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Introduction to Total CMS for RapidWeaver (Pre-Release) thumbnail

Introduction to Total CMS for RapidWeaver (Pre-Release)

09/05/2015
This video covers the pre-release version of Total CMS. Some thing will be different from the final released version.This video covers the pre-release version of Total CMS. Some thing will be different from the final released version. 

Transcript

00:06 hey everybody Joe workman and today i'm
00:08 excited because we're gonna integrate
00:10 total CMS into an existing rapidweaver
00:13 project we're gonna start from scratch
00:15 and see kind of how we how easy it is to
00:17 use right and how we can set it up and
00:20 get started with it so before I really
00:24 get started with it I want to back up
00:26 and tell you a little bit of backstory
00:28 now when I built the CMS I wanted to you
00:33 know throw out all the preconceptions of
00:35 what we think is CMS is right normally
00:38 when we think of a CMS we think we have
00:40 to have a back-end database and then you
00:43 know some sort of ugly front end that
00:45 you know shows our things and we can
00:47 click on it and then it allows us to
00:48 edit it right well I I wanted to think
00:52 outside the box I I decided to build
00:55 something completely from scratch that
00:58 is exactly what rapidweaver users need
01:02 right it is completely custom I don't
01:04 leverage any existing paradigms right it
01:07 is built from scratch for rapidweaver
01:10 and I had two requirements one was 0 set
01:16 up I don't want any sort of complicated
01:18 setup process for the CMS second one was
01:21 no database databases are hard and I
01:24 want this to be easy and powerful and I
01:29 am so happy that we have accomplished
01:31 setup 0 database all you need to do is
01:35 publish and go it all just works and I'm
01:39 really really excited to show you this
01:41 first glance at a total CMS so without
01:44 further ado let's jump in and see how
01:46 awesome it is now here we have the total
01:50 CMS demo project that is available for
01:52 download as well as you can get it on
01:55 the dock portal and inside the disk
01:58 image that you download a total CMS with
02:00 now I'm not going to go over every
02:02 single stack right now and then show you
02:04 the settings right I want to kind of
02:07 break this down and show you the basic
02:09 concepts of how to get things started
02:12 and to do that we're going to create
02:14 completely blank pages so first off
02:18 we'll see that I've created a new
02:20 content blank page in a new admin blank
02:22 page inside the project there is nothing
02:26 on these pages we are starting from
02:27 scratch now when you look at the total
02:30 CMS stacks you'll see that there are two
02:32 distinct groups we have the top group
02:35 here which is all of the admin stacks
02:36 these are the stacks that you're going
02:38 to use to create and submit content to
02:40 the CMS and then the white icon stacks
02:44 are the ones that are going to be used
02:47 for content these are going to display
02:49 your CMS content inside your website so
02:53 let's do the admin side first and
02:55 basically every admin page you're going
02:57 to want to have an admin core stack this
03:00 contains all the core libraries that we
03:02 will need for the entire admin page okay
03:06 now for this example we're just going to
03:08 do something simple we're just going to
03:10 create a text box so I add the admin
03:13 tech stack to the page and obviously
03:16 we're going to want to have a save
03:19 button so we're going to go ahead and
03:20 click the shows a button now it's the
03:23 save buttons off by default because most
03:25 time you'll want to have like a
03:26 centralized Save button throughout you
03:28 know your admin page potentially so that
03:31 not every text box has a separate Save
03:33 button okay but for this example we just
03:36 want to keep it simple I'm going to have
03:37 a save button here now what you'll
03:40 notice is that every stack throughout
03:41 total CMS contains a CMS ID this ID is
03:46 what links the admin page content that
03:49 is submitted to the actual content that
03:52 gets displayed on the website so I'm
03:55 going to create something that is has
03:57 not been published on this site so let's
03:59 go ahead and do a demo okay I'm just
04:03 going to create a thing called demo and
04:05 this ID doesn't exist on the site yet so
04:07 it's completely fresh and I'm just going
04:11 to leave all the the defaults alone
04:13 that's all we need so since this project
04:15 uses the foundation theme I've added a
04:17 few foundation stacks just so that we
04:20 can properly preview everything so here
04:24 we are I have my tech stack
04:26 now it is blank it doesn't show any
04:29 content yet because we haven't actually
04:30 saved any content for this demo area yet
04:33 but now let's go ahead and create the
04:35 content side so here I am on the new
04:39 content page and let's go into the text
04:43 content stacks so I'm going to add a CMS
04:46 text content stack and what will notice
