About Webspaces
Intro
The original vision for the web was a medium where it could be as easy to put material onto the web as it was to access it. Good things take time, and it is only with the advent of Content Managment Systems (CMS) like this one that that vision has become somewhat of a reality.
Webspaces is open source Content Management Software, which can be used for building websites, community portals, or intranet systems. It is a lite and simple system that is easy to install, quick to get up to speed with, and presents a flexible minimalist face to users. We call it three click publishing, because thats all it should take. Anyone with average IT skills should be able to do it.
Core principles
Content, presentation seperation
As with all CMSs the page data is stored seperately from the presentation / layout . A page template is applied to the content when the page is rendered. This means that by changing the page template, you can change the look of literally hundreds of pages.
English page naming
Pages all have english names/urls which helps users find their material and search engines index properly. The unique webspace and webspace page names share the one name space, with any number of parent child relationships. All webspace page items are rendered by page.php.
Simplicity first
Minimalism and Self-explanatory-ness are design features. Most CMSs include a huge amount of bells and whistles on a default install, which you then have to figure out how to turn off. Then you literally have to read a book in order to know how to run it. Webspaces CMS takes the opposite approach and creates first and foremost a basic webpage, which you can then build on as you need with tools that are remarkably flexible.
Speed
The whole point of a CMS is to save time. Webspaces has been optimised to make publishing fast. A text based markup that errs on the side of easy typing, and fast page loading. You weave in and out of the content pages as you update them by clicking a small graphic on the page, which your audience will never notice. There are no obvious login boxes, no urls to remember or lose. Webspaces has probably the worlds simplest markup formatting language , which is modelled around common internet habits of old. You can insert images and headings, and make tables and boxes quickly and easily. A range of nav bars are automatically generated which you can include in your pages.
Quick start
Edit pages
You can edit any page that is in the cms (urls like page.php?view=page-name) by clicking the small discrete graphic usually in the sidebar or footer area. Once into the editor page, you can also click 'MyWebspaceAdmin' in the top right, that takes you to the main admin area where you can edit any page and lots of other things.
Add Pages
To add a new page theres a button at the bottom of the admin page. After you have added it, you can set the parent page under page options. This results in the page being automatically added to the correct navigation sub-menus. If you dont want the page to appear in any menus, select hide in contents under page options. Your page, if you name it My Page, will be accessible by page.php?view=my-page.
Sidebar content is accessed via Admin | page | sidebars. Default sidebar content is in Admin | space sidebars.
Add managers
The person that created a webspace is by defaualt the manager. Additional managers can be added in a two step process:
1. User tools (footer menu) | user manager | add user2.
2. Admin | settings | add manager.
It pays to ensure that cms managers have at least a basic grasp of publishing. Even though its now easy to publish on line, good writing and styling dont come easy in this world, and that world is now your audience.
