Prepared by Derek K. Miller (dmiller@navarik.com)
Version 1.1 - 30 September 2004

Introduction

The Sitellite Pro Content Management System (CMS) from Simian Systems (http://www.simian.ca) lets companies and organizations create, manage, and edit websites. It is easy-to-use, but flexible and powerful. It requires no installation on client computers, since it runs in most modern web browsers, such as recent versions of Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and Mozilla Firefox.

Sitellite Pro uses Internet-standard open-source software such as the PHP scripting language, Apache web server, and MySQL database to create a visual web editing environment, known as the "Web View," that requires no manual coding of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) for web pages, but permits those with expertise to edit that code if they wish, for fine control over layout and navigation.

In addition to the Web View, there is also a "Control Panel" view that lets site administrators control how pages relate to one another, and manage a web team, including editing permissions and setting passwords.

While Sitellite Pro is based on the mature Sitellite open-source CMS (http://www.sitellite.org), it is much better designed for working on real-world websites. However, since the commercial version is a relatively new product, the built-in help and documentation are rather skeletal; these instructions help to fill that gap. Generally, these instructions refer to Sitellite Pro simply as Sitellite, even though it may discuss features the free Sitellite CMS does not include.

Accessing Your Sitellite Website

This document does not cover installation and configuration of Sitellite. Once it is properly installed, you can generally access it at the appropriate domain you have configured, such as:

http://www.example.com

or

http://www.example.com/index

The Sitellite Administration Interface

To edit your website, you use a specific administrative URL within it, which will prompt you for a username and password:

http://www.example.com/sitellite

Signing In to Sitellite

If the sign-in screen appears, you must enter a username and password to log in to the Sitellite CMS. You may wish to change any previously set-up user passwords in order to make them more secure. See "Admin" below.

Web View

Once you have signed in to Sitellite (or if you visit the administrative URL again after you have already signed in), you see the Web View editing mode of Sitellite. It presents you with the regular view of the www.example.com home page, with the Sitellite control bar across the top, and additional small editing control buttons at the top of editable sections of the page.

To move to another page on the site for editing, simply navigate to it as you usually would in a web browser. For instance, if your site has an About Us link, click on it if you wish to edit the About Us page instead of the home page.

The small editing buttons on a page let you quickly change different aspects of each section of that page. Each complete web page may have more than one set of editing buttons because it is constructed of component pages, which you can edit individually. For instance, the home page may show a sidebar, which can be edited separately from the main page content.

The different editing buttons are:

Add New Page

The Add New Page (or Add New Box, if for a sub-section of a page) button has a "+" symbol. It creates a new web page (or section) using the standard editing interface (see Edit Page below). It's best not to begin by creating a new page—try editing an existing page using the Edit Page button first, to become familiar with how page editing works.

Newly created pages must have a unique "ID" name on the site, as well as other properties such as an associated layout template, so it can be identified when constructing sets of pages and linking between them.

As with the Edit Page button, nothing is saved to your website immediately when you started working on a page, and you can preview your new material as it will appear before making it public.

Edit Page

The Edit Page (or Edit Box) button has a "pencil" symbol. Clicking on it allows you to edit the section of the page immediately below the buttons. Once you have clicked on the button, you see a different view of your page material—the Sitellite control bar remains at the top of the screen, but the bottom portion changes to the standard editing interface, which lets you make changes to web page content as you would in a word processor.

Page Information Fields

Within the editing interface, you can change many aspects of the content. Since other pages depend on the Page ID, you should not change that field, but you can, for instance, change the Page Title (what appears in the title bar at the top of a web browser window) from "Welcome to Example.com" to "Welcome to Example Corporation," for instance.

Button Bar

The button bar provides word processor–style controls over the appearance and behaviour of text and other page elements that appear in the editing area underneath. You can choose a style (Normal for body text, Headline for a top-level heading, and so on), make text bold or italic, create a horizontal line under a paragraph, justify paragraphs, create lists and indents, create and remove links to other pages, and insert tables and images.

Editing Area

As in a word processor, any text selected in the editing area is affected by the buttons in the button bar. Select a range of text and click the Link button (the "chain" icon), and you will be prompted to enter a URL to which the text will link. Choose Subhead, and the text will become a second-level heading. You can also type, copy and paste, and otherwise alter text in the editing area as you would in a word processor.