04:49 is that this kind of gives you a hint of
04:53 what it is this stack should be placed
04:55 at the bottom of every page okay this
04:58 stack doesn't actually contain any
04:59 content by default and what it does is
05:02 it processes all the content above it on
05:04 the page ok so this stack should be
05:08 placed at the bottom the last stack
05:11 inside your stacks edit mode okay now in
05:15 order to process the text for that demo
05:18 text box we're going to add another tech
05:20 stack to the page but this time we're
05:22 going to go ahead and say insert text
05:24 macro okay and when you do that you'll
05:27 notice that we have a CMS ID and that
05:30 CMS ID we want to tie it to the previous
05:33 one and we're going to set that to demo
05:35 now remember this is a foundation
05:37 project so I've just added a few
05:38 foundation stacks to the page so we
05:40 could properly preview everything and
05:41 what we'll see is we get an alert saying
05:44 unable to find CMS file with ID demo and
05:47 that's because we actually haven't
05:49 created any content with that so let's
05:53 go ahead and do this now I've previously
05:57 published this file and it already
06:01 contains all of the CMS application
06:04 files on the server now I haven't
06:07 actually published these new content and
06:09 new admin pages but that doesn't matter
06:11 as long as the total CMS server files
06:15 exist on your web server we can actually
06:18 submit text content directly from
06:21 rapidweaver so let's go ahead and insert
06:23 some sample text into here and what
06:26 you'll notice is after I inserted this
06:28 text the outline of the box has turned
06:30 red what that tells us is it says that
06:33 this box contains unsaved changes so
06:37 that means I've actually made changes to
06:38 this area which we have
06:40 we've added a bunch of text and all I
06:42 need to do now is click the Save button
06:45 that is submitted the content from
06:48 within rapidweaver to your web server
06:51 okay and if we go back to their our
06:54 content page we will actually notice
06:58 that the content is now displayed now
07:01 this is a really powerful concept what
07:04 you'll notice is that we actually
07:06 displayed the CMS contents inside
07:09 rapidweaver right we we didn't need to
07:12 create our content in Rapid River and
07:15 then publish it hoping that it looks
07:18 correct when once we publish to the CMS
07:21 right everything looks exactly inside
07:25 rapid eiver as if you were to publish it
07:26 so you now have full preview
07:28 capabilities just as if all that content
07:31 was local to your rapidweaver file now
07:35 again we saw that we can actually submit
07:37 text content through rapidweaver to our
07:41 live website now because of a few
07:44 caveats you'll notice that we actually
07:46 can't do that with images but with text
07:49 content you can now if you notice inside
07:52 the text content stack when we added the
07:54 CMS ID you'll see that it created this
07:57 little macro for us or it's displaying
07:59 it for us this is a little helper to get
08:02 you started but as you get using the CMS
08:06 you'll learn that you can actually
08:07 replace the contents of any stack with
08:11 these macros a perfect example of this
08:14 is if we were to go to the main content
08:15 demo page will see that I have a
08:18 foundation tabs stack here now obviously
08:22 total CMS can't ship with every possible
08:25 stack out there so what we've done is
08:27 we've given you the ability to place
08:29 these macros anywhere you want in any
08:32 stack and they will be replaced with the
08:36 text from the actual content that's
08:39 saved in the CMS and what's great is it
08:42 all works in preview so if we look at
08:45 this page in preview will notice that
08:47 these tabs actually contain the text
08:49 that was saved
08:51 on the CMS on our sites this allows us
08:55 to easily preview not only text as you
08:59 see in this example where we're showing
09:01 the text here as well as the images as
09:03 well as galleries and everything else
09:06 works beautifully all inside rapidweaver
09:08 now total CMS also supports formatting
09:12 of our text content and to make that a
09:15 little bit easier we actually have a
09:17 toolbar that we can add to our page now
09:20 if I go back and look at our admin mode
09:22 for this will see that if I actually
09:24 select some text here okay first will
09:27 notice that there's a tooltip that comes
09:29 down that has a lot of options that we
09:31 have available so if we want to make
09:33 this particular text bold we can go
09:35 ahead and click the bold button and if
09:38 you notice that actually makes that text
09:40 it adds a little bit of syntax there
09:41 that will make that text bold if we
09:46 wanted to make this particular text
09:48 italic we can also use the toolbar and
09:51 it adds some specific syntax that allows
09:54 us to make that text italic if we were
09:57 to save this and look at our content
09:59 again what will notice is that our text
10:03 isn't formatted here well that's really
