Guides > User guide

After accessing Cloudia Administration interface URL, you will be asked for your login name (1) and password (2). In case of CloudiaHosting, URL of administration interface is http://www.ccms.cz/eng/admin.

Before logging in, you can select the "Keep me logged" checkbox (3). When checked, you will not be automatically logged out once you close your browser window and the next time you access administration interface URL, you will be automatically logged in. Do NOT use this feature on public access computers or under shared accounts.

You can also change the language of Administration interface in dropdown (5). Language of the interface can be only set on this login screen and your selection will be set as default on next session.

3 — Administration interface description

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After successfull login, main administration interface is shown. This chapter describes basic parts of the interface and its usage.

Main toolbar contains Statistics button and node shortcuts on the left and link to this User guide and logout button on the right. Node shortcuts enables you to quickly navigate between frequently used sections.
Section tree (Node tree) represents the node structure of administered site(s). Section tree operations are covered in Section tree chapter of this guide.
Main menu of chosen section lets you define a navigation of managed site and is described in Main menu chapter. This panel is collapsed by default.
In some cases, you will need not only to manage the content of the site, but also work with the files stored on server, or manage the content types, or do some other more advanced stuff. Tabs marked by (4) switch Site structure panel to File manager or Administration. Administration is out of scope of this guide, see Further reading if you want to know more. Still, in a several cases you might want to explore file structure of managed site (such cases will be pointed out in this guide). See File manager chapter for description.
Taskbar contains a list of last opened windows and minimized windows. Check the following section, General interface controls, for detailed description of its usage.
List of records shows content of currently selected section. There is a List of records section dedicated to this panel and whole Records chapter is closely related.
Section properties show various properties of currently selected section. See Section properties chapter of this guide for details.

3.1 — General interface controls

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The look and feel of Cloudia Administration interface is pretty much the same as that of your desktop operating system.

In fact, the administration interface can be perceived as a desktop, running in your browser window. On this desktop, you can open, minimize and maximize windows as you are used to in operating system. With a few exceptions (such as shortcut to user guide, or preview button, which will be explicitly mentioned in this guide), all actions take place in one browser window (tab). All windows opened in Cloudia CMS are generated by javascript, and are part of the same page as the rest of Administration interface, so you don't have to worry about browser security settings and pop-ups.

All the basic window operations are available:

move a window by dragging it by its title bar,
resize a window by dragging one of its borders or corners,
close a window by clicking the close button in upper right corner: ,
maximize a window to fill the whole browser window by doubleclicking its title bar or clicking the maximize button: and restore its original size by doublecliking its title bar again, or clicking the restore button: ,
minimize a window to the taskbar by clicking the minimize button: .

Minimized windows can be found in the taskbar, next to the button accessing last open windows. Last opened windows can be reopened and minimized windows restored by clicking on its title in these lists.

You will find that there are more situations, where you can apply customs from desktop systems, such as drag & drop, right click context menus, etc. These will be mentioned further.

In the upper right corner, in the main toolbar, you can find

a link to this user guide, which opens in a new browser window or tab,
a logout button. Login screen will be displayed and you can change language of the interface, or login as a different user.

4 — Sections

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Each site is organized in sections and subsections in a tree structure. With multisite license, you will find that even a site is a kind of section in the overal structure of Cloudia CMS platform. Each record is placed in some section, thus creating natural and flexible structure.

This chapter will show how the sections can be explored, manipulated and used.

4.1 — Section tree

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On the left side of administration interface, you can find a Site structure panel. The illustration shows screenshots of the panel in case of single site account (left) and multisite (right). Site structure panel contains a tree of sections in your site(s). We'll refer to this as the section tree (number 2 in the illustration). Note that in the single site case, the root of the section tree is the site, and with a multisite license, the sites are under an abstract root, in this case named "(Cloudia CMS)".

For most tasks covered in this guide, nodes representing sites and site sections are just the same.

