Administration Reference

A guide to how the admin backend is laid out and how to use it.

GetSimple CMS Basics

Essential Knowledge for GetSimple CMS Administrators

Folder Structure of GetSimple CMS

These are the most important directories:

/admin/ - Log-in here to edit content, add themes, etc.
/admin/lang/ - Upload the language files which you need here. You will find translations on Extend
/data/ - Here is where the user-generated data is storred
/data/uploads/ - This is where you upload files either directly using the 'Files Tab' or an external FTP program
/plugins/ - Plugins to extend GetSimple CMS functionality are uploaded here
/theme/ - Upload themes which you want to use in GetSimple CMS. Each theme is in it's own named folder under this folder

Page Names, Titles and Slugs

A page in GetSimple CMS has:

A Page Title or Page Heading which is normally displayed at the top of the page itself
A 'Menu Text' which is a normally short name for display in the site Navigation links
A 'slug' which is the text used in the page url and also the filename of the xml file which stores the page data
A HTML title as defined in the <head> section of the pages's html. It might be the same as the Page Title or defined by a Plugin
They might all be the same and they might all be different. And there is a Site Title too.

Some Definitions

The following might be unfamiliar terms:

File Permissins and chmod:: On a Linux Server 'permissions' are set for files and folders to control who can read, write and execute them. Chmod (Change Mode) is the command to alter these permissions.
htaccess:: A .htaccess (hypertext access) file is a configuration file used by the Apache Web Server to control access to files and directories. The file is found in the directory it applies to.
Themes:: The theme is the set of files which control the look and layout of a GetSimple CMS site.
Templates: A theme can include any number of page Templates which contain the html to define different page layouts or include different pieces of code. The default template is always named template.php and is in the theme folder. In some themes (like the Innovation theme) the template file is split into parts.
Plugins: Plugins contain additional code for extra functionality.
Components: A component is a piece of text, html, php or other code which can be inserted into a page template. See Components.

Settings and Configuration

Website Settings

Website Settings are site-wide, meaning that it does not matter who is logged into the backend - everyone will see the same exact settings.

Website Name - This is the Name of your website
Website Base URL - This is the URL of where your GetSimple CMS site is installed to
Custom Permalink Structure - Allows you to customize your URL structure.

Fancy (Pretty/SEO) URLs

GetSimple CMS allows you to create better looking and more SEO friendly URLs. In order for this feature to work, your server needs to have the mod_rewrite module installed.

You also have the ability to edit the structure of the URLs by setting a Custom Permalink Structure. Certain custom structures need the mod_rewrite module, but not all.

Custom Permalink Structure

Create custom permalinks via the 'Settings' tab in your GetSimple CMS installation. Permalinks help define the URL structure of your site. If you put a value in the 'Custom Permalink Structure' input box, your 'FancyURL' setting may be overridden by the string you put in.

The default URL structure for 'FancyURLs : ON' is: %parent%/%slug%/

The default URL structure for 'FancyURLs : OFF' is: index.php?id=%slug%

Syntax

The two tags to build your custom permalink are %parent% and %slug%/ Do not use a beginning slash.

Examples

Replace subdirectory with your own virtula directory - This folder does not need to exist:

subdirectory/%parent%/%slug%/

Removes the index.php from the URL. This can be done without FancyURLs being turned on:

?id=%slug%

Adding .html, .html or .php extention to URLs

If you want to add an extension (.html, .html or .php) to your website's pages, you first need to turn on 'Use FancyURLs', then set the 'Custom Permalink Structure' to (example for pages that will end in .html):

%slug%.html

Next, you need to make a small change to your root level .htaccess file. Change the Rewrite Rule to this:

RewriteRule /?([A-Za-z0-9_-]+).html$ index.php?id=$1 [QSA,L]

NOTE: Change .html to .php (or .htm) in both the Rewrite Rule above and the permalink structure if you are using that extension instead.