10:05 easy to change if we go into the content
10:08 text ax settings will notice that we
10:12 have a display option and what we can do
10:15 is we can say we want to make sure that
10:16 that text is formatted and you'll notice
10:20 that we actually have a new macro now
10:22 that you can use this anywhere
10:24 throughout any stack to place formatted
10:27 text and when we preview our text with
10:30 the display set to formatted will see
10:33 that that text that we set to be bold is
10:35 now bold and that Thundercats were that
10:38 we highlighted and said it's italic well
10:40 it's italic that's a very powerful now
10:44 spend a little bit extra time showing
10:46 you some of the intricacies of the text
10:48 processing but we've kind of nailed down
10:51 all of the basics you assign a ID to
10:54 your admin stack and then use that same
10:57 ID inside your content stacks to display
10:59 it now with the text we have the power
11:03 of all of those macro
11:05 because you can place those macros
11:07 inside any stack that you want in order
11:10 to customize the content that could be
11:12 tab names it could be headers inside
11:15 your header stacks or it could be
11:17 buttons text right it could be anything
11:22 you want it could be I you know tooltips
11:24 or anything it could be a font awesome
11:26 icon right anything that you can is on
11:29 yay HTML page can be customized by total
11:33 CMS now you can also use these in your
11:36 page titles or in your browser
11:39 descriptions or in your meta tags to
11:43 allow your users to actually have
11:45 control over their browser descriptions
11:48 or their browser page titles it doesn't
11:52 need to be inside of a stack it could be
11:54 any content that is within the HTML that
11:58 is published to the server so this
12:02 allows us a lot of power a lot of power
12:05 and may I say this is huge right so now
12:09 what we're gonna do is I'm just going to
12:10 quickly just braised over some of the
12:13 other stacks I'm not going to go into
12:15 the settings I'm just gonna talk about
12:16 some of the options and things that you
12:19 should look out for so that when you
12:20 start building your sites um you'll know
12:23 but we have the basic concepts down the
12:25 admin stack is tied to the content stack
12:28 via the ID you don't have to set up a
12:31 database you don't have to have any
12:33 complicated setup process you build
12:36 everything in stacks and publish now
12:39 this is actually a great point another
12:41 thing that differentiates total CMS is
12:43 you have the power to build your admin
12:46 areas this means you're not allowing
12:50 this the developer of the CMS to say
12:54 this is what your clients are going to
12:55 see when they go to edit their content
12:57 you have the power you design the admin
13:01 interface the way you want it this uh
13:05 you know really allows us a lot of
13:07 flexibility here now obviously you want
13:09 to password protect your admin areas and
13:12 you could do that with the built-in
13:13 protect stack or if you have my page
13:15 safe stack you can use that as well
13:18 but you get control over everything now
13:21 you don't have to have one big huge
13:22 admin page either you can build it out
13:24 maybe you have two three four admin
13:26 pages and you know all of them are
13:29 password protected obviously so that you
13:31 know your users can log in and then
13:34 access all of their admin areas so here
13:37 we have the admin interface inside the
13:40 total CMS demo project and let's just go
13:43 down this down the list and we'll look
13:44 at each of these options here so the
13:47 first one here we have here is an image
13:49 and to upload new images you simply drag
13:53 and drop a new image and once you drop
13:55 it it'll automatically upload and go to
13:58 the server now when you hover over the
14:00 image you'll notice that there's a
14:01 toolbar the first one the first button
14:04 on that toolbar allows you to edit the
14:07 alt tag for this particular image the
14:11 next button when we click on it you'll
14:14 see that it provides URLs to the actual
14:17 warehoused image where this image is
14:19 stored this way you can use this image
14:22 not only within a total CMS image stack
14:25 but in any image stack that supports
14:28 warehoused images simply copy these URLs
14:32 and use anywhere you want to use that
14:35 image and will automatically be managed
14:37 by total CMS now you may notice here
14:41 that it also contains three URLs the
14:45 reason for this is that the CMS not only
14:49 uploads the image but it resizes that
14:52 full image to a max size that you define
14:56 inside the stack as well as creates two
15:00 different thumbnails for us to use it
15:03 creates a proportional scale down
15:05 thumbnail as well as a cropped square
15:08 thumbnail this allows us to if your
15:12 customer uploads a 10 megapixel file the
15:15 CMS will scale that image down to the
15:18 dimensions that you as the designer have
15:20 defined so that your customers don't
15:22 have 5 10 megabyte images slowing down
15:25 their websites now next as we scroll
