Managing Content on Your SmartSpace Web Site

Go to Content Manager via Manage > Content Manager from the top SmartSpace bar.

The Content Manager enables Traders to manage text and image content on their SmartSpace web site.  (Other content can be created using other SmartSpace modules).

Please click here for more on how to manage the Community Edition content.

Please click here for more details on how to manage your Content Settings which control how your website behaves.

Creating and Managing Content

Content Categories

Before creating content, you need to consider the structure of your website and how your content fits into that structure.  You also need to have content categories to place your content in.

SmartSpace comes with some preconfigured categories, but you have greater control over your content if your create your own content categories.

Please click here for more detail on creating and managing Content Categories.

Content - Articles - Posts - Blogs

The terminology for text content could be any one of articles, posts or blogs.  Whilst they are all essentially the same, they are usually used in different contexts.  The way any of these are created is the same, although configuration for each can vary.

You can create content in two ways:

1. Selecting Manage Content > Create New Content link in the Content Manager menu in the left panel, then entering a Title/Menu Item and selecting a Content Category in the process of creating or updating the content.  You must select a Content Category otherwise it will not be processed.
2. By selecting the Content TAB across the top of the Content Manager page, select the relevant category and click Create New Post on the right under the green bar, or click the New Post in this Category icon in the Action Menu that is activated when an article is selected.

To Edit Content do the following;

• Select the Content Category that the content is in by clicking on the grey bar containing the category name,
• Browse through the content in the category and click anywhere on the line of the selected content,
• Click the Edit icon on the action menu that appears when some content is selected.

Content Creation Overview

• Other terms used for content may include, Articles, Posts or Blogs.
• You must ensure a Content Category is selected and that the Title and Text fields are not empty to ensure content is processed.
• Some categories require an order number to be present for it to appear in auto generated menus and lists when published;
  • Place a number in the Display Order field - set to '0' for this item not to appear in the menu, otherwise it appears in numerical order,
  • It does not need to be consecutive and like numbers could appear in any order (NB: this is not required for Latest News),
  • Items set to 0 are still published and available to view, but will not appear in the menu - you may want to provide links to this in your content.
• You can add extra information to the content page by clicking on the Advanced Content and SEO Settings bar to expose more fields and links mainly used to insert more information useful to search eninges.
• Create the content in the Article Text field using the format tools available.
• You can add images to this content using the tools available in the online text editor or you can add formatted preloaded images after saving the content (this always appears in the top right corner of the content).
• Click Publish Now to publish the content on the internet.
• If you click Save for Editing Later, the content is only viewable by those with the right permissions in the Staff Manager.
• Unpublished content is not viewable by the public.
• You can access the content later by clicking Manage Content in the left hand menu - this shows you all the content that you have created.

Content Editor Specifics

The video below gives you can over view to the content editing system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iCoXLY53A4

The Content Editor page contains all the fields which relate specifcally to that piece of content, both visible to the website visitor and hidden from the visitor, but visible to search engines.  A good page of content will contain both compelling and accurate content, plus the necessary information to get the best possible search engine ranking.

Most of the extra SEO fields are only visible by clicking the Advanced Content and SEO Settings bar.

• Title/Menu Item
  • This extemely important field not only is displayed on the content page (in most circumstances) but is also seen in at the top of the browser window, plus in the search results as the main title for the search result.  Make it specific to the content.
• Page Name
  • If you have the Page Name feature enabled (Content Settings) you can place this name in the URL of the webpage.
  • This makes the page more relevant and visisble to search engines and provides users a more memorable web address.
  • This should not be a generic name as this must be a unique name (the system is checked for duplicates and appended with a number if necessary).
• Content Category
  • A content category must be selected. In some cases it will be preselected, but it can be changed
• Display Order
  • Depending on the content category selected the content is either ordered automatically by modified date descending or by order number.
  • If it is ordered by order number, this order number determines the order of an autogenerated menu or list.
  • An order number of zero will leave it off the menu or list, but it still can be viewed with a direct link.
• Hide Title
  • In some cases, designers want to hide the title of the page.  Click this box to do so.

Advanced Content and SEO Settings

• Additional Title
  • This text is added to the title in the browser window and search engine results.  It usualy contains a keyword relevant to the page.
• Page Tags
  • Some search engines use a Keywords page header (unseen by users) to help determine the content pf the page.
  • Separate words or short phrases by commas.
• Page Description
  • This is usually the description used in search engine results so make it something that will attract the attention of the searcher and make it relevant to the content of the page.
  • It is restricted to 150 characters.
• Page Preview
  • This text is used with some widgets on the website as preview text to the main article
• Article Text
  • This is the actual content of the page - see below for more on formatting this area.

Using the Text Editor

The text editor is a third party product, CKeditor, a complete online word processing solution.  It allows you to do most things that your computers word processing program can do.

Warning - Avoid direct cutting and pasting from your computer!!

Because website code is a completely different programming language to what is on your computer, cutting and pasting text from your computer directly into the online text editor can cause diffculties.

