Using Plone

Plone is a content management system that makes it easy for non-technical people to add content to a website. The support area of LiveModern provides guidance on how to use the website. This document provides an overview, with links for more information that can be found either on this site or in the Plone User Manual. Please note that the Plone User Manual is a generic document for all stock Plone websites: we've made some modifications to our Plone site so not all content in the Plone User Manual will be relevant.

Joining the Site

Joining this website gives you the right as a member to add content, such as images, documents and so forth.

To join this website, select the join link in the top right hand corner of the home page. This opens the join form for you to complete. If this is the first form you have encountered on this website, you will note a few things: A red square next to the label of an input field means the field is required. You'll also notice lighter "help" text near each field: mouse over it to make it darker. You may navigate through the form fields by tabbing on them.

There are several fields on the join form, most of which are required:

• Full Name—Your name. Please use your real full name. It will appear where ever you author content.
  
• Login Name—The Login Name you wish to use, most people choose an alphanumeric value without spaces such as "bob" or "jane97". Note that your Login Name is case sensitive.
• Email—A valid email address is required. That way if you lose your password it can be emailed to you. You will be able to change this email address later on by editing your member preferences.
• Location—Enter only your city and state/province (and country/region if outside the United States).
• Role—Check this box only if you are primarily a producer of goods and services for the modern market.

Once you have completed this form, click Register (only once) to submit your information. It may take up to a minute to confirm that your registration request has been initiated. An account activation link to complete your registration will be sent to you via email. Complete your registration by entering a password. Once you hare finished the registration process, you can log in to add content or customize your access to LiveModern.

For more information, see Managing your Membership. For the difference between anonymous and authenticated (logged in) use of a Plone site, see Plone User Accounts and Roles.

Logging In

If you already have a Login Name and Password, you can log in to the site by typing them into the log in form and clicking the log in link. Cookies must be enabled for you to log in to this website. For more Information, see the Plone User Manual.

Forgotten Password

If you forget your password it can be sent to the email address you provided when you registered. You can request that your password be mailed to you by clicking on the Forgot your password? link located in the log in form. If you've forgotten your Login Name, please refer to Managing your Membership.

Logging out

Once you are logged in to the website, in the upper right hand corner you will see a link to log out. It is good practice to log out of the website when you are finished using it.

Member Folders

Each member has a folder where they can create and store content. They are located in the Members folder and contain a default home page called index_html. To see your member folder, click on the my folder link in the blue personal bar in the upper right hand corner of the site.

Setting User Preferences

In the blue personal bar in the upper right hand corner there is also a preferences link that opens a page to personalize your preferences. Click on the Personal Preferences link. This form allows you to set a number of preferences that change how you interact with the site, and others on the site interact with you.

• Full Name—This value is entered when you registered your membership on the site.
  
• Email—This is the email address associated with your membership (it was entered when you registered) and is used a number of places in this website. Most importantly, if you lose or forget your password, this is the address the system will send it to.
• Location—Enter only your city and state. Sometime soon we will enable you to restrict the scope of the information you see on LiveModern based on your location. Of course, you will have the option of seeing all of it, but many people are interested only in seeing information that is in their own location. This field will help us get ready for that.
  

Once you have made the desired changes to your preferences, click Save to commit them.

These are only the required fields in your Personal Preferences. For more information on the other settings, see Setting Your Preferences in the Plone User Manual.

Adding and editing content

As a site member, you have a folder in the members section where you can store your content. Rather than detailing how to add and edit all the different types of content available, we will cover adding one type of content, a page, in detail. All content types are added and edited in a very similar manner, so it is mostly a matter of repeating the steps here.

What is a page? A page is a page of content, usually a self-contained piece of text. Pages (usually called a web page) can be easily written using the built-in content editor. The default home page for a member, found in your member folder, is one example of a page.

Adding a page

To add a page, you will need to be in your member folder, or any other folder that you are the owner of. You can go to your member folder by clicking on the my folder link in the blue personalize bar at the top of any page (when you are logged in). This folder, when you click on the green contents tab, shows you the list of objects in the folder and lets you edit them. If you do not see this contents tab, and the green actions bar beneath it, you do not have permission to add or edit content in this location (i.e., you will not see these tabs for most pages on the site).

Once you are in your folder, you will notice a drop down menu in the green bar: add to folder. Clicking on this gives you the list of content types you can add in this folder. Select page from this list. Once a page has been added you are taken immediately to the edit view for that page.

Complete details about adding content is found in the Plone User Manual.

Editing a page

The page can be edited directly in the web browser, using the edit form. One thing to note is the highlighted edit tab at the top of the page (there are other tabs, see below).

