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User Guide / Article Management
1. Categories
The concept of the categories is very powerful in Tiny Marbles. Firstly, articles can be clearly arranged according to different categories, which you can create and edit at your own request. Secondly, it is possible to organize the categories as a tree and therefore the categories can be used for a navigation concept of the website. In this case each category name would appear as a navigation point in the website navigation. Thirdly: categories can handle various layouts. But step by step ...
1.1. Article types and layouts
Sorry, first some theoretical information. But you need the knowledge about 'article types' and 'article layouts' and their relation to get an idea how the categories and articles are working. Don't worry, it is easy to understand, and after this you are well prepared for the daily work of managing the content of a website.
Article types
'Article types' are related to articles and each type has its own business logic. By default Tiny Marbles provides two different types: 'Default HTML' and 'Default List'. You will find the specific business logic for each type in the chapter Articles. The type of an article has to be chosen while creating an article and cannot be changed later.
If you need new or other article types you have to extend Tiny Marbles. More information about that you can find in the developer guide.
Attention: You don't specify the layout, or in other words: the 'look and feel', of an article, when you set the type! You only determine the specific business logic of an article.
Article layouts
'Article layouts' are related to the categories and each layout could have a specific look and feel. Furthermore the layouts are connected to an 'article type': each 'article type' can have several layouts. Please be careful and keep that in mind, because out of the box Tiny Marbles only provides two article types ('Default HTML' and 'Default List') and two article layouts ('Default HTML' and 'Default List'), so the difference is not obvious on the first glance.
If you need new or other article layouts you have to extend Tiny Marbles. More information about that you can find in the developer guide.
Why so complicate?
It sounds complicate, but actually it isn't. As long as you keep the following in mind, the daily work with the CMS is very simple:
- You set the 'article type' while creating an article, this step determines the business logic of an article
- You set the 'article layout' while creating a category, this step determines the look and feel of an article
- Each 'article type' can have more than one 'article layout' (1:n relation)
- 'Article type' and 'article layout' of an article cannot be changed later
Because of this behaviour you are now able to customize your own CMS based on Tiny Marbles in a simple way. Already with the types and layouts coming out of the box ('Default HTML' and 'Default List'), most of the websites can be build very easily. The next step you probably would do is to create more article layouts, especially if you like to support extra panes for teaser, advertising or additional information. And if you really need a new type of article with a specific business logic, you will find more information in the developer guide.
Enough theory, let's start working with articles and categories ...
1.2. Create a new category
In order to create a new category go to the main page of the Content Management area and click on 'Create category'. In this control you can specify the name in all languages of the CMS. Out of the box Tiny Marbles provides English and German, but other languages can be set up easily at configuration time. In this particular case here we show an example of the real world and set the name of a new category of the project myclassicworld.com.
First you should choose a layout to determine which look & feel the new article will have. Since we would like to create a blog-like news list with pagination we choose the layout 'Default List'. Leave the field 'System ID' empty, you only need this value if you intend to use a specific system ID for the development. 'Show empty' defines whether the category appears always or only if there are connected article in this category. Leave it blank, but maybe for testing purposes sometimes it is necessary to show a category although no article is written for this category yet.
For each article category you can set a specific icon or main image from the image library (you have to upload these images to the image library of the CMS first). This is feature is very powerful in case you intend to set a specific icon or forisntance a specific background image related to the choosen article category in the view part of the website.
1.3. Manage category hierarchy
After saving go to 'Category hierarchy' and move the new category to the right context. The new category 'myclassicnews' appears at the bottom of the tree. You can 'drag/drop' categories to set up the category tree to your choice. Some elements are greyed out when a category is dragged, because you cannot move a category to its own child or parent.
In our example above you see three main nodes 'home', 'top menu' and 'left menu'. For all these categories we specified a system ID to recognize these nodes later in the layout of 'myclassicworld'. The new category 'myclassicnews' should appear as the first navigation point in the left menu, so the only thing to do is to drag the category to the right place.
Take a look at the result:
The new category 'myclassicnews' appears exactly where it belongs: as the first navigation point in the left menu. Please compare the admin page with the category tree, and the layout of the 'myclassicworld' example.
Attention:
- Out of the box only the layouts 'Default HTML' and 'Default List' are provided, all other layouts you can see in this example are specific for the project 'myclassicworld'.
- In the admin page you can specify system-IDs for categories, like here in 'home', 'top menu' and 'left menu'. In a website you can use these IDs but you have to take care yourself about the specific business logic.
