GetSimple (http://get-simple.info/) is a relatively new Content Management system that, as the name suggests, is a delightfully simple CMS for owners to administer.
Accessing the administration panel
Go to www.’yourdomain’.com.au/admin and enter your Username and Password as provided by TOSD.
Note: Replace ‘yourdomain’ in the above link with your own domain name ?
Main administration tabs
The diagram above shows the general administration layout. There are six main menu tabs across the top. Pages and Files are the only ones we will concern ourselves with in this Quick Start Guide. Notice that when you click on any of the main tabs a secondary set of options appears in the right hand sidebar, with the currently selected option shown in orange.
Pages
View All Pages
Selecting ‘Pages’ (from the tabs) then ‘View All Pages’ (from the sidebar secondary menu) displays a list of all the pages in the website.
Clicking on any of the page title links will enable you to edit that page.
Clicking on the ‘Create New Page’ button in the secondary menu will enable you to create a new page.
Creating a new page
- Click the ‘Create a New Page’ button
- Click the ‘Page Options+’ button to expose the options for your new page
- Give the page a ‘Title’ (preferaby one that contains a keyword, or keyword phrase that is relevant to the page content). Do not make the title too long, or, apart from anything else, it may take up too much room in the menu.
- Slug/URL: you can leave this empty. It will be automatically created from the page title when your page is saved. However if you do want something a little different from the title use lowercase letters only and dashes to separate words (no spaces). E.g. daffodil-varieties
- Select the parent page. If the page is to be at the top level of the menu, select ‘index’ from the pull down list.
- Add keywords (I suggest no more that 6 words) and make sure that any keywords are also contained in the general page content.
- Add a meta description (I suggest no more that about 140 characters (including spaces). The title and meta description are both displayed in the search engine results. They must be relevant to the page content and written in such a way that they will encourage people doing searches to want to click them.
- Template: in general leave as ‘Default Template’. Contact TOSD if you are in doubt.
- If the page is to be added to the menu (this would be the normal situation but you may not want to do it until you have finished working on the page) tick the ‘Add to menu’ box.
- Use the editor to enter and format your text, images and hyeprlinks. If you hover over any of the menu icons a text label will appear to tell you what it is. As shown below, icons are available for all common formatting functions.
Adding Content
Images:
These should be uploaded first using the ‘Files’ tab. All images should be set to their final size in pixels before uploading and have a resolution of 96ppi. Images straight out of a digital camera will be far too big, both in terms of their physical dimensions and file size. If you don’t have software to do this go to http://pixlr.com/ , click “Open Photo Editor” and click the ‘Open Image from computer’ link. This will enable you to resize your image and save it at the correct resolution.
Images are added after the text paragraphs have been set up.
- Click on the start of the paragraph the image is the be associated with to set the cursor then click the image icon.
- In the popup window click the ‘Browse Server’ button and select your image from the uploads list.
- Add a brief description in the ‘Alternative text’ box (using keywords if possible) set the alignment to’ Left’ or ‘Right’ and the HSpace to 10px to allow for a little padding around the image. Click OK to save.
Hyperlinks (links)
Highlight the words that will form the link and click the link icon. A popup window will appear.
- If you are linking to another page of your own website set the link type to ‘Link to local page’ and select the page.
- If you are linking to a page on another website set the link type to ‘URL’ and enter the URL e.g. www.anotherwebsite.com.au/pagewhatever
- If you are linking to a pdf (uploaded previously using the ‘Files’ tab) set the Link Type to ‘URL’, click the browse server button and select the file from the uploads list.
Presentation tips
- Leave the main body text of the page at the default size and colour. In other words: just type!
- Best to avoid pasting text from another application but if you must always strip pre-existing formatting by papsting it into a completely plain text editor (e.g. Notepad) first
- Getting the order right will help. Here is what I suggest . . .
- Add the main text content first.
- Format the headings and sub-headings by clicking on the icon with the drop down arrow labelled ‘Normal’ and selecting the required heading size. Note that Heading 1 (H1) should not be used as it is reserved by the system. Note also that the colours of the headings will not show up in the editor. They will appear correctly when the page is viewed, though.
- Add any images
- Add any hyperlinks
- Do any final adjustments to formatting e.g. bold, italic etc
Creating a News Article
If your website has a News facility configured click the Pages Tab then the News Manager button on the secondary menu. The existing News articles will be listed. Click on one to edit, or click the ‘Create New Article’ button to create a new one. Creation is very simple. Just type the article and add images or links as required. An Excerpt (summary / intro) may be added if required but is not necessary.
Uploading Files
- Select the ‘Files’ tab from the top menu – existing files will be listed under the Uploads directory
- Click the ‘Upload files and/or images’ button in the secondary menu to upload a file from your PC, taking note of my comments above in the Page Content/Images section regarding correct image preparation.
- This facility can be used to either upload images for insertion into a page or news article, or documents (preferrably pdfs) that you want to link to.
H,i great to see a user orientated quick start guide, hopefully someone will produce a video guide too, only ones I’ve found have been for developers, bit too complicated for some people.