There are four fields that you can edit for a page:

• Title—This item will be shown at the top of the page, in the "breadcrumbs," in the search interface, in the title of the browser, int he URL that is generated for the page, and so on. Think of it as a headline in a newspaper article, very short (just a few words) and descriptive. This field is required.
• Description—This is a short lead in to the page, usually no more than 75 words, to introduce the page and provide a teaser for the remainder of the page.
• Body Text—This field contains the body of the document. The format for the content by default is HTML, and we highly recommend you keep it that way so that you can use the easy-to-use and built-in content editor (the button bar right below the Body Text box for all browsers except Safari). But you can change it if you like using the drop down menu:
• Structured/reStructured Text—Structured text is a format for taking plain text and producing HTML without the user having to learn or type HTML. Structured Text rules are available here. It will be very rare that you use either of these options.
  
• Plain text—Plain ordinary text with no mark up. If you are on a Mac and don't want to use Firefox, this is your best bet.
  

• Related Items—If you want to provide links to other pages on the LiveModern website, use this feature to find them in your folder (or other public areas of the site).
  

Once you have finished editing your page, click the Save button. You will be returned to the view tab where you can see how the page will be rendered. To edit it again, click on the edit tab.

If you don't provide correct input on the edit form, when you save the page you will be returned to the edit view and your errors will be highlighted. At this point your changes have not been applied - you must correct the mistakes and click Save again.

For more information, see Editing Content in the Plone User Manual.

Assign keywords to content

Any content can have properties assigned to it. These properties are also known as metadata and provide information such as keywords, copyright and contributor information. The most useful metadata to add to most of your content is keywords.

Keywords are a way of assigning metadata to an object. We have established a very broad list of keywords that are relevant to the content of this website (modern housing products and services). Click on a keyword to associate it with your content. Use control+click (command+click on a Macintosh) to select multiple keywords from the list.

When you are finished with assigning any keywords or other properties to this content, click Save. Note that if you assigned keywords, they are now listed at the bottom of the page, and site visitors can use the links to add your page to their del.icio.us or Technorati tag lists.

For more information about assigning additional properties to your content, see the Plone User Manual.

Publishing your content

Most content is created in a visible state (often called draft or public draft) which means site visitors can see it, but the content will not show up in the site navigation tree or in any of the portlets. Visible documents are available through the search feature and by linking directly to their URLs, but they are not broadly visible (I.e. not published in any of the portlets) until you specifically publish it. (The major exception is any forum content: it is always published immediately you click the save button, though you can usually edit it later.)

When you are satisfied with your content you may need to submit it for publishing. To do this, select the state drop down list the green bar. This list gives you access to the options available to you in the publishing process for this type of content.

• Private—You might not want other users to have access to your content while you are editing it. Select this option to make your content accessible only to you.
• Publish—Select this option if you immediately want to make your content as visible as possible on the site.
• Submit—Select this if you do not have an option to Publish. Your document will now be in the pending state. A reviewer will review your content and decide whether to publish it as-is, edit it and publish it, or reject it.

For more information, see the Plone User Manual.

Adding and editing other forms of content

There are several different object types that come by default in this website. Adding and editing these object types is a similar process to the one described above for documents.

• Images—Image files usually end with an extension such is: gif, jpg, png, tiff or pict. When you add an image, the id of the object is assigned to be the file of the image. So if you upload an image called photo.gif, it will be accessible on the website as http://livemodern.com/.../photo.gif. When adding or uploading a new image you can select the image from your file system by using the choose file button and selecting the file from your hard drive or local area network. Please remember to keep your image sizes small, under 150KB if you can. The optimal width for images on LiveModern for most of our visitors is 500 pixels. Note that there are other ways to add images using the built-in content editor. For more information, see Adding and Displaying Images.

• News Items—News Items are commonly used in websites. Published News Items show up in in reverse chronological order on the news tab and in the news portlet. For more information, see Publishing an Event or News Item.

• Events—An event is something to be added to the calendar, such as a meeting, a conference, or other time-based event. When an event is published in the calendar, it also appears in the list of "upcoming events" portlet and the events tab. For more information, see Publishing an Event or News Item.

• Folders—Folders are the simplest and most powerful mechanism for organizing content. A folder is a container that can house any of the above content. By default all content types can be added to a folder. However, if you are adding a lot of your own content to the site, we recommend making folders for each content type in your member folder.

Discussing Content

Almost any piece of content on this website can be discussed. The owner of the content (otherwise known as the person who created it) turns on the discussion feature by clicking on the Properties tab of the content and checking 'Allow Discussion'. The default radio button is the policy for the content that has been set by the Site Administrator.

If discussion is enabled, when viewing content the discussion will be shown and logged in members will be allowed to participate.

Searching for Content

There are two ways to search for content on the website. At the top of any web page site there is a search box that provides an easy way to do simple searches. You can narrow down the search results by using the Advanced search functionality. This is accessible once the results of your search have been displayed.

In the Advanced search form you are able to query content by a number of attributes including: title, keywords, description, review state, creation date, content type and even author. The results of the search will display any content that is not in the private state.

For More Information

In this Getting Started Guide we have covered some of the basic elements of using the website, such as adding and publishing content, searching for content, and altering your preferences to suit your needs, etc. Additional information about each of these topics can be found in other sections of the Support area. More information about Plone can be found in the Plone User Manual.