CMS Made Simple is a an open source content management system that allows rapid website development in a fraction of the normal time, avoiding hours of coding by providing modules and 3rd Party add-ons. With this book in hand you will be able to harness the power of this modular and extendable content management system at your fingertips.This guide for CMS Made Simple is based on practical and working solutions allowing you to understand how this powerful and simple application can support you in your daily work. The workshop helps you create engaging, effective, and easy-to-use CMS websites for businesses, clubs, or organizations.This is a step- by-step case study, aimed at helping you build a complete professional website with CMS Made Simple. You can take a ready-to-use template or implement your own custom design, enrich the website with features like a photo gallery, an e-commerce solution with PayPal checkout, and forms of any complexity or popular JQuery effects and finish it off by optimizing it for search engines. The useful HTML and CSS code snippets are optimized and can be easily adapted for your own projects. Chapter by chapter you will put yourself in the role of web designer, developer, administrator, and business manager, thus learning every aspect needed for building rich websites that are very simple to manage.
Develop powerful, engaging, effective, and easy-to-use CMS websites for businesses, clubs, or organizations
Implement your own design or any HTML /CSS template into CMS Made Simple with step-by-step instructions
Integrate an e-commerce shop with PayPal checkout
Easily implement YouTube videos into templates or pages
Create custom forms of any complexity with individual fields using a builder
Integrate a photo gallery or newsletter feature with ready-to-use modules
Build print-friendly PDF versions of your sites on the fly
Develop protected pages available only for members and manage visitor logins with a sign-in form
Build your own functionality with module maker
Chapter 1: Building Websites with CMS – This chapter introduces the case study website with its functional requirements. Chapter 2: Getting Started – In this chapter you will learn how to install CMS Made Simple and how its admin console is organized and will configure CMS Made Simple for sending out e-mail. Chapter 3: Creating Pages and Navigation – This chapter focuses on creating, editing, and organizing pages. It introduces the page hierarchy and search-friendly URLs. At the end of this chapter you will have the complete page structure for the case study website. Chapter 4: Design and Layout – In this chapter you learn to create a new template or port a ready HTML /CSS design to CMS Made Simple. At the end of this chapter you will be able to implement an individual design for a website. Chapter 5: Using Standard Modules – This chapter covers standard modules of CMS Made Simple, such as News, Search, Image and File Manager, and Printing (including built-in PDF output), and introduces how to install additional modules, like FAQ. Chapter 6: Users and Permissions – Here you will learn how the permissions of different users can be organized in the admin console. Chapter 7: Using Third-party Add-ons – In this chapter you will implement a photo gallery with individual design, add a contact form with custom fields, install Captcha functionality, manage newsletters, and implement YouTube videos on the website. Chapter 8: Creating Your Own functionality – This chapter introduces two approaches to create your own functionality. In the first part, you learn how to use the module maker to create a product catalogue. In the second part, you learn how to create a service desk functionality using a module. Chapter 9: E-Commerce Workshop – You are invited to follow a step-by-step workshop to see how an e-commerce shop with a PayPal checkout can be realized with the E-Commerce Suite. Chapter 10: Advanced CMS Made Simple – This chapter teaches you how to create multilingual websites, make search engine optimizations, and use JQuery plugins in the navigation of the website. The integration of a visitor statistic and some advanced techniques enrich the functionality of the case study website. Chapter 11: Administration and Troubleshooting – You will learn how to keep your website up to date and secure and do some performance tuning. At the end of the chapter you get an answer to the question "How can I get quick help in the forum?"