WebmasterNotRequired.com - FREE Web Site Builder & Content Management System
Instruction Manual (updated November 11, 2008)

Welcome to the WebmasterNotRequired.com Web Site Builder & Content Management System built using state of the art ASP.NET which makes it easy to build your own dynamic web site.

This guide will provide you a quick walk-through to the site administration and the module features.

If you are looking for something special, use the "Find" feature of your browser to look for certain terms. This CMS has many features to be discovered.

For additional questions, news, releases and the project's news feed visit http://WebmasterNotRequired.com/CMSSupport.aspx
 
Table Of Contents (TOC)
Administration
1.     Set up a site
2. Manage pages and navigation
3. User management

 
Current modules
1. Contact Form
2. Download List
3. Easy Control
4. Event List
5. Gallery
6. Guest book
7. HTML Content
8. Link List
9. News List
10. Sub pages
11. Blog
12. Blogroll
13. TagCloud

 
Administration:
1. Set up a site

First thing before you start creating content is to set some global parameters and information for your new web site. When logged in for the first time go to the Administration menu and select CMS Setup:
The following page allows you to change some global parameters and even change the complete layout of your web site., even after all content has been added!

Description of items:

Title
The title is the name of your web site. and will be shown within the header image of the web site.
(you may leave this blank)

Language
Future releases of the CMS may be available in different languages.

Mail Sender Address
Enter the email address here that you want your message to be addressed from.

SMTP-Server
If you want to use features that require e-mails to be sent, you need to define your e-mail server.
When hosting with us this should be localhost

SMTP User
Our email & web servers require authentication for sending email. Please enter a valid email address for your package.

SMTP Password
Enter the password for the email account used in SMTP User. Should be unique and not shared with other web site passwords (like the one use to log into this CMS)

SMTP Domain
When used on our servers this is generally mail.YourDomain.com

The domain name is essentially the web site name.

Footer line
Contact details or copyright information can be provided here and will be shown at the bottom of each page.

Web site. description and Web site. keywords
You can add the appropriate meta information for the header sections of the web site. here.

Reset Web site.
Will clear all fields again.

RSS Feeds
Many of the modules are RSS feed enabled. A checkbox "Enable Section RSS" can be activated to show RSS icons below these sections. Users can subscribe to updates of this specific module's content by clicking the icon.

Select Theme
A really cool feature of this CMS is that you can switch the design and layout at any time with only one click. All content will automatically be rearranged and new style sheets will be used.

Simply select a new theme and click on it. Done!

If you are familiar with .Net and Visual Studio you may even want to create your own templates?

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2. Manage Pages and Navigation

Select Pages and Navigation to take control of your site's structure, arrange the navigation and create new pages.

The pages are listed in the order in which they appear in the navigation.

Indented items (like "...Starter Package ") are sub pages of the page above them and will be shown in a secondary navigation.

To add a new page simply click the button "New Page" and an empty page appears at the end of the list.

To move a page within the navigation hierarchy or to make it a sub page of its parent, activate the page by clicking on it and use the blue Move arrows at the right under the New Page button. The right arrow will make it a sub pages, the up and down arrows change its position.

Description of items

Page Title
This name will be shown in the browser window.

Meta Tag Description & Meta Tag Keywords
You can add the appropriate meta information for the header sections of each web page here. To help with your search engine positioning.

Navigation
Name of the page in the navigation menu.

Virtual Path:
With a dynamic CMS new pages will have generic IDs. You may want to make the URL's of these pages more user friendly by assigning a virtual path name.

Simply type in the name of the page, e.g. "About me". Instead of having a generic URL like: www.yoursite.com/hm.aspx?pg=3cb13823-a424-4761-81c1-5fa9da24db43

you can now use the short version

www.yoursite.com/contact.aspx

This way printing a URL on promotional material or sending it by e-mail becomes much simpler!

Allow Anonymous
By default everyone can visit your pages. If you wish to have a restricted area for members you can uncheck this box and only registered users will be able to see this page. (-> see 3. User Management )

Editing by power users
If you activate this button, power users can edit this page. This enables the delegation of administrative areas (-> also see 3. User Management )

Visible
Uncheck this if you want to hide this page, e.g. because you are still working on its content.

