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GeekFree WMS Who?
- What is GeekFree WMS?
- GeekFree WMS is a Website Management System (WMS). A website management system is essentially software specifically written for the internet that allows a user via a single login to manage many aspects of a website.
- Dig Deeper
- GeekFree WMS is a database driven, dynamically served, open source website application written in PHP, and designed to be installed and run via a LAMP hosting environment. LAMP stands for Linux operating system, Apache website server, MySQL database server, and PHP a server side scripting language.
- Why Use GeekFree WMS?
- GeekFree WMS is designed to make the process of managing a website easy. No website design experience or additional software is required to perform basic maintenance tasks such as editing a page's text or uploading media like images and pdfs' to the website.
- Like any other piece of software the more you know the more you can do and for advanced features it is very helpful to have a basic understanding of web design and an esthetic eye doesn't hurt either but neither is required as much of what you need to know is already outlined in the help documents. GeekFree WMS does have limitations as to what you can and can't do but the average user may never be affected by them.
- Dig Deeper
- If you have a need to edit your own website but know very little or nothing about website design or have a lot of content like products you sell that are stored in some kind of a database then a WMS is for you.
- Several WMS exist but if you have used them you know that they were designed by someone that cared more about how the code worked then how the user interacts with it. GeekFree WMS was conceived of and designed from scratch to be easy to use and as intuitive as possible for the end user. If you know how to use a popular point and click desktop office document editing program than you have all the skills you need to get started using GeekFree WMS.
- It is not in GeekFree WMS's core to try to do "Everything", that only overly complicates things. Instead GeekFree WMS tries to do MOST of what people need, as well as possible, with the least amount of code, and with the most intuative user interface.
- Functional Art Solutions developed GeekFree WMS, so if you need it customized (who doesn't?), who better to do it but the original developers.
- How Does GeekFree WMS Work?
- It's pretty simple from an end user stand point. First you need to be registered to use GeekFree WMS. Typically either you or the website administrator will create an account for you by filling out a website form. Once registered, you navigate to the login page of your website using your internet browser and enter your email address and password. Now that you are logged in you will see additional administrative links magically appear. The admin links you see (or don't) are reflective of the admin rights granted to you by the website administrator. Now browse to the page that needs editing and click the "Edit" link. This will bring up the page editor, which is similar to a simplified version of popular desktop office software many people have used before. Make your changes to the page using the WYSIWYG page editor (What You See Is What You Get, pronounced 'wiz i wig'). When finished editing the page, click the "Save" button at the bottom of your screen and Walla, your changes are immediately reflected and a backup copy of the previous state has been saved. Now, click the "Logout" link and you have just completed your first edit. Sound simple? Yes, it is that simple for basic edits.
- Dig Deeper
- GeekFree WMS uses a pre built WYSIWYG editor called TinyMCE to edit the page body. TinyMCE is a very good JavaScript driven, cross browser compliant component which transforms a textarea field of a website form into a dynamic but simple to use editing platform.
- GeekFree WMS uses a template system to govern what part of the page a user can edit and it creates a basic look and feel for the page. The template usually includes the page header and footer banner(s), images, and text. It contains place holders that are replaced with information from the database such as Page Navigation Links, Page Title, and Page Body that are easily created by authorized users. The template itself can only be altered by someone with advanced website design knowledge and software to FTP those changes to the website. Unless you have intimate knowledge of dynamic website design, server side scripting, PHP, and how GeekFree WMS works, modifying the website template(s) is NOT recommended.
- Unlike standard HTML pages where each page is a separate entity that actually exists as a separate file on the web server, GeekFree WMS pages are not traditional files. GeekFree WMS pages comprise of several elements including Navigation Name, Page Title, and Page Body which are each encoded and stored in a database. When you visit an GeekFree WMS page, GeekFree WMS retrieves those page elements from the database, fills a page template with those elements and returns the resulting page to your browser. What your browser receives appears to be a typical HTML static page but it is not, as the information used to create the page may change between page requests either because of an actual edit of the page or because of other dynamic features.
- GeekFree WMS allows an authorized user to do the following:
- Edit a page, your profile such as password, and many other things.
- Upload media for use on the website such as images, pdfs, or movies.
- Create new pages and groups for organizing pages.
- Create and Manage users.
- Delete and Restore (recent changes) pages, groups, and media.
- Manage the Navigation links for the website by Adding, Moving, or Deleting links including pages, groups, media, and services.
- GeekFree WMS was designed from the ground up to include many of the basic features most users need in it's core code, but what really makes GeekFree WMS powerful is it allows designers to create custom Services to incorporate advanced functionality beyond the core code. In fact GeekFree WMS itself is highly dependent on the use of Services. Some of the core Services of GeekFree WMS are:
- Gallery for displaying and organizing images
- Events Calendar
- Newsletter / Mass Emailer & Subscriber interface
- Contact Us Form
- Website Links Page
- User Registration
- User Login Interface
- User Profile
- User Management
- Navigation Control
- Form Control. Used to create and edit database dependent forms to be used on the website, complete with validation.
- Help Documents
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