First, let's have a look on exploring the section tree. You can:

Select a node by single clicking on its name or folder icon. Selected node is highlighted (3 in the illustration), its content is loaded into the central List of records panel, and its properties are shown in the right Section properties panel.
Expand and collapse a node by either clicking the expand/collapse icon (8), or double clicking on its name or folder icon. Subnodes are loaded dynamically from the server, you will note a loading indication (9) when expanding a node. You can also expand all nodes (6) and collapse all nodes (7).
Filter nodes by typing part of the name of node in the filter field (5). Nodes will filter as you type. Filter can be cleared by the cross icon right to input field. Remember that the node structure is loaded dynamically, so using filter for the first time after logging in can be a little slower.

There are also a few operations in the section tree which can change site structure:

Add a new section either by selecting parent node and clicking the "Add section" button in toolbar (1), or by right clicking parent node and selecting the "Add section" option from the context menu (4).
Delete existing section either by selecting it and clicking the "Delete section" button in toolbar (1), or by right clicking the section and selecting the "Delete section" option from the context menu (4).
Rename section in currently active language of administration interface by right clicking the section and selecting "Modify section" from the context menu (4).
Move section by dragging it and dropping to its new location. Drag & drop can be used to move section to another node (even different site), or just reorder sections in the same node. Holding the section above collapsed node will cause this node to expand.

4.2 — Section properties

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After selecting a node in the left Site structure panel, or section shortcut in the main toolbar, properties of the selected node will be loaded and presented in the right "Section properties" panel.

As you can see in the illustration, this panel has two tabs: Common and Advanced (7). This guide will discuss only the "Common" properties, Advanced properties will be covered in web administration guide, see Further reading.

In the common properties, you can set following:

Name (language): name of the section in given language version. Name of the section in the language currently active in administration interface is also used in the section tree. Name of the section is used for generation of URLs in your site, so remember to name sections properly for best SEO results.
Activity (language): the section's activity for given language version. Deactivating a node for some language version will hide this section and its content from that language version of the site.
Records paging: number of records to display per one page on a frontend site for this node. When set to any positive number, records of this section will be displayed in pages containing specified number of records and a list of available pages will be rendered into the site. When omitted, all the records of this section will be displayed within one page.
Records ordering: how records of this section will be organized. When set to "sort", the "sort" parameter of records will be used, when set to "alphabet", the value of the "title" property (particle) of records will be used (in proper language version), when set to "date", the creation date of records will be used (descendant). The "custom" option enables frontend user to select how records will be ordered.
Standard content type: the content type, which will be on the top of the available content type list in the "Add record" dialogue.
Redirect: a section or arbitrary URL this section will point to. Instead of rendering its own content, accessing URL of this section will redirect to another section or URL.

4.3 — Main menu

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In the left lower corner of administration interface, you can find collapsed "Main menu of chosen section" menu. Here, you can select sections which will be referenced in main menu of the site. Since main menu design and set up should be part of initial design, you will find thorough description of this panel in web administration guide.

5 — Records

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Each section of the site can contain records. Each record is of some content type, defined globally or specific for given site. Each record represents a piece of content of the section, like a product in the e-shop, a comment in the forum, blog post, etc.

5.1 — List of records

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When you select a section in Site structure panel, or click its shorcut in the main toolbar, records of that section will be loaded into central "List of records" panel.

This chapter describes means of work with this list and pinpoints interesting features which can help you towards better comfort and effectiveness of use.

5.1.1 — Basic operations

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Cloudia CMS is designed to handle large amount of data – this can mean hundreds or thousands of sections, and virtually unlimited number of records in one section. In typical sites, this could happen in an e-shop with several thousands products, but more commonly you can encounter such vast content in custom applications, since records can represent any kind of data.

As you can imagine, working with such many records at once could be slow and uncomfortable. List of records enables paging, filtering and sorting of records in the list to make the job easier and more effective.

