Getting Started with BusyCMS - Overview

To build your website with BusyCMS, you do not need any knowledge of code commonly used in websites, although some knowledge of HTML and CSS is an advantage. You also do not need any graphic design skills other than re-sizing an image.

Web professionals may find that styling and inserting content into BusyCMS is an economical way of providing an easy content management system to their clients

To use images in your header and style background (optional) you will need to be able to crop and resize an image and save optimised to either JPG, GIF or PNG format. Most inexpensive entry level photo edting programs provide this functionality, such as Adobe Photoshop Elements www.adobe.com.au.

About the WYSIWYG editor

The style, page header, menus, catalogue and page template are modified easily by BusyCMS internal systems.
Creating and editing page content in BusyCMS is different in that we use a modified version of the popular open source "CK Editor".
CK Editor operates in similar fashion to a word processor on your computer, with a few minor differences. The user icons at top are in most cases self explanatory.
The image input icon provides a facility to upload and edit your images for the page content.
A complete user guide to CK Editor may be found HERE.

Some quick tips:

• Save your page frequently by clicking "Update"
• New line: Shift+Return
• New Paragraph: Return
• Page content images. Many cameras today generate very large images that are far too big for the web and time consuming to upload.  Re-size your camera images prior to uploading to the approximate size you will use on the page (the maximum width of a page content image is 1110 pixels or 890 pixels where "Right Column" is activated) and save in JPG or PNG format. By doing this first, uploads will be quick and your web server space will be used more efficiently.
• After logging in, your administration opens in a new browser window or tab so that you will have two windows or tabs open, an administration window and a main or public website window. When editing in the administration window, after updating, change back to the website window or tab and refresh the page to see your changes.

Getting Started with Busy CMS

After your website builder  BusyCMS  is installed, on your first visit to the website you will see a holding page. Initial website installations are set up in "Offline" mode. You can set "Online" mode in your administration, as soon as you are ready to go live.

In your confirmation email from BusyWeb, you are provided an administration username and password.
To access the administration pages, click the word "Admin" at the holding page bottom and log in with your username and password.

Administration Home Page 

After login you are taken to the "Administration Home" page. You will see the status of the website, "Online" or "Offline" and a selector to update the status.
You may add some information to the "Offline" holding page, such as your logo and information for the website visitor.
The status and the website holding page will update after clicking the update link at page bottom.

If you have BusyCMS with the Catalogue option, you have the option of the home page being a normal page or the catalogue home page.
If you use the normal home page, you can instead create a menu item to link to the catalogue home page as a top menu item.

About Online/Offline modes and public view.

In "Offline" mode, the public will only see your Offline holding page. After you log in, while in "Offline" mode, only you, not the public, will see your complete website as long as you remain logged in. The purpose of this is to enable you to review the changes to your website while creating or editing it, before going live. 

After logging in, your administration opens in a new window or tab to enable you to alternate between administration and website windows. Switch back to the main website window or tab and refresh your edited page to see the changes.

You can also hide individual pages from public view while your website remains online by deselecting the "visible" option in the menu link editor. While logged in, only you will be able to see "hidden" website page menu links.

While the website or a page is "Offline", as administrator you will see an offline reminder bar at the top of the website pages or the individual page.

Next - Navigation and Pages