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Welcome to CMS!
So here it is: Our Content Management System!
The system enables you and a large number of users to interactively organize and manage content in an easy and intuitive way. It uses MUM as its core component for the user management part and provides like MUM only basic features, e.g. the management of categories or articles. This is because we think that the final design of a system is individual and part of project work, depending on the specific requirements of a customer.
So our CMS has to be taken to mean a pattern based on global ideas, which expose to be typical for a CMS, with a fabulous underlying technical know how and the chance to create the final design – your favorite design – easily.
Now let’s have a closer look to the CMS!
The Login
For the first time working with the CMS, you have to create a super user. The next time, you only need your login name and your password.
If existing, you can also choose different zones from a drop down menu. If there are no other zones like the default zone MUM, which you created by the installation, the list box disappeared (for creating zones, please see the corresponding chapter below).
After the login, you are lead to the start screen of the Content Management System. The system deals with 3 components: Categories, articles, and images. On the top right of the following picture, you see that the user is signed in as cmsadmin and that there is a Sign Out link.
Content Management
Category administration
Articles can be clearly arranged according to different categories, which you can create and edit at your own request. For the administration of categories, the current actions are available:
- Create a new category: create a new category
- Manage Category Hierarchy: access and edit the category tree structure
To create and describe a new category, you are asked to insert a name and a comment.
After saving, you can click to view the new category and do several things with it: edit and delete the actual category, create a new one, select articles, which shall belong to this category or manage the category hierarchy.
We tried to leave the category administration as simple as possible to manage and to extend, that’s why we use a Prototype-based Drag and drop mechanism on the category hierarchy screen.
You can drag categories and drop them on other categories to move them. Because you cannot move a category to its own child or parent (it would cease to be a tree indeed), these elements are greyed out when a category is dragged.
We also show a menu when the user hovers on each category, with a link to the category’s management page. This makes it very easy to create, delete or edit categories, adjust the structure and select articles, things that a user will probably need to do.
Article administration
To deal with real content, the system provides two possibilities:
- Create a new article: create a new article
- List all articles: list all created articles
If you want to create a new article, you have to set some Meta data first.
The name 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”.
At least, you can choose one or more categories to which the article shall belong as well as the type of the article.
To select a category, you click first on its name in the list of all categories on the right side and then on the top arrow button. Now, you find the chosen name in the list of the selected categories on the left side. To cancel your choice, you have to do the described actions vice versa, using the other arrow button.
The system provides two different article types, you can choose: “Html” or “News”. The latter refers to RSS, an electronic message structure, which makes it possible for users to keep up with web content in an automated manner.
After choosing an option, it’s time to create the content!
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). After being done, you can take a look at the result by clicking the “Preview article” button. The system shows you your article, whereas the version number is set automatically.
If you choose „News“ as article type, you have to decide if you want to inscribe your article in the RSS and add a description.
The list of all articles specifies different content attributes: The last update, the author, the title, and the RSS inscription.
Moreover you can sort the whole article list by update point, open all article versions or edit, delete and preview articles.
In case of the version list, you can also sort it by version number and edit, preview or delete the several versions.
Moreover, the different versions can set “published” or “unpublished”, whereas only one version can be published. The others will set automatically as “unpublished”.
Image administration
The CMS deals not only with written content but also with images. For the image administration, you get the following actions:
- Upload images: upload new images
- List images: list all images
- Create a new image category: create a new image category
- List image categories: list all image categories
The upload process can be done very easily. You only have to follow the 3 steps, we describe on the screen: Choose an image from a directory, upload it and add the author, a description and a category. Now you can zoom, crop and rotate your uploaded image.
The new image is now also shown in the list of all images. You can go directly to the list by clicking the link “list images” on the start screen of the Content Management System.
If you need a new image category, click on the link “Create a new image category” on the start screen of the Content Management System and insert a name.
After saving the new category, you can add another or click to view the current one and select images from the image list to assign them to this category.
To take a look at your image categories, click on the link “List image categories” on the start screen. The system lists all categories by name in an alphabetical way.