Sorting: You can change the sort order of records in the record list simply by clicking the header of desired column. Reverse the sort order by clicking the column header again. Another option is opening the column menu by clicking the button (1) and selecting one of "Sort Ascenting" and "Sort Descending" options. Current sort column and direction is indicated by a small arrow in the column header (4).
Changing the column set: It has been mentioned before that the list of records is flexible and displays information relevant to selected section. In fact, what you can see in columns of the list is a subset of properties of displayed records. Administration interface automatically selects columns to display which will show the most relevant information. Still, you may need to see different properties in the list. For this case, columns can be configured by clicking on button (1) and selecting desired properties in the Columns menu (2). This menu shows combination of all properties of all content types in selected section. Column set can be reset to default by menu item (3). Selected column set is persisted and will be used after the next login to the administration interface.
Rearranging columns: Columns of the list can be moved and resized. To move the column, just hold and drag its header, its new position will be displayed as you move it. Resize columns by dragging its left or right boundaty in the header. Note that the rest of columns will change its width propotionally to fit the width of the list.
Paging: Records are divided to pages of 200 records. Current page (3) and total number of pages (4) are shown in the lower left corner of the panel, numbers of displayed and total records (7) are shown in the lower right corner. Current page number can be overwritten (it is an input field), or you can use navigation arrows to change page to first (1), previous (2), next (5) or last (6).
Filtering: Filtering records works similar to filtering sections in site structure. Typing a text in the filter field (9) will dynamically filter all the records which don't contain the string out of the list. However, there is one significant difference. Records, unlike sections, are not filtered based on its name, but its content. Each record can have many different properties, often in several language versions. As you can see in the illustration, after clicking the "Filter" button (8), you can select which record properties will be used for filtering. All properties are used by default. As you can see in the illustration, after typing "999" in the filter input field, two records are displayed in the list: one with "999 reasons..." text in its perex, and second with price set to 999. Notice the "filtered" sign (10) is shown in the list header when filter is active, with a button which clears the filter.

In the upper right corner of the List of records, you can find the Preview button (11). This button opens URL of currently selected section in new browser window (tab). Use this button for quick preview of the section.

5.1.2 — Inline editing

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Inline editing of records in the List of records is one of strong features of Cloudia CMS. It is a quick and convenient way to update basic properties for large number of records.

Generally speaking, you can edit any property of the record by double clicking its cell in the grid of List of records. For some properties, however, inline editor is not suitable and double click will open record detail window with the desired property available for editation. This edit mode is covered in Record detail chapter.

Currently you can use inline editing for simple text fields (1) and dates (2). Once in the inline edit mode, you can move in the grid to the same property of next record by pressing Enter, or to previouss wit Shift+Enter. You can also edit next property of the same record by pressing Tab, or previous property by pressing Shift+Tab. Using Tab when editing last in-line editable property of the record, editation moves to the first property of following record. The same rule in reverse applies for Shift+Tab. Described navigation is illustrated by arrows in the picture above.

When you change a property during in-line editing, you will notice a small red triangle in its cell (3). This is a change indicator. Changes are not immediatelly saved. To save changes, hit a "Save changes" button (4) under the List of records.

Also, when you will select another section while having unsaved changes in the current one, you will be prompted whether save or discard changes, or keep current section open.

5.1.3 — Drag&drop

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Records can be easily rearranged by clicking and dragging in List of records. Note that when you select more records by checkboxes on the left (1), you can drag multiple records at once. As you drag selected records, number of records you are moving around is shown in a tooltip (2). The tooltip also indicates proper drop targets and performed action by one of icons , , , which changes to once you move a cursor to place where records cannot be dropped. Releasing a mouse button and dropping records on such areas cancels the action.

Drag&drop of records can be used to:

Rearrange records in a section when records are dropped on the List of records (3). Notice that this causes "Sort" property of affected records to change. The change is saved after "Save changes" button is clicked, as with inline editing. When Section property "records order" is set to "sort", this ordering is used also in the front end of the section.
Copy or move records to another section when records are dropped on the Section tree (4). After dropping record(s) on the section, you can choose to move or copy records to the section, or cancel the action.

5.1.4 — Record activity, deletion

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Records, as well as nodes, can be marked active, or inactive for each enabled language. Inactive records will not be visible in site frontend. In fact, there is one more option for records, but that is accessible only in detail of the record: see Simple properties chapter for more details.

Record activity is indicated by the color if its ID value. Green values (1) marks active records, red values (2) inactive and black ones (3) are partially active, that means active only for some language versions. Additionally, tooltip indicating activity of each record appears next to mouse cursor when it hovers above the ID of a record (4).