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3. User Management

The CMS provides a simple yet powerful user management that can be used to create restricted areas.
Please keep in mind that there are 2 levels of rights available:

1. Registered Users: Pages that are not visible to everyone (-> 2. Manage Pages and Navigation) can be visited by registered users only. There is only one level of registered users.

2. Administrators: Among the registered users there can be one or more administrators. Administrators have full access to the back end and can edit the site, create and delete pages and mange user profiles.

3. Power-User: Registered Users can be defined as Power Users. Power Users have unrestricted access to pages, for which have been given access set by Administrator. The Back end is only accessible for Administrators.
To create new users simply add name, password and e-mail and click "Create User".
Clicking the Edit-Button will allow you to change name and e-mail. And you can assign administrator rights to the user by checking the appropriate box.

FULL ADMIN: this user will be able to create, edit and delete pages.

POWER USER: this user can edit only the pages assigned to Power Users via an ADMIN under the Administration/Pages and Navigation page.

The last login of each user is also tracked within this view.

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The modules:
Every new page is empty and will display the module selection drop down element:
Currently there are 10 modules available to create your page. You can add as many modules to your page as you like and arrange them in any order. Add the bottom of each page you will always find the module selection, each new module will be added at the bottom of the page.

To change the order of modules you can click the up and down arrows in each module's header which will move the whole module section up or down.
Delete Section will delete the complete module.

Many modules will have a rich text editor to create new content. It allows the basic text formatting tasks and even table creation - find out yourself what can be done with these tools...
To add a picture click the image icon and either select a picture from the server or use the upload feature to add new pictures. If you are familiar with HTML, you can toggle views between the design view and the HTML view with the tab "Source" above the editor's window.


View and Edit mode

To provide administrators with a real preview of their work without the need to log out, the modules have a view and edit mode. One can toggle between them by clicking the View and Edit buttons.
Send to sidebar
Some modules offer a special feature "Send to Sidebar".
If you activate this option, the content of the modules will be highlighted in the sidebar which can be used as a quick link section or latest update section.
1. Contact Form

Stay in touch with your friends, colleagues and customers and provide an easy way to send messages to you: the Contact Form module. Please note that you must have specified a SMTP server during setup for sending e-mails.
The contact form back end serves three purposes: To create the contact form, define where the contact requests are sent to and to provide a thank you message to the user.

The first three fields recipient e-mail, Copy to and Subject define how mails are delivered to you.

The Introtext is the teaser text to invite people to get in contact.

The Thank you message is displayed on the screen after a user has used the contact form.

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2. Download List

To share documents on your web site. use the Download List module. It allows to upload many different file formats and these will automatically detected and an appropriate application icon is added to the list view.
downloads add  
Once the file is uploaded it automatically chooses the correct icon based on the file type and builds a download list complete with Title, Description & File Size.

Download List

  

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3. Easy Control

Would you like to integrate your own UserControl in the CMS? Nothing easier than that: the Easy Control is the section of your choice! Just create your own UserControl as you normally would and place it inside the EasyControls folder in the CMS root. You can even copy existing UserControls you have into that same directory.

When you place an Easy Control section in one of your pages, all controls inside the EasyControls folder are automatically listed in the drop down, which you see in the administrative view of the section. Just select the control you want to show up and you're done. Easy, isn't it?

easy control dropdown list  
Below is the Iframe that displays another web site, while this example is not really of much use it does begin to show the flexibility of having easy controls. More will be added on this topic in the near future.

IframeTest

  

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4. Event List

Invite some guests and get your events online. The Event List module lets you create events, set their date and time.

Create an event item:

Select the event date with the dynamic date selection.

Select the time by using the hours and minutes drop down.

The "show from" is like the publication date. If you select a date here, the event will only be visible on and after that date.

By clicking Send To Sidebar you can create a menu of just your event titles in the web sites Sidebar (try it to see how it looks, as it is easy to undo.)

Sidebar
Automatically creates a list of events dates and location with a link to the events full information.
Events  
When the link is clicked you can view the events information
Display Event  

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5. Gallery

To share your photos use the Gallery module. Files can be selected and annotated like in the Download module.
 
