In order to better understand how to use phpWebSite to create a web site, let's take a look at a typical site. By identifying the various elements that make up your site from a visitor's perspective, the administrative interface will make more sense once you begin using the tools. The page pictured below represents a fairly typical phpWebSite generated web page - no doubt you have seen something like it many times when surfing the web. A menu is in the upper left-hand corner, There is some general information site, front and center where we would expect it. Several important notices are on the site and some information is highlighted in a column on the far right of the page. Using traditional tools like Dreamweaver or Frontpage, our approach to building a page like this would be to start placing graphics, links, and text on a "blank" page much like we would create a print document. After a bit of work, we could reproduce the page above. And we would have produced just that - a single, solitary page. Now let's pause a moment and look at the main administrative page for phpWebSite. A few things stand out. We are looking at a web page in a browser, and the layout area common to many web page generation tools is nowhere to be found. Instead we have a collection of icons and links. These represent the various modules that allow you to provide and manage content for your site. Unlike single-page generation tools, phpWebSite serves as a framework that dynamically organizes your content. Each page you view on your site is the work of many modules providing information that the phpWebSite engine puts together into the web page viewed by the site visitor. Let's look at that original web page again, this time showing the modules that are working together to build the page: What we see now is that phpWebSite has gathered up and presented the information on the site based on the module used to provide it. Different modules handle different types of information. One of the keys to using phpWebSite successfully is using the right module for the right information. In the pages that follow, each module is covered in detail. The important thing to note at this point is that we manage our site by managing our content. This is why phpWebSite is frequently referred to as a "Content Management System". You may be wondering how to control to control the layout of a page. You should note that the layout of the example given is just one of the many possible. Layout is controlled via the layout module in combination with HTML templates, both of which are covered later. Rest assured that pretty much any look and feel can be achieved - here we are just interested in 'information elements' that comprise a site.

So, how do we enter our content using a particular module? One of the nice things about phpWebSite is that the module interfaces are all very consistent. Content is entered via easy to use web forms. As an introduction, let's make a new Block using Block Maker. Log on to your phpWebSite installation using the User-name and Password you set during installation, or that your web administrator has provided you. Appalachian State University users should use the departmental training area that has been installed. If you don't have phpWebSite installed, you can use the phpWebSite public demo at http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/demo/0.9.x/ Once logged in, click on the "Control Panel" link in your administrative menu. This will open the main main administrative menu. Click the "Site Content" tab. You should see the main site content module group. Depending on your installation, you may not have all the modules that are shown here, but in all likelihood, Block Maker is installed, as it a simple and extremely useful module! Click the icon or the "Block Maker" Link to open the Block Maker interface. Choose "Create a New Block" from the Block Menu. Now we only need to enter some content for our new block. Recall that blocks on our page are small and used for small amounts of text, but have the advantage of being in a prime location on your site. So let's give our new block a Title and some light text. Don't worry about the block footer or the Theme Variable - we will cover those in detail later. Select "Home" from the "Allow View" select list (this tells phpWebSite to only display this block on the home page). You should have something like this: Now just just click "Create Block" and your and block has been created. You will notice you are now at a screen that lists all of your blocks. You should also note that the block you just made has a button next to it that says "Activate" You block will not be displayed until you choose to have it displayed. Clicking "Activate" will do this. You can now check the home page by clicking Home on the Main Menu, and you should see your new block. Creating a Block is very simple, but encapsulates the basic content creation process for all modules. Text is supplied via simple web forms, options for display are point and click affairs, and content can be made active when it is ready to be "published". You now are ready to start exploring more modules.