Content Management

A Content Management System (CMS) allows the operators of a web site to add, edit, or delete content on the site. A good CMS is easy to use and does not require any programming or design skills. Basic knowledge of a computer is necessary but a CMS should be no more difficult to use than a word processor.

Many sites have information or images that need to be updated at least once a week. Having to call your web designer each week to request updates would be expensive and annoying to the designer. A CMS solves this problem. Once the site itself is built, the owner of the site can log in from any computer connected to the internet and update text and images as often as they want.

Design215 Site Manager 2.0

There are many types of Content Management Systems on the market. At Design215, we built our own CMS, custom tailored to our clients' needs. Our system works best with the sites we design but the Design215 Site Manager will work with any existing site as long as PHP and MySQL are supported.

Features Overview:

• 4-Tier User Management for accessing the Site Manager and protected pages on the web site; one admin account, one guest account, unlimited manager accounts, and unlimited registered user accounts.
• Organize data into any number of Categories, Subcategories, and Items.
• For each Category, create custom fields and field names to describe the data. For example, the fields in a guestbook might be "Name", "Email", and "Message", while fields in a photo gallery might be "Title", "Filename", "Location", "Date", and "Description".
• Rearrange the order in which Categories or Subcategories are displayed.
• Use the default or a custom file upload folder for each Category.
• Upload multiple images, thumbnails, or other media files at once. View directories of uploaded files, sorted by name or date.
• Image galleries support thumbnails in separate folders, and images on external web sites.
• All database items are linked by unique ID numbers, allowing categories, subcategories, and other items to be renamed at any time without affecting the data structure.
• A "Hidden" category allows content to be temporarily removed from the web site without deleting it.
• Text fields support HTML but also preserve hard returns and blank lines on Macintosh and Windows.
• View visitor statistics at any time, including total and average visits per month and day. See charts of pages viewed, sorted by name, time, popularity, or IP address. See lists of all referring links, and search engine keywords.
• Simple text editor allows users to create notes, temporary files, or instructions for other users.

Live Example: PoeStories.com

Here is the Main tab of the Site Manager for PoeStories.com. The layout on the left shows how the content of the site is organized. The Gallery folder is open and inside it, one of the photo galleries is open. Inside the open photo gallery is a list of the images in that gallery. Each image has a title and a description.



This is a custom tab that was designed specifically for PoeStories.com. On the left is a list of vocabulary words. Words are entered along with a definition. Any time one of these words appears in any story or poem on the site, it becomes a link. When the link is clicked, the definition pops up next to the word.



This view in the Statistics tab is showing a chart of pages viewed during January 2006, sorted by popularity. The administrator can easily determine which pages are the most popular, and how many people have been to each page.

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