Buttons on the bottom of the List of records can be used to permanently delete (5), activate (6) or deactivate (7) selected records. When deleting, confirmation dialog will appear. Activation and deactivation affects all language versions simultaneously. For separate de/activation of different language versions of a record, access "Common" tab of Record detail window (see chapter Common record properties).

5.1.5 — Adding and updating records

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You can add a new record to the current section by "Add record" button (1). After pressing this button, you can select content type of the new record. Each content type is described by its name (3), ID (4), description (5) and a set of icons (6). These icons should provide simple overview of the content type:

perex: Content type contains both perex and detail view,
page: Content type contains formatted block,
image: Content type contains image(s),
news: Suitable for News-type of content,
form: Generates a form,
eshop: Content type is suitable for e-shop items,
restricted: This content type should not be used commonly,
...

The "Show all content types" checkbox (7) allows you to add more content types. This option is generally not recommended, unless necessary.

After selecting the "Create" button (8), Record detail window is opened with new, empty record. The new record is not saved until changes are saved in the Record detail window.

To update existing record, select one in the List of records and press "Update record" button (2).

5.1.6 — Bound records

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General principles of binding records is an advanced topic beyond scope of this guide and will be covered further.

Here, we will just say that any record can have other records bound to it. These records can be for example comments, ratings, etc.

[...describe: columns, button, bound records list]

5.2 — Record detail

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Record detail is opened in a window. The window title (1) shows value of "Title" property, if present in the record and ID of the record. Window content is divided into several tabs (2). Except the "Common" tab, each tab represents one property (particle) of the records' content type. In the illustration, you can see Record detail windows for a news article (top) and for a simple image entry in gallery. As you can see, article has several different particles: title, perex, body and news date, while image entry has just the image particle.

In following subchapters, we will describe how different property types (particle types) can be edited: some are as simple as single input field, other provides rich features such as different upload methods.

However, keep in mind that Cloudia CMS can be extended by new particle types, and if you are using some custom extension, this chapter may not cover that.

Changes made to the record are saved by the "Save changes" button (3). Closing the window by "Close" button or close icon in upper right corner will discard any changes.

5.2.1 — Common record properties

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Each record has a set of properties common to all content types. These properties are displayed under the "Common" tab of Record detail window. If you double click "Tags", "Activity" or "Note" cell of the record in List of records, this tab is opened automatically.

Activity (language): Select activity of the record separately for different language versions. The "Delayed" option works together with the "Delayed" (2) field and activates the record later. Default is "Active" for all available language records.
Delayed: Date, on which delayed record should become active.
Comments type: Whether this record can have comments, and what type of comments should it be. Default is "no comments". Types of comments are special content types, for more information on setting up comments, see Administration guide.
Note: Note for the record, doesn't affect front end in any way.
Tags: Each record in Cloudia CMS can have different tags assigned to it. Tags can be used for wide variety of purposes, the most common is for categorizing articles or products on the site. Assigning tags to the record is siple: Just start typing a tag in the field (5) and system will offer you autocomplete suggestions of already used tags. In the moment you select existing tag or finish writing a new one by pressing space, tag will be highlighted as seen in the illustration. Tag can be removed by pressing backspace in the input field, or clicking the close icon on the tag.

5.2.2 — Simple properties

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Most of the property types (particle types) are simple and very intuitive:

Simple text (short or long): Just type a text according to description.
Short language dependent text: Additional tabs for different language versions appears, type in a text for each one.
Dropdown select with single selection: Simple selection from provided options.
Dropdown select with multiple selections: Visually similiar to ordinary select box, but enables multiple selections after expanding the options. Displays comma separated selected options.
Radio buttons: Select one of options offered.
Date and time: Simple input field with a calendar icon, which can be clicked to access simple calendar to pick a date.

In addition to these simple types present in most user interfaces, Cloudia CMS offers two types with unique features: Image and Rich text. These types are described in following chapters.

5.2.3 — Image

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5.2.4 — Rich text editor

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Formatted, language–dependent text blocks, such as articles, products description, or chapters of this guide, make up basic content of typical site. In Cloudia CMS, editing such content is as close to working with your desktop text processor as possible with todays widespread web technologies. Thanks to popular TinyMCE editor with several unique extensions, you can use full power of the rich text editor with just basic knowledge of any common text procesor, such as Microsoft Word, or OpenOffice Writer.