15:28 down we'll see that we have more text
15:30 boxes and more
15:31 is that we've all seen as well as the
15:33 toolbar here are some text boxes that i
15:36 was using as an example to edit the
15:38 metadata within our page the page title
15:41 as well as the meta tag for do this for
15:44 the description and here's the gallery
15:47 the gallery works the same thing as
15:49 images drag and drop you can add new
15:52 images to the gallery very easily now
15:55 when you hover over each image you'll
15:57 notice that just like the normal image
15:59 we have the ability to actually edit the
16:02 alt tag okay so you can actually edit
16:05 the alt tag for every single image in
16:07 your gallery and on the content side
16:10 that alt tagging actually used as a
16:12 caption inside the gallery or slideshows
16:16 now you can also click this and get the
16:18 access to the actual full image and
16:21 thumbnails that are generated for the
16:23 gallery if we notice here this is an
16:26 example of where the square thumbnails
16:28 are used these images weren't originally
16:31 square when they were uploaded the CMS
16:33 generated these square thumbnails so
16:35 that we can use them and obviously you
16:39 can trash an image in a gallery so if
16:41 you no longer want an image in your
16:43 gallery you can just simply delete that
16:45 image next is we have the video and you
16:50 can paste in any YouTube or Vimeo video
16:52 URL here and YouTube supports both
16:55 playlist URLs as well as individual
16:59 video URLs so this simply just paste in
17:02 the URL to the video that you want to
17:04 embed on your page and total CMS takes
17:07 care of the rest it's really easy now we
17:11 have feeds and fees are very very
17:13 amazing actually now you can easily type
17:16 in a post and drag in an image for your
17:18 feed and then when you save it it's
17:20 added to your existing feed list over
17:23 here and then for each feed you can
17:26 actually go ahead and for each item
17:28 click on it and edit that post so you
17:31 can maybe you had a typo in the text or
17:33 you want to change the image you can
17:35 easily edit all existing posts you can
17:38 also contain you know create alt tags
17:41 for each image and the post doesn't
17:44 necessarily need to have
17:45 image so when it post doesn't have an
17:47 image here in the admin interface I just
17:49 have a default feed icon and lastly we
17:53 have the RSS button where you can
17:55 actually copy and get the RSS feed URL
17:57 for this news feed this allows a lot of
18:01 possibilities in terms of integrating
18:03 with you know if this than that so you
18:05 can maybe auto post to Facebook right
18:08 and things of that nature having an RSS
18:11 feed for your newsfeed will be a great
18:13 thing it allows a lot of flexibility
18:17 last at the bottom we can you know
18:19 easily do files and file depots and you
18:23 can click on the link and get the exact
18:26 download link so that maybe you want to
18:29 put this URL to this file in a button so
18:31 that this zip file always downloads from
18:34 a button and then whenever a user drags
18:37 in a new zip file the same URL is used
18:39 and then for file depose you know
18:43 similar things you can delete a file as
18:45 well as get the link directly to that
18:47 particular file within the file depot
18:51 and last thing at the very bottom is
18:53 just a formatting cheat sheet that ships
18:55 with total CMS so you can give your
18:57 users may be a little bit of you know
18:59 help in terms of the syntax for that you
19:03 know markdown formatting that we use
19:05 inside the text areas or they could just
19:07 use the toolbars so everybody I'm really
19:11 excited I tried to keep this video short
19:13 but there's just so much awesome stuff
19:16 to talk about with this CMS and I hope
19:18 you got the core concepts of how to
19:20 build the CMS into your sites you build
19:23 an admin page and then you display that
19:26 content all with stacks you have all of
19:29 the control and all of the power and
19:30 again 0 setup 0 database you just
19:34 publish and go I hope you are excited
19:37 try the free trial for total CMS you
19:40 have you can download it and use it on
19:42 your active site for 30 days so give it
19:45 a shot you have no excuses just go ahead
19:48 and give it a shot and you'll never look
19:50 back um it this has features that people
19:53 have wanted in rapidweaver for 10 years
19:56 right and we finally have it
19:58 in a beautiful rapidweaver stacks way
20:02 that is true to rapidweaver right you
20:05 can preview everything in rap Weaver
20:07 build it all it all feels native and it
20:11 just works and I'm really excited about
20:14 it we've been working really hard for
20:16 over 10 months now on this project and
20:19 I'm so excited to give it to you so that
20:22 you guys can then take it in and extend
20:24 it to even further I can't wait to see
20:26 what you guys did build with it so have
20:29 a great day everybody thanks for
20:30 watching this video and take care bye"}]
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