Using the Admin System

The MelatiSite CMS enables you to create and maintain pages of a website through its database interface.

The website can be viewed as a tree with the home page as the root. The tree can be viewed by clicking the tree link Tree Icon on the top right frame of a Page record within the Admin System (French) . (English) .

Creating a new Record

Access the Admin System, where you can select the Table you wish to add to from the dropdown.

  1. Click the New Record icon New Record Icon.
  2. Fill in at least the items marked with a red *. [Leave the Deleted box unchecked.]
  3. Press Update

You have created a new record!

Adding paragraphs (Divs)

Use the Admin system to navigate to your newley created page.

  1. Press the Div link on the top right pane.
  2. Click the New Record icon New Record Icon.
  3. Enter a pagagraph number.
  4. Select a Style (Default).
  5. Add the paragraph title.
  6. Enter the paragraph content.
  7. Press Update

Repeat for as many paragraphs as you have for this Page.

Uploading an Image or Document

To upload a new Image or Document:
  1. Select Uploaded Document or Uploaded Image table
  2. Click on the New Record icon New Record Icon.
  3. Select type of file (this is not currently used)
  4. Add Description (this will not currently be displayed)
  5. Click Upload new file link
  6. Allow new window to popup, in new window click on new file dialogue, select file to upload from you local disk
  7. Click upload, wait, quite a long time, for the popup window to close itself. It takes a lot longer to upload a file than to download it, as Broadband is asymetrical.
  8. Fill in any numeric value for height, size, width, they are not currently used
  9. Fill in a Display Name, which is a title for the document
  10. Click create

This uploads the file and creates a record of it. The URL is displayed, this is the url to put in your hyperlink.

Images are uploaded to the /images/ url, documents to /docs .

Note the French and English sites share the image and documents space so there is no need to actually upload the image or document twice.

Creating non-standard pages

The pages that you can create using the CMS are deliberately standardised, to give a uniform look and feel to the whole site which can be easily changed. However there is a requirement to be able to bypass this mechanism.

To create a page which does not fit into the standard framework follow the procedure above to create basic page. Then save that page to your local disk and edit it with your HTML editor of choice.

Use the Admin System to create a new Uploaded File record and upload your editted file.

This trick can be used to overwrite a page from the database, if there is a requirement for a non standard page.

Configuring contacts

The emails sent by the system have the following configurable settings:

WebsiteFromName Ordinary name of sender
WebsiteFromEmail Email of sender
SalesAdminName Ordinary name of sales addressee
SalesAdminEmail Email of sales addressee
NewsAdminName Ordinary name of news addressee
NewsAdminEmail Email of news addressee

Use the Admin System to modify the setting table .

Internationalisation

All text is stored in tthe database, the non-paragraph text, such as link text is stored in the Setting table.

Use the Admin System to modify the setting table .