Now that we have steps 1 and 2 of setting up your website out of the way, lets proceed to step 3 : Setting Up Your Custom Website Design. This step requires a little more skill, but I am going to assume that most reading this will have no problems as you are already familiar with web design.
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John
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Posts: 44
Location: USA |
Posted: August 8, 2008
Now that you have everything installed, you should follow the onscreen instructions and login to the system at www.yourdomainname.com/login.php. Now you should be into the custom website design system. You will see a number of tools in the backend, take them one at a time but remember your focus should be on the Page Admin from the get go, later you will use the other tools, but first we need to customize your web site.
Master Template:
The master template for your site will be sitting in your www folder. It is called template2.php. If you opened your browser window, you will be able to see your master template. the looks of it, its not much from the onset, but it is the foundation of your custom website application. We designed the system based off of this file and the csstemplate2.css file that is also in the www folder. You will notice that this file has container elements that hold not only the Content Area Information, but also the Meta Information for each particular page. This structure is our suggested setup; however you will be able to set up the document any which way you need to while keeping the same template naming convention.
The master template's purpose is to set the site using the repetitive elements on the page. For our purposes, we have used the top part of the file including the logo header area, some hard coded links and for the bottom area we have used the footer backround, permanent links, and the copyright information. After this is customized, the rest of the project is downhill. If you kept most of the same css style attributes, you could eliminate alot of custom style sheet changes so that you could focus on the content.
After you have your changes on the master template completed, you should then reupload the file and continue to the web pages backend editor.
After logging into the backend of the website, you will notice that there are handful of items on the Page Admin, from creating a page to editing menus, and other items which you may or may not already be familiar with. From the onset, lets get an overview of what these tools and input tags do.
From the top, you will see the navigation bar for the admin section. Below I will list what these items in the custom website design admin panel do.
- Page Admin
This is where you will have the ability to create pages, edit existing pages, and delete pages. Along with the ability to customize pages, this section dynamically creates the navigation providing that you have the system setup for dynamic navigation.
- Navigation Admin
The Navigation Admin is the ideal to use in to setup up either manual navigation, dynamic navigation, and/or to use images in your navigation. It also is your best tool within the software to prioritize your files and inform you on to which pages are being listed in the main menu system.
- Change Login
The change master login information should be self explanatory. This enables you to change the master login password, and perhaps with multi user plug ins, it will enable you to control all your administrators and there permissions.
- Plugins
The plugins page lists the plugins that are available on your site and lists additional plugins in which are available for purchase so that you can upgrade your website in order to stay current with the times.
- Global Search & Replace
This enables you to list, search, and replace items within the content management section of the database so that you can quickly make changes across the website. This helps to eliminate those mind numbing copy and paste operations that most website and graphic designers dread.
- Newsletter Subscribers List
This Newsletter Subscribers List enables website users to subscribe to the sites newsletter marketing list. Newsletter Marketing is an excellent way to build a customer base and grow the readership and customer base.
- Contact Form Assistant
The Contact Form Assistant website owners to easily produce contact forms with validation with captcha form security. Using this type of form validation combined with captcha seriously will eliminate spam email that is produced from your contact forms. The email sender then sends an email receipt to both the website owner and the recipient in either HTML format or Plain Text. Its a really smart email system that helps to weed out the spam email that you receive in your inbox.
- Forum Manager
The Forum Manager is a plugin script that you can purchase in addition to the SEO SMITH's CMS that enables your website to conduct a forum on your website so that your consumers and users can discuss various topics and create a sort of online tribe.
- Archives
The archive section enables you to archive old or dated materials while still enabling the content that you have written to provide as magnets to the search engines. In addition, the dated materials on older sections of the website provides more than just search engine food, but it also proves to the consumer that you have been around a while and you are not going anywhere other than up.
- Logout
You can logout so when on a public computer, you can remove the stored login variables that may be associated with your website login.
Throughout the whole admin panel, you will notice yellow question marks that contain information that will help guide you as you build and edit your website.
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John
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Posts: 44
Location: USA |
Posted: August 9, 2008
Nav Admin:
The Nav Admin is your best tool when to use for setting up your sites main navigation. It enables you to setup not only your main navigation structure, but also enables you to order you links within the menu system.
Main Navigational Format:
- Your website can use a variety of menu systems including Dynamic (From The Database) or Manual Override (Where You Edit And Handcraft Your Own Navigation). Assuming that you are going to use the Dynamic menu main navigation system, you still have the option of using all text based links or you can use images for the first level.
If you decide to use your own navigation system (Manual Override), you can display your own navigation file. Be sure to remove any HTML body, head, content type, and meta tags from your own custom navigation file. Save your file in the www folder on the server (The same folder as your home page). Then to address this file, enter the complete file name in the Manual Override File input box on the Nav Admin page.