1.4. Edit category hierarchy
Go back to the category tree, choose the category you would like to edit and click on 'Mangage Category':
The following control appears where you can edit and delete a category and select articles. In our example we show how to select articles and add them to the category:
In the tab 'Select articles' you will find all articles which are connected to the chosen category. You can remove articles by simply clicking on the trash can in the list (screen above).
If you like to add new articles click on 'Add article' and the screen opens like it is shown below. Select the articles you would like to add and a green marker appears on the right side of the article. 
2. Articles
As mentioned in the chapter Categories Tiny Marbles provides two article types out of the box: 'Default HTML' and 'Default List'. With these two types most of the articles of an CMS can be managed because both types provides an HTML-editor to give the editor the liberty to create the content in a flexible way. It is up to you how you control later in the website with the CSS the appearance. If you need other or new articles types you have to extend Tiny Marbles for that. But keep in mind, that probably a new layout would be enough. Creating new article layouts is much simpler than to create a new article type. A new article type only is needed if additional or different business logic is required. The article types 'Default HTML' and 'Default List' provide all business logic a CMS needs, so check these types before you decide to create new types in Tiny Marbles.
2.1. Out of the box: 'Default HTML' and 'Default List'
Article type 'Default HTML'
The article type 'Default HTML' is the basic article for the CMS. The article provides meta data, version control, publishing mechanism, preview and all basic business logic an article needs. You can specify a headline and describe the content with the help of an HTML-editor. The article can be used for publishing after you added the article to a category with the related layout 'Default HTML'.
Article type 'Default List'
Basically the article type 'Default List' is a list of the article type 'Default HTML'. But since Tiny Marbles only provides the admin pages for the CMS, it is up to you how to display the articles later on your website. This type provides everything for displaying very easily a news list with headline, date, a teaser text and the link 'more' to the complete article. Add the article to a category with the layout 'default List' and the article is prepared for publishing. Additionally the article type 'Default List' supports RSS.
2.1. Create a new article
In this user guide we describe how to create a new article type 'Default List'. For a better understanding we show the result based on an existing project build with Tiny Marbles: myclassicworld.com. But please keep in mind, that the layout part of your webpage still needs to be built, and for that you have all liberty using the content data you manage with Tiny Marbles.
From the admin point of view the article type 'Default HTML' differs only in two points from the type 'Default List': the missing description of an article and the missing RSS. Once you learned to work with the list, the 'Default HTML' needs no more explanation.
Click on 'Create article' in the content management area. As shown above the title can be chosen freely, the author and the creation date are set automatically. The article’s state, which you can choose from a list box, can be “Published” or “Not published”. You have to choose the type of the article, in our example we choose 'Default List'.
To select a category, you click on 'Add category'. On the right side the box with the category tree appears. You can only select categories which match to the type of the article. Simply click on the category of your choice and the article will apear later in this part of your website.
Now it is time to write the content. The first box shown in the screen below is the description box which you later could use as a teaser in the website. The second box is the content area. As you can see, both boxes provide the HTML-editor for the liberty of a flexible content. Take a look at the bottom of the screen and you will recognize that the CMS autosaves the article for you (every 30 seconds).
After saving, the article is automatically added to a search index. The search index is created and controlled by Lucene, and we provide a convenient way to access the search index using Luigi.
The system offers the typical well-known text editing tools for e.g. underlining, bold typing or changing the font. Moreover, you can insert and edit images, written text and tables as well as Html code or embedded media (flash, quicktime, media player files). Please be careful in case you copy-paste text from other programs like for instance Microsoft Word. If you don't like to copy also the HTML information from the other systems use the folder symbol with the 'T' (in the sceen below marked with a red frame). The advantage is, that you only copy the pure text information and you avoid that your layout might be destroyed.
Attention: The description how to manage the images, podcasts and videos you will find in the chapter 'Images, MP3, Videos' in this user guide. You can add images to an article in a very simple way.
After being done, you can take a look at the result by clicking the “Preview article” button. The system shows you your article, in this case for a better understanding we show an example of the website 'myclassicworld.com'.
2.3. List articles
Click on 'List articles' on the main page of the Content Management area. You will get a list of all articles in the system with filter, sortable columns and pagination.
In the list of the articles you can see the columns 'Owner' and 'Author'. The 'Owner' of an article is the user who created the article, the 'Author' is the user who created a new version of an article. The 'Owner' is allowed to create, modify and delete his own articles, as long as he has the permissions 'My article' and 'Create article'. To delete and modify articles of other user ne needs additional permission for that. For more information check out the chapter about Permissions.
As you can see in the screen above you can filter from the article list the different languages and the different article types. In the list you have the information about the state of an article, which is very important for the publishing mechanism. The CMS provides the follwong states:
- Not published: the editor can set an article explicitely to 'Not published'
- Published: the editor can set an article explicitely to 'Published'
- Offline: The today's date is not in the publish period, that means, the public period already ended in the past or will start somewhere in the future
- Online: an article is only 'Online', when the article is 'Published' and the today's date is inside of the publish period.