You can also sort the list in the opposite direction as you can do it with the article list as well as delete and edit single categories. The image category list shows you the number of images per category.
User Management
The CMS uses an adapted MUM. You can change between these two systems through the tabs on the top of the screen.
The following picture shows the first screen after clicking on the tab “User Management”:
On the top of the site, you see the name of the current zone. Here it is the “MUM Zone”. You can change the current zone by clicking on the arrow link right next to the zone's name. To configure the MUM, click on “MUM Configuration”.
The screen shows the number of defined zones, users and groups. Moreover you can fill the repository with data or delete the whole installation and start over.
MUM for CMS deals with 4 components:
- Zones
- Users
- Groups
- Permissions.
Let’s have a closer look!
Zone administration
The number of users, who work with one CMS, can be gigantic. To handle and manage such a huge crowd, you can define zones. Each user belongs to one and only one zone. So the large amount of people is clearly divided. The default zone created by the installation is the "MUM Zone", and it is also the home zone of the administrator.
For zone administration, you get different controls:
- Edit this zone: edit the current zone's properties
- Create a new zone: create a new zone
- Delete this zone: delete the current zone
- List all zones: list all defined zones
User administration
The second row of controls on the start screen deals with the user administration:
- Show user: search a user by his username
- Create a new user: create a new user
- List all users: list all users
If you search for a certain user, just insert its username into the search field and an auto-complete list will show up to help you.
Now you can do several things with this selected user data: edit the login, change the password, delete the data or select the groups to which the user shall belong.
To create a new user, you only have to define the user’s login data: a name and a password. The need of register other user attributes, as birthday date, phone number or address, depends on the requirements of a concrete project and will be realised individually. After saving the new data, you can click to view and edit the new entry.
The list of all defined users shows the user’s name in an alphabetical way and can be sorted in the opposite direction by clicking the arrow link next to the “Name”.
Moreover you have the option to edit or delete the user’s data.
Group administration
The group controls on the start screen of the MUM differ hardly from the user controls:
- Show group: search a group by its name
- Create a new group: create a new group
- Manage group hierarchy: access and edit the group tree structure
To search for a certain group, just give its name into the search field and an auto-complete list will show up to help you.
Now you can edit and delete the selected group, create a new group, choose members, which shall belong to this group or manage the group hierarchy of the current zone.
You create a group in the same way as you create a new user or a new category. After saving the new data, you can click to view the new entry and edit it.
As the category administration, we also tried to leave the group administration as simple as possible to manage and to extend. That’s why we use the same Drag and Drop mechanism.
Moreover the forbidden elements are also greyed out when a group is dragged (see the help window on the right side of the screen) and a menu with a link to the group’s management page appears as well when the user hovers on a group.
Permission administration
Not every user shall be allowed to do anything with the content or the data stored in a CMS. So it’s very important for the administrator to grant authorizations and permissions flexibly and individually to zones, groups as well as users. Therefor you get the following controls:
- Manage Authorization: grant and manage authorization
- Manage Group Permission: grant and manage group permission
The authorization management is a 3 step process:
First you have to define to whom or what you will grant authorizations e.g. the MUM zone, a group (hier noch Name von Beispielgruppe einfügen > abh. von den Screenshots) or a single user (hier noch Name von Beispielnutzer einfügen > abh. von den Screenshots). Then you have to choose the subject area to which the authorizations refers e.g. articles, images, groups or zones. Depending on your choice, you can select at least the allowed actions e.g. create, list, modify or view.
The last step offers two options: The group permission and the simple permission. In case of the latter you can select single actions to assign them to a user, a group or a zone. But to simplify the authorization management, you can also bundle several allowed actions to one group permission.
You only have to define a group name and select the desired actions. After saving, the name appears in the group permission list on the Manage Authorization screen.
The Categories marked as blue represent the categories that are already linked to this subject (user or group or zone). This means that there are already permissions defined.
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Please send us comments, questions, criticism!