- Choosing Not To Use Images For The First Level (Also Referred To As Top or Default Level)
Choosing No for using the top level images enables you to display all text links from the main navigation menu. This tends to be the easiest approach to getting the menu system complete the quickest without having to rename image files when the client wants to relabel a pages Link Text. With the styles that are available for the main navigation, your menu system will still look really sharp without images.
- Using Images For The First Level (Also Referred To As Top or Default Level)
Choosing Yes for using top level images enables you to display image links for the pages that are set as Content Page type and with a sub category set to Default. Easy right! The only difficulty with using top level images is that your top image files will have to be named in accordance with the pages Link Text. If, for example, you had a page with the Link Text set as 'Home', your top level images would need to be named 'Home.jpg' and 'Home_hover.jpg' (Substitute the .jpg extension with whichever one you have chosen within the editor). These images would be stored in the 'images/nav/' folder on your server.
- Sub-Item Animation:
The sub item animation enables you to have fancy flyout menus. Using have several choices bettween none, fade, slide, and zoom. You can play with this and have fun with it.
- Number of Levels:
Depending on what shape format you use, whether it be vertical, horizontal, tabbed, or expandable, you will have differing availabiliy of levels that the flyout menu system can handle. For example, the tabbed flyout menu can only handle two levels of navigation and with that it may limit the amount of subcategory items that you can display per top category.
- Rollover Properties (Image Extension) :
The rollover properties image extension enables you to select what extension that you will use for the top level images, providing that you choose to use them (.jpeg, .jpg, .gif, .png).
- Nav Style:
The navigation style enables you to use existing navigational styles in order to achieve a desired look. You can also make your own navigational style, just simply copy, paste, and rename a navigation style folder and edit the style sheet. Or simple edit a navigational style that already exists. Yet there is even another option of adding your own custom style to the system; however, just make sure that there are no conflicts with other style names.
Tweaking The Order Of The Menu Items On The Main Navigation:
When you want to set an order to all the files on the Main Navigational menu system, inside the Nav Admin, click on 'Show All Main Navigational Files'. You will notice that the items are listed in the order by the Order column in the left of content area. You can rearrange your navigational order here. Sometimes elements will not appear in the order that you want them to in the onset in the Main Navigation, so this is where you will tweak the order.
If you have a top level category named 'Hats', for example, with the order number of 5, and it has three subcategories named 'BaseballBallCaps', 'TopHats, and 'SkiHats' but you wanted them to order them in the drop down menu as 'BaseballBallCaps', 'SkiHats', and 'TopHats', you would need to keep the priority of Hats as a lower number then its subcategories, but you would need to set the priority of 'BaseballBallCaps' to higher order number then 5, so 5.1 would work, 'SkiHats' to 5.2, and 'TopHats' to 5.3. Any number above five and below the next top level category would work to display your intended order in the subcategories under top level category 'Hats'.
The rest of the navigational files work simiarly for the listings within the sitemap page or as the preinstalled sitemap page is named 'automated-sitemap'.
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John
Joined:
Posts: 44
Location: USA |
Posted: August 9, 2008
Archives:
Archives is a new feature to our software. Similar to blog sites, the Archives section enables website administrators to keep outdated content on their website in a less visible area. I know, your first thoughts are why would I want to do that? There are actually several reasons for this. First, a company that has historical information even the outdated stuff, tends to be perceived to be more trustworthy. Secondly, this archived information can seriously help with your the marketing awareness in the search engines. Simple but solid reasoning is that the more unique pages that you have on targeted subject, the better you will do in the search engines. With our archived pages, you will noticed that we do not change the urls of the archived items, and we defineatley did that on purpose! When you have a timed sensitive page, more consumers will tend to link to it. When the pages is archived and removed from the main navigation, the links that that page has already aquired are still pointing directly to that URL, and they are not linking to a new archival address. This becomes important in your online marketing strategies as you never want to throw away good links. |
John
Joined:
Posts: 44
Location: USA |
Posted: August 9, 2008
Page Admin
The Page Admin is composed of many different elements that will help you control exactly what you want your site to do. From the started point, you have preloaded pages within your site that look very similar to SEO SMITH's website. These page will help you get your site rolling in no time. Some of the USER TEMPLATES are already defined and preloaded into the system. We have done this to help you get a jumpstart on building the website and to help you get a grasp on the system functions and external application plugins. At anytime you can add and update to the USER DEFINED elements as well as you can delete them.
Creating A New Page:
Over on the right of the Page Admin you will notice that there is an input box that enables you to create a new page. Enter the name of the new page that you want to create and press the Create button (Note: Best practices suggests that you try to use page names that consist of only numbers, letters, underscores, and hyphens). After pressing the Create button you will notice that two form elements just got populated, one for the page link title and the other for the physical page name. Now that those are set, you can leave them be.
Editing A New Page:
Over on the right of the Page Admin you will notice that there is an selection box that enables you to select and edit pages. Select the page name, and all of the pages content will be revealed on the form. You can edit any of the elements that wish to edit, and then click the update button at the bottom of the page in order to update the item.