In this chapter, we will describe basic usage of available functions and show possibilities provided by features unique to Cloudia CMS.

As you can see in the screenshot, language versions of the content are represented as different tabs: English and Czech (česky) here. Text can be formatted by selecting tool icons in the top toolbar, which are described further, and in some cases by right-click context menu. There are also several keyboard shortcuts for common formatting tasks, such as ctrl+b for bold text.

Following list of features follows order of icons in the toolbar and mentions how these features can be used with context menu or keyboard shortcuts, where possible.

New document:

Clears the edited content (in selected language version only). Shows confirmation dialog before that.
Basic text formatting:

Basic text formatting is very similar to any other text processor:
In first box: Bold (ctrl+b), italic (ctrl+i), underlined (ctrl+u), or strokethrough text.
Next, text align: left, centered, right and justified. Also available under "Alignment" item of the context menu.
In the remaining boxes, font family and size can be selected. If possible, try to use only the first one ("Format"), as it enables easy CSS styling for web designers (and therefore produces nicer output).
Undo / redo:

Another typical feature, ctrl+z for undo and ctrl+y for redo works as well.
Clipboard:

Cut selected text to clipboard (ctrl+c), copy it (ctrl+x), paste it (ctrl+v), or paste formatted text copied from MS Word. Copy, cut and paste are also available in right-click context menu.
Lists:

Use these icons to create unordered (bulleted) lists (like the one you are looking at now), or ordered lists. When writing tle list, press Enter key to create new item, Shift+Enter to continue the same item on a new line, or press the Enter twice to stop writing list.
Indentation:

Outdent or indent current paragraph or selection. When writing a list, this creates a new level.
Links:

When a part of text is selected, you can make it a link by selecting the "Insert/edit link" button. Dialog window lets you enter all standard HTML attributes of the link. The most important attribute, however, is the URL of the link. In addition to standard values, such as cross-site URLs (e.g. http://www.cloudia.cz), or anchors (e.g. #5.2.4), links to Cloudia nodes and to resources can be easily defined:
- Link to section or record:[...]
- Link to resource:[...]
Anchor:

Creates a new named anchor in the text. Anchor can be used by links to reference certain part of a text. For example, this documentation uses anchors to reference chapters. Link to "#5.2.4" will scroll the page to anchor named "5.2.4", which is located at the begining of this chapter.
Image:

[...]
Colors:

Select color of text, or color of the background respectively.
Tables:

Create and manage a table in text. The editor offers complex table processing tools, comparable with any text processor. Using this tool, you can create a table with predefined number of rows and columns, add and remove columns and rows, merge cells, set CSS styles and HTML properties, and more. For example, you can set row properties separately for odd and even rows by selecting appropriate value in a select box in "Table row properties" dialog.
You can access additional table editing options in right-click context menu when clicking in a table cell.
Subscript, superscript:

Turns selected text into subscript or superscript.
Special characters:

Shows a dialog window with a number of special characters (such as greek alphabet, math symbols, national characters, …), which can be inserted in the text.
Media:

Adds a multimedia content (Flash, Shockwave, Quicktime, Windows Media, or Real Media). Requires URL of the media file (does not upload) and optionally some additional properties (also Flash-specific properties can be set)
Additional formatting:
- Horizontal rule: Creates a horizontal line in the text with specified length (whole page width when not specified), height and shadow
- Blockquote: Turns selected paragraph into a block quote. This is simillar to indentation, but can be further styled by CSS (creates "blockquote" element)
- Insert non-breaking space
HTML operations:
- Since formatting of the text should be controlled by content type styles, first two icons should not be needed. Still, you can manually adjust CSS style of edited text in a dialog opened by this "Edit CSS style" button.
- In some cases, the yellowish "Cleanup messy code" button can help clean up the mess caused by some sort of difficult sequence of WYSIWYG operations, or manual HTML editation.
- "Edit HTML source" opens a HTML source of the text. It is not recommended to use this mode, though, unless it is necessary and you know what are you doing.
Search and replace:

Opens familiar dialog to find or replace a text.