Your first steps with Contrexx® WCMS

This section provides you the basic knowledge to start working with Contrexx®. We hope you'll enjoin it and wish you great success in realizing your first project. If you have any questions, please have a look at the support section to get an overview of where you can get help or support.

Introduction

The backend interface aka administration console is where you manage your website like for instance create new web pages. On the other side there is the frontend interface which is the actual website resp. what your visitors see when they're visiting your website. The web design of your website is referred as theme.

Authenticate at the backend interface

Follow these instructions:

• Enter the URL of your Domain in the address bar of your browser and add the suffix "cadmin" at the end of the URL. For instance "http://www.example.com/cadmin"
• After the request has been completed you should see the login form.
• Complete the form as follows:
  Fill out the security code: Retype the security code from above
  Username: according to your setting within the web installer
  Password: according to your setting within the web installer
• Advise: as a first step you should fill out the informations in the Global Configuration section beyond the navigation point Administration on the left side.

Working with the Content Manager

After you have been successfully authenticated within the backend interface you will be able to create new web pages. To do that, select the function "Content Management - New page" on the left side of the interface. You can now set the desired attributes of your new page. Especially you probably wanna set the link name and page title as well as several meta attributes (those are relevant for search engines). To create the virtually content of the page you have a powerful WYSIWYG-editor on your side. The editor provides all common known features from word processing applications. As an advise, always use the provided formats of the editor when formatting headlines (for instance Heading 1 or Normal). The effective look of the headlines and text should then be defined in the theme (the design and layout of the website). This method is very important on how search engines analyze your website. Headlines which in general are based on keywords that best describe or summarize a certain page will get a higher rated by the search engine due it is marked as such one (setting the format Headline 1 on the headline will put it within a H1 HTML-tag).

Modules and Themes - flexible and extendable

The architecture of Contrexx is based on those elements:

• Core System
• Themes
• Modules
• Content template

So called themes are biuld in XHTML and define the layout of the website. The output of the several features of Contrexx is then put into the XHTML source code using placeholders.

Hint: Check out the official repository of Contrexx themes

The modules are developed in PHP and provide the base of the function set. The core system provides the basic features like the output of pages, the site navigation, a sitemap etc. A module consists of a backend and a frontend section. The backed is used by an administrator to manage the module and the frontend is what the visitor will see in the end when he visits that part of the website that uses the according module. Finally the content templates act as in interface between the modules and the theme. The template defines how the output of the module should be displayed within theme.