Deployment Section:
We have a deployment section that will enable you to deploy your pages and archive your pages in the future so that you do not have to spend your life behind the website in order to post time critical events. If you post a page in the future, it will not show up on your site until that future date. If enter an archive date, the page will archive itself on the date in which you have selected. Assuming that you have set these pages as a Content Page type, links to these pages will appear on the main navigation within the Publish and Archive Dates. If you set these pages up as a Doorway Page type, they will not appear on the main navigation map.
Page Properties:
If you have already read the Create A New Page section above, then you are already somewhat familiar with the Page Admin. The input items within the page properties section will control the physical properties of the page.
- Page Link Title:
The Page Link Title is the text that you will see on the navigation element of the main navigation. If you decide to use dynamic navigation (You will read about this below) ,
- Physical Page Name:
This will be what appears in the url when viewing this page minus the extension (.htm). You should always try to use letters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens when applicable otherwise, your url's will not be as search engine friendly.
- Subcategory Selection:
All the main pages or top level pages should be set to the default category when you set them up. Then in order to compartmentalize your categories, then the pages that you want to group under the top level menu items should be selected from with the subsequent pages. After inserting the pages and setting the page priority listings, you subcategory will automatically change to a custom category number that represents the combination of category item as well as its priority listing. Do not worry, if you need to chang categories and priorities later on, you can easily do this within the navigation admin which we will discuss later.
- Priority Setting:
The priority setting enables you to set the priority of the listing on the navigation menu, assuming that you use the built in dynamic navigation menu system. After you set this, you can forget this. Depending on what version of the SEO SMITH's Content Management System you have, you may see that it resets itself. If your are questioning your priority order, then you can simply open another browser window to test your live changes.
- The Restricted Pages:
Suppose you want to run a membership section of your website that only those with approved credentials can view the pages, this is where you would use the restricted access page types. An example of the restricted access page is page named 'Success3' which is the page that you get to after the master user logs in. For the most part, out of the box, without any added plugins, the restricted access pages are limited to only a handful of pages. With the user registration plugins that are coming available, you will be able to easily extend your site to support a membership based system. This plugin has been omitted from the main SEO SMITH's package as most users of this software will not require it.
Meta Tags:
- Meta Title:
The Meta Title is one of your most important elements on the web page in regards to search engine ranking. You should keep your most important keywords within the title while still having it be readable to the users that see it in the search engines.
- Meta Description:
Almost as important as the Meta Title, the Meta Description is the second most important
item on your page when it comes to search engine rankings. This should be keyword rich but also make sense to your readers.
- Meta Keywords:
Your Meta Keywords are important for your rankings in the search engines but they can also be a disaster to your rankings. Make sure that you do not overuse keywords within each page and separate each one with a comma. Try not to have redundancies in keyword phrases and be certain that the keywords that you use are actually in the context of the page that your creating. Otherwise you are looking at major search engine penalties.
- Robots Tag:
For the most part you can leave your robots tag set to the default index,follow. Most will not require to alter this.
Page Content Area:
- Header Imagery:
The Header Imagery was designed to automatically resize and ad in order to place it at the very top of the content area, but with most of the recent changes, the Header Imagery field has become antiquated and therefore unneeded. Perhaps it will show more of a use in later plugins. You can skip down to the Page Headline.
- Page Headline:
The Page Headline is one of the most important elements to have on a web page, just behind the 3 Metas. But in order to rank for competitive terms, and they are all competitive these days, you will need to utilize this tag with keyword rich information that grabs the reader.
- Load A Previously Saved Template In The Content Area:
Using this feature, one can reload previously saved information into the WYSIWIG Editor for reuse. This can save a lots of time for future updates and modifications. Also note, that when you create a stunning design or one that you would want to reuse, be sure to check the SAVE TEMPLATE checkbox so that you can automatically save the page into a storage folder for later use.
- Contact Form Assistant:
Hitting the Contact Form Assistant button will open up a new window for the Contact Form Assistant. This tool will enable you to easily create a contact form mailer with captcha codes
and form verification which will also help to cut down/eliminate the spam that is normally associated with web contact forms.
- Content Area:
The content area is where you can add text, images, media, and related information to your page. Many of these features similar to WYSIWIG editors that you are already familiar with. Oh, and by the way, WYSWIG editor is a visual editor and the WYSIWIG part means What You See Is What You Get. Further instructions are included in the editor itself, but this is much like other products like MS Word.
Site Summary:
- The Site Summary purpose is to use a modified description of the page to differiente the sites inbound linking content from the Sitemap. Providing that you enter in Site Summary for each individual page, the Site Summary text description will appear below the anchor tag on the sitemap. If you choose not to enter Site Summary content, this link will not appear on the Sitemap. This is useful as you may want to omit some pages from the Sitemap that you do not want people to directly have access to until they need to. A good example of this would be Restricted Access Pages.
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