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♦ Media: You can add images and video to your site. This section allows you to manage and upload the various media to your server.

♦ Preferences: Allows you to change a few more settings, including the e-mail address and password of the admin account.

♦ Admin-Tools: Contains advanced options for improving the administration experience.

Adding your content

The point of a content management system is to manage some content, so it’s time to add pages to the system.

1. From the administration page, choose Pages.

A screen similar to Figure 3-8 appears.

2. Type main as the first page name.

Each page you create needs to have a name.

3. Keep the page type WYSIWYG.

You can make many different kinds of pages, but most of your pages will be the standard WYSIWYG format.

4. Leave all other settings at their default.

The other settings available here don’t mean much until you have multiple pages.

Figure 3-8: This page allows you to add, modify, and delete pages.

5. Click the Add button to add the page.

A screen similar to Figure 3-9 appears.

Figure 3-9: Now you’re at a nice page editor.

Using the WYSIWYG editor

The purpose of the CMS is to make editing a Web site without any technical skills easy. You can give admin access to an HTML novice, and he can use the system to build Web pages with no knowledge of XHTML or CSS. The editor has a number of useful tools that make creating and editing much like working with a word processor.

♦ Predefined fonts and styles: The user can choose fonts and styles from drop-down menus, unaware that these options are taking advantage of predefined CSS styles.

♦ The ability to add lists, links, and images: The editor includes the ability to add lists, links, and images (and other types of content) without any knowledge of XHTML. If you add an image, the editor includes a wizard that helps you upload the image to the server. If you add a link, a wizard helps you specify the URL of the link.

♦ Multiple paste options: Many users create content in Microsoft Word. A Paste from Word button attempts to delete all the excess junk Word adds to a file and paste the content cleanly, which is a major lifesaver.

♦ A plain source editor: My favorite button on the WYSIWYG editor is the one that turns off the WYSIWYG features. The Source button displays the page as plain HTML/XHTML text. The automated features are nice, but I can usually build a page a lot faster and more accurately by hand. This feature is especially useful when the visual tools aren’t doing what you want.

When you finish building your page, click the Save button to save the contents of the page.

Along the top of the editor is a series of icons: a house, a blue screen, a life ring, and a lock. Click the blue screen (which is the View icon) to open your new page and see it the way the user will see it. Figure 3-10 shows the results of my simple page.

The WYSIWYG page is the most commonly used page type (especially by nontechnical users) but it’s not the only option. The standard edition of Website Baker also comes with a number of other default page types:

♦ Code: Interprets the page as PHP code. This is any easy way to enter any PHP code you wish, including database lookups. The code is interpreted as PHP, so if you want it to be HTML, you can just use a giant heredoc. Figure 3-11 shows a PHP snippet being written, and Figure 3-12 shows the results.

Figure 3-10: This is how the page looks to the user.

Figure 3-11: The code page allows you to write any PHP code you wish.

Figure 3-12: How the code page looks to the user.

♦ Form: Allows you to build a basic XHTML form without knowing any XHTML. The administrator can add all the normal form elements. Figure 3-13 shows the form editor in action. When the user enters form data, the content is automatically e-mailed to the administrator and stored in a database that can be retrieved via the CMS. This feature is one of the most important factors of a CMS