Thumbnails will be created automatically once the images are uploaded.

A preview image will be created that fits into the dimensions of the gallery module. The original file is available via a download link.

Also the rest of the gallery images are readily available to preview via the left and right arrows. Click the up arrow to return to the Gallery.

gallery3

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6. Guest book

Let your guests leave their comments on your site. The guest book is easy to set up and even comes with an AntiBot image for more security.

In the current version you can't edit entries, you may delete them, this version also needs to be worked on a bit as currently it does not filter entries or send an email to the site admin when an entry is made.

Also the delete function is currently INSTANT there is NO CONFIRMATION!

Updates will be posted to http://WebmasterNotRequired.com/CMSSupport.aspx

Delete Guestbook
 

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7. HTML Content

The most important section of all - as it allows for the most flexibility. With the rich text editor you have extended possibilities to change text style and formatting.
HTML WYSIWYG Editor
  
To add a picture click the image icon and either select a picture from the server or use the upload feature to add new pictures. If you are familiar with HTML, you can toggle views between the design view and the HTML view with the tab "Source" above the editor's window.  
Source Code  

 

The Image Editor Screen Shots

 
Image Info  
Image Link Properties  
Image Upload Properties  
Advanced Image Properties  

 

The Link Editor Screen Shots

 
Link Editir Info  
Link Target  
Upload a file to link to  
Advanced Link Editor  
You can also create tables easily (however to edit your table you may have to use the source code.)
Create Tables  

There are 2 types of Browse buttons available when uploading images and files.

When uploading from your computer the button will only say Browse....

However when browsing the web server for images and files you already have uploaded the button says Browse Server. If you click the Browse Server button it will open the following window. You can create folders to help you keep your files and images sorted.

Images and other files are kept in separate areas to see which you are working in look to the top left under resource type. To upload to the server from your computer while browsing use the form at the bottom of the page.

Server Files

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8. Link List

The Link list module works in the same ways as the Download or Gallery module. The URL is added and the target can be selected separately.
By default the links will be ordered in alphabetical descending A-Z, to force order your links simply add a number before the title. Example below.
Link list

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9. News List

Add news to you site. Select the "Show from" and "Show until" dates to specify when and for how long a news chapter will be displayed on you web site.
 
News List
 
News Article

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10. Sub pages

If you have a page that has several sub pages it might be interesting to have a link list to all these sub pages on this parent page, like a table of content for a category of your web site.

The Sub pages module does just that: Simply add it to your parent page and it will list all sub pages as a link list automatically!

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11. Blog

The Blog Module provides you with all the advantages of a Web log:

  • Publicity for your Web site.: the ping function attracts more visitors to your Web site. 
  • Topicality of a selected thread: keep the visitors posted (travel diary, progress of a project, monitoring of publications in the Internet, knowledge management, etc.).
  • Communication and exchange of ideas: read the comments of your blog visitors and reply to them by updating your blog entry or posting new entries.
Post new blog entries or edit old ones.

Tags:
Click on “Tags“ and a little window opens where you can assign tags to an entry or create new ones.
Keywords can be changed or erased anytime. Just click on Tags in the Edit mode of the blog.
Weblogs input notification:
You can decide in the configuration of the blog whether a ping should be sent to Weblogs.com when posting entries. This will advertise your input with Weblogs.
Weblog Ping
Calendar:
The calendar displays the days on which the entries were posted in bold.

Comments:
Visitors can post comments on any blog entry which are immediately published. An administrator is able to erase these in the Edit mode.

Kommentar

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12. Blogroll

The Blogroll module has a similar structure to the Link List. The only difference is that the Blogroll displays links to other blogs you would like to introduce to your visitors.
Blogroll
To post a new entry, please indicate a title and the URL of the post. You can also add the RSS feed to the post. This enables the user to subscribe to all blogs with one click (Subscription List).

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13. TagCloud

The purpose of the TagCloud is to visualize keywords used in the blog. Keywords used more often are displayed in bold. Clicking on a keyword displays all entries containing this keyword.
TagCloud
You can place the TagCloud as often as you like and anywhere. If you want your Web site. to feature more than one blog, the TagCloud groups all blogs together.