The 'Edit'-icon leads to the version list of an article. The icon 'loupe' shows a preview and finally the click on the icon 'trash can' deletes an article.
If you would like to delete one or more articles from the list, simply click on the trash can icons and collect the articles by using the control key or shift key of the keyboard. Then click on Delete? and the selected articles will be deleted after you confirmed a message from the system.
2.4. List article versions
To get the list of all versions of an article click on the link 'All versions' in the list of articles. As a result page you get all available versions of an article.
Attention: Each time an article is edited and saved the system creates automatically a new version. As long as you work in the edit modus and the article is autosaved, only the first 'save'-operation creates a new version. The system uses always the information of the signed-in user and set his name in the field of the author.
As you can see in the screen above, the article 'Music has to excite me' is not published yet. For publishing you only have to choose the version you would like to publish and click on the 'publish'-icon. Only one version at the same time can be published.
2.5. Languages and translations
Tiny Marbles provides two kind of languages: the languages which can be set for the admin area, and the languages which can be set for the content. The latter is important for the website of your specific project. The language for the admin area you can specify in the user's profile, out of the box the system provides English and German. The language for the content of the website will be set in an article itself. The language is stored in the version of an article ('locale', see drawing below), and each language has its own version control. Like the language for the admin page also the content language supports 'English' and 'German' by default.
For the translation you first need to create an article in one language, let's say English. After saving the article you open the article again and change the language in the drop down menu to 'Deutsch' and save the article again, as you can see in the screen below. Now you can manage both languages of an article independantly. You can filter the languages in the list of the versions of an article. If you delete an article, all its versions of all languages are deleted too.
2.6. Article search
You can find the full text search for articles on the overview page of the tab 'Content Management'. Simply insert one or more search terms in the input field an click on the loupe icon. In case you enclose more than one search term in double quotes (for instance: "Katharina Wagner"), the search terms are combined with 'AND'. In that case only articles are shown in the serach results, which contains all search terms.
After hitting the loupe icon, the list of the search results is shown. You can filter the search result using the filter: 'Language', 'Status', 'Type', 'Start date' and 'End date'. The 'Start date' and 'End date' filter are connected to the publish date of an article.
3. Article tags
Tags are powerful to categorize content. In this chapter we show how to create article tags and how to manage them. Furthermore we show a very pretty use case for article tags as guideline how article tags can be used on your website.
3.1. Create a tag, add tag to article
In order to create an article tag simply edit an existing article or create a new one. It is important to know, that article tags are connected to the article type. That means, if you add a new tag for instance in an article of the type 'Default List', the new tag appears in all article of this type. Take a look at the screen after opening an article: you will find the box for the tags in the header area of the article:
You can add existing tags to the article or remove them by selecting or unselecting the tags from the list. You add a new one by typing the new tag's name in the input box and click on 'add'. The system recognizes automatically, if you add a tag which already exists and selects this tag for you.
3.2. List and edit article tags
The management of the tags can be reached from the main page of the content management area in the sector 'tags'. List all tags and you can search or filter for the tags which exists in the system. Click on the 'edit'-icon of a tag and you see the edit page where you can change the tag in both languages: English and German. The 'system ID' of a tag is usually not necessary unless you would like to recognize certain tags for specific business logic of your website.
3.3. How to use tags on your website
In our project myclassicworld which we built on Tiny Marbles we used the tags for the article type 'Default List'. As you can see, the tags of the article type 'Default List' appear in a list on the right side of the layout (below 'Categories'), and the article list can be filtered by clicking on the tags.
4. Advertisement and banner management
With the new advertisement and banner management feature you can add advertisement and banner images very easily to your website. Each banner can be connected to a URL, and the clicks are counted. In the future we will combine the companies from MUM with the advertisement management, then it is possible not only to create a banner, but a complete business partner with name an address.
4.1. Create a new banner area
To create a new advertisement area go to the Content Management tab and click on 'New banner area' in the box 'banner area'. The banner area contains at least one banner, and a banner is a at least one image, which you can add from the image library. A banner can get additionally a title, a URL and a description. You are able to create an area on your website where several banner of several companies are shown. Additionally it is possible to connect a banner area to one or more article categories. That gives you the liberty to show different banner areas dependant on the categories of your website.
4.2. List all banner areas
In the list of all banners you can filter the banner by the article categories, you can edit the banner areas and delete them. With the publish icon (yellow and grey arrow) you can publish a complete banner area on your website.
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