• Whilst the text may appear normal in some cases, it usually casues problems on the website because of the extra formatting that is present in the document.
• Sometimes the extra formatting can increase the size of the document by a factor of more than 1000 (yes 1000!).
• Content may also not appear as expected on your website.

How to avoid this;

• Cut the content from your word processing program,
• Use Shift+Ctrl+V
  • This will take out the old word processing formatting and replace it with relatively clean text
  • Your text will now be visble in the text area ready for reformatting,
  • To make your text appear as it shold on the website, you should make sure that you hit the enter key between each line break.
• Reformat dot points using the Bulletted List tool in the online toolbar,
• Add links using the Link tool.

Adding, Attaching and Embedding  Images

Smartspace content uses a system of attaching images to content articles so that different images can be rendered in different places on the website, all connected to the one article.

For example, an article may have a preview on the home page highlighted by a large (or small) image, it may have an image at the top of the content page, and it may have other images near the content, possibly as a mini slideshow or with images bound to content.

All these images can be attached to the article using the image attach tool in the article action menu. You can also upload and attach an image in the one process.

Content like blogs, will often have images embedded in the content. This uses a direct system of actually placing the image in the content itself.

• Normally, you should add all images using the image Upload tool available from the left menu, before creating content.  This has the following benefits;
  • It resizes the image to a web friendly size,
  • It creates three extra thumbnail images of varying sizes for use in different parts of the website,
  • It saves the image to a database which then can be easily accessed by other parts of the system,
  • All images are still available to you to embed in your content page.
  • Please note! You can also upload and attach an image in the one process, once content has been created
    • You do this by clicking on the Upload and Add Images icon in the action menu
    • Read the following article on details of attaching images to content
    • View the short video on attaching images to articles
• If you think you want to embed an image into a page of content that will not be used elsewhere, you need to ensure the following;
  • That the size of the image is right for the space you intend to put it,
  • That the image has been optimised for the web - i.e. smaller than would normally be the case on your computer,
  • Click here for more about preparing images for your website.
• To Embed an image;
  • Place your cursor where you want the image to be situated in the text flow,
  • Click on the Image icon in the editor toolbar,
  • Click the Browse Server button in the resultant popup window,
  • If you have already uploaded the image browse the server for the image previously uploaded,
  • Please ignore the "Demo Version" message if it appears - the system is fully licensed and fully operational,
  • Remember that the correct sized image may be in one of the sub directories under the directory where you originally placed the image (thumbnail sizes can be varied using the gallery settings options),
  • If you want to upload an image at this point (it will not be saved into the database),
  • Go to the directory or create a new one,
  • Click the Upload icon,
  • Click Add Files,
  • Browse your computer's directories and select the image(s) that you want to upload and Click OK or Save,
  • Once you have the imiage available for selection, either way, double click the selected image listing,
  • Insert Alternate Text which is a text replacement for the image if it does not appear,
  • Alt text also helps with search engine rankings,
  • Click OK.

Saving/Publish Content

• After completing your content record, you can save or publish the record either by clicking on an icon at the top of the text area, or by clicking on a button at the bottom of the text area.
• If you click Save, you can preview your content on the resultant page using the Preview icon in the action menu;
  • If the content is satisfactory, you can publish it using the Quick Publish icon in the action menu,
  • If not, use the Edit icon in the action menu to further edit the content.
• If you click Publish, the menu will be available to be viewed by the public on your website;
  • You can unpublish content easily using the Unpublish icon on the action menu.

Linking to Upoladed Content

You can link to any documents aleady on the webserver or upload and document and link to it very easily using the text editor (Note: It is normally best to link to PDF documents as it is almost universally supported in all browsers)

To create these links which will open the document when the link in the web article is clicked.

• Create a new post or edit an existing one
  • If you want to make the link one with custom text, ssimple type the text and highlight it
  • If you are happy for the link to be the full URL of the document, place the cursor where you want the link to go.
• Click on the link icon in the editor toolbar
• Click the Browse Server button in the popup window
  • This will open the File Manager in a separate large floating window
• Navigate to the directory where either the document is stored or where you want to upload your new document
  • If you want to link to an existing file, simply double click the selected file, then click OK in the small popup window
  • To upload a new file or files, click Upload Files, then upload the selected files into the directory
    • Mulitple files can be uploaded at once, by holding the Ctrl key down whilst selecting the files with the mouse
  • Double click on the selected file, then click OK to place it in as a link in your article
    • Note that you can only link one file at a time
• Save, Update or Publish the article as required.

Using The URL Redirect Feature

You can use a SmartSpace article as a redirection tool to go to PDF's, other pages on your site or other sites.

This will enable you to use the autogenerated menu systems in SmartSpace to link to any page you wish.

Click here to find out more detail on redirecting an article to a PDF.

To redirect an article to an ordinary web page, do the following;

• Open a Content Category and click Create New Post,
• Insert the URL you want to be redirected to on the first line of the article;
  • You MUST start with http:// or https:// (in the case of a secure page),
• Save/Publish the article,
• Check the autogenerated link to ensure that the redirect works as expected,
  • Do NOT create the URL as a link in the article, but only as plain text.