Content

As outlined on the Admin Main page, we use the Content Admin Panel to create, view, edit and delete Categories, Articles, Extra content and Pages. Clicking on the Add New link beside the Categories option opens the next two panels shown below. Clicking the Add New link beside Articles, Extra or Pages options opens the same main panel, which we’ll discuss in the New Article section below the New Category section.

New Category

Categories: We organize our articles in Categories. When a site visitor clicks on any category you have created, all articles that have been assigned to that category will be displayed on pages within that category. As an example, if you wish to feature several articles on farm animals, you might create categories for Horses, Cows, Pigs, Chickens and Turkeys, then assign your articles to each accordingly, using the Customize Panel, before posting it.

Creating a new category is real easy. Start by typing the name in the name field. When you do this, you will notice that the same word is automatically repeated in the second field in lower-case form and… if it had two words, a hyphen is auto-inserted between the words. The name in the first field gets displayed as a link to the category. The one in the second field gets saved to the database and is used to create the actual link itself (it’s formatted that way on purpose). You can then enter a short description of what the Category contains in the third field. Make sure the Publish Category check-box is checked so your new Category will display immediately. Categories are also added to the Category drop-down within the Customize panels (discussed later) and the Category Order Panel (next).

Changing the Order of Categories: As we create new Categories, they are automatically added to this panel. Only two are shown in the example to the left, and the number “0” is assigned to each. You can re-order the Categories as they are displayed in the Categories menu on your pages… by re-assigning the numbers. For example, Changing “Cat One” to “2” and “Cat Two” to “1”, would reverse the order of display in the Categories list, with Cat Two being first in the list.

New Content – articles, extra and pages

Panel Features: When you choose the “Add New” Article or Page link options from the Manage Content panel, your content entry panel will appear as shown. When you choose the “Add New” Extra Contents link option, the SEF title field is not included because it isn’t required for Extra Contents.

We begin by typing a short title in the first field. As you do this, you’ll notice that the same words are simultaneously added to the second (SEF) field below it… all lower-case… with hyphens and no spaces between the words. This creates the link to the article that will be displayed in the URL address bar in a site visitor’s browser. The link is created this way so it can be saved as a locator-reference in the database when you save the article. Next, you begin typing your article in the text-entry field.

Styling Buttons: The first 4 buttons below the text-entry field will wrap tag-sets around text when you have it highlighted in the text area.
B – will wrap text with a strong tag-set to make it bold.
I – tags will display text in italics.
Strike – tags put a line through text within them.
P – tags wrapping text blocks will add an extra line-space between them.

BR, when inserted at the end of a line of text, will cause text after it to start on a new line without an extra line-space.

Break: This tag is used to split the text of your article into two parts when you only want a short introduction… say the first paragraph… to display with a read more link below it. The “read more” link will display the whole article, including the first introductory paragraph. The Break tag is enclosed in square brackets as when inserted into the text area. This tag is automatically inserted at the end of your text. If you want to place it in a large body of text, you will need to cut and paste it into place.

Image: This button is used to insert a file-path to an image you want displayed in your article. You will have uploaded the image into the folder where you store your article images. Clicking the button opens a small Prompt panel, where you insert the file-path to your image. If your image was uploaded to the images folder and the image file-name was redvette.jpg, then you would put images/redvette.jpg in the field and click OK. Next, you are given a field to enter in the “alternate text” for the image, which displays when you mouse-over an image in the article. In this example, the image is a photo of a red corvette, so we might type in… A Sharp-looking Red Corvette, and click OK. The complete HTML string will then be inserted in the text-entry area. Image file-path strings are always inserted at the end of the article text. To re-locate it somewhere else within the text, you will need to cut & paste it to the new location.

Link: The link tag is used to display a link within article text to another article or web page. Type the words for your text-link where you want the link to display and highlight them. Click the Link button to open a small Prompt panel, and insert the complete (absolute) URL to the other article or web page. Click OK to open a second field, and enter in the text that will be displayed when you mouse-over the text link. Clicking OK then wraps your text-link words with the link tags, turning it into a complete link string.

Include: The Include tags are enclosed in square brackets when inserted into the text area as . We use these tags to include the content of a separate file (HTML, PHP or plain text) as article or page content. This is extremely useful because the site’s template styles apply to the content, eliminating the need to include any styling within the files themselves. As an example, let’s say we’ve created an HTML form called form1.htm to gather information and send it to us by e-mail. The HTML script only needs to include the form elements… no styling. If we have several form files, we can create a folder in the site’s root directory called forms and upload the file(s) to it. Then, to include the file’s content in an article or page, click the Include button below the textarea, enter the file-path to the file in the Prompt panel ( forms/form1.htm) and click OK. Wherever this string is located, the content of that form page will display. The same applies for the content of a plain text file or a stand-alone PHP file containing functions that run independently of the core sNews functions. Note that these tags are automatically inserted at the end of your text. If you want the included file to display elsewhere within your body of text, you will need to cut and paste the completed string into place. You can learn more about creating and using files in the Files section.

Customizing – article positioning

Clicking on the Customize button opens this panel for more options. Clicking it again closes it. The Category drop-down lets you choose which of your category pages your article will be displayed on. By default, all articles are posted to the “Home” page. To have it displayed on only one category page, choose the category (from those you’ve already created) from the drop-down.

Description META Tag: When we create page-files in a normal, static HTML website, every file has a section at the top enclosed in head tags, and it is scanned by search-bots in order to get your page(s) indexed on search engines. Because your site’s pages are created dynamically (on the fly), you can customize the “Description” and “keywords for each article and page from here. As an example, if your article or page was about eating watermelons… your description might read: “How to eat a watermelon” (without the quote-marks).

Keywords META Tag: Keywords serve the same purpose as the Description, but give search-bots more words to index your page under. Using the watermelons example, we enter the keywords in a continuous string, each separated by a comma: watermelons, healthy eating, summer treats, fruit … and so on. There are limits as to how many characters the database will accept, so keep your description and keywords strings to eight or ten words maximum.

The next three check-boxes: … when enabled… will do as they say.

Publish Date

The Publish Date panel lets you choose a future date and time for your article or page to be published on, by checking the “enable” check-box. The current time is shown below it for a reference. You simply choose the day, month, year, hour and minute from the drop-downs. Your next step – click the Save button to save all article (or page) details to the database.

Customizing – Extra

The Customize panel for Extra Content is quite different than the one for articles and pages. All you need to do here is decide whether or not you want the extra content to display on one Category and/or page or on all. By default, both are set to All, so you need to choose your options from the drop-downs. The Category drop-down lets you choose either Home or any other Category you’ve previously created. The Pages drop-down lets you choose from any pages previously created.

 

Customizing – Pages

The Customize panel for Pages serves pretty much the same purpose as it does for articles. There is no Category drop-down in this case, since links to pages are displayed separately on your main page.