Status Bar

At the bottom of the editing area, a status bar shows you where the current cursor position or editing selection is in the structure of the page, using the same notation as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) code does ("body" indicates that it is part of the page body, for example, while "tr" indicates a table row).

The status bar also indicates which of the two available editing modes you are using. In most cases, you will be in Editor mode, which uses the word processor–style controls. If you click the <Source> button, you will switch to Source mode, where you can edit the HTML code directly if you are comfortable with doing so.

Save, Preview, and Cancel Buttons

Whether you are in Editor or Source mode, once you have made edits to the page, you can choose one of three buttons at the bottom of the editing interface:

• Save immediately saves and publishes the page to your website. It is available to the public once the save is complete. It also returns you to the main Web View of your page.
• Preview (a safer choice) lets you view how the page looks before making it public. It opens a new web browser window displaying your page with the edits you have made. This is a good way to ensure that the changes you have made are correct. You can close the preview window using the [ Close Preview Window ] link, or with the regular web browser Close button at the top of the window.
• Cancel aborts any changes you have made and returns the web page to its state when it was last saved, before any edits you just made. It also returns you to the main Web View of your page.

Properties Tab

At the top of the standard editing interface are three tabs. You enter on the Edit tab. If you click Properties, you can see and change the page's position in the website, which template it uses, and other information. These fields are best left as they are for now, until you become more familiar with how pages are built and linked in the Sitellite CMS.

State Tab

The State tab lets you set whether a page is ready to be made public, and to manage the publishing process for a web team. You can also set whether a page is to be published or archived at a future date. Again, it's best to leave these settings alone initially, until your organization has established a workflow for drafting and publishing pages.

Change History

The Change History button has a "v1" icon. Sitellite maintains a database-stored history of changes to each page (or section), and allows you to see a list of versions. The history page shows who made changes and when. You can click links to View a previous version of a page or Restore it, in case the current version is in error or a previous version should be returned to public view. If there have been many changes, you may need to click Next to see more versions.

Delete Page

The Delete Page (or Delete Box) button has an "x" icon. It will delete the current page (or section) from the site. It will ask for confirmation first. Once a page is deleted, the only way to retrieve it is through the Control Panel (see below).

Move Box Up and Move Box Down

Some sections of pages, such as sidebars, can be repositioned on the page using the Up and Down buttons which have "arrow" icons. The Move buttons take immediate effect on your public site, so if, for instance, you have two sidebars stacked on top of one another on a page, and choose to move the lower sidebar above the upper one, it moves immediately. You can just as quickly move it back.

Further control over the website is available in the Control Panel, which we will discuss next.

Control Panel

Clicking on the Control Panel link in the Sitellite control bar brings up the control panel interface. It has three top sections.

Content

Using the Content drop-down and editing links, you can browse or add web pages, sidebars, and other types of files, as well as view and retrieve previously deleted material.

Admin

Using the Admin drop-down and editing links, you can view the current list of users, add new users, and manage users in roles and teams for different projects. For simpler projects, you probably don't need to work with more than one role or team, but you may wish to add new users, so that you can later determine who made changes to a page.

To add a new user:

1. In the control panel interface, choose Users from the Admin drop-down menu.
2. Click the Add User link on the left side of the page.
3. Fill in the appropriate information, including a new username and password. Choose a Role or Team as appropriate—a role in a team determines what access privileges the user has by default. You can adjust those later using the Access tab (see below). Leave Disabled and Public as "No." As an example, if you want to set up an administrative user with full control over Sitellite, choose a Master role in the Development team, and fill in the other fields as you wish.
4. Click the Contact tab to add more information (all optional).
5. Click the Access tab to fine-tune what access privileges the user has.

Tools

The Tools drop-down and links are for more advanced settings and controls. We will leave them be for now.

Inbox

Lower on the page, the Inbox lets users on a web team communicate with one another. You can use the Preferences to set whether new messages are sent to users by email or Jabber instant messaging, if you use it.

Preferences

The Preferences link in the Sitellite control bar at the top of the screen allows you to set which view appears when you log in (Web View by default), the browse level (what does that mean?), the CMS interface language, how many items (such as history versions for a page, or links to web pages when browsing) appear on a page when editing, and whether pop-up form help is available when editing.

Help

As Sitellite's help system is developed, this link on the control bar will provide more detailed assistance. For now, it is quite limited. The Help Search field will help find specific material, but with limited help, results are currently few.

Log Out

The Log Out link signs you out of the CMS and returns you to the login screen.

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