Browser Compatibility

First, make sure you're using a modern web browser.  To take advantage of the full power of the editing tools Plone 2.0 offers, be sure you're using one of the following browsers:

Logging Into Your Plone 2.0 Website

Adding content to a Plone 2.0 site is a simple process. In order to add content, you must be logged in to the site and you can only add content in the parts of the site where you are allowed to (this is called having permission).

Adding content to a Plone 2.0 site is a simple process. Now that you are logged in; as a site member, by default you will have permission to add content to your member folder, so this is a good place to practice using the Plone CMS (content management system).

Member folders are special folders with your name on them that are assigned to you when you sign up on the site. To begin, make sure you are logged in to the site. Then, navigate to your member folder by clicking on "my folder" in the personal links bar in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

Your folder will open in "contents view." This means you will see all of the items inside your folder. An item is any piece of content: file, folder, news, etc. If you haven't added anything to your folder yet, the only item that will be in your folder is a document called "Home page for you" (you=your username).

Above the document list there is a drop-down menu (next to the button that says "Add new item"). Click on the menu and select a content type (see more about the content types in the list below); common types include web pages, events, files, folders, images, news items, and links. After selecting a content type, clicking "add new item" creates the new content object and opens the editing interface.

In the editing interface (a box around the main area will say "Edit content type", where content type is what you selected from the list).  All types of content have a short name, a title and a description:

• The short name becomes part of the item's Web address, and should be written in all lowercase letters with no spaces. In general, the short name should be an abbreviation of the title; the shorter the better.
  
• The title will appear in the navigation structure and at the top of the page.
• The description should provide a brief summary of the object and will appear beneath the title and on search pages.

Fill in information for these fields and the other applicable fields (for example, the body for a Web page, or the URL for a link, etc).  You can see what the content will look like by pressing "save" near the bottom of the page. This will show you the content as a user would see it (the "view" screen). If you want to modify something, click on the "edit" tab from the horizontal bar over the content.

There are many different types of content available in a Plone 2.0 site. Probably the easiest way to learn about them is to play with them. In the meantime, here's a brief description of the ones you will use most commonly:

• A document (or page in newer versions of Plone) is simply a web page. You can add text, links, and graphics into a web page.
  
• An Event is something to be added to the calendar, such as a meeting, conferences, or a social event.
• A File is an external document type, such as a word document or a pdf file. You can add just about any type of file to a Plone site.
• A Folder is a place to store other objects and to organize information. For instance, you might create a folder within your members folder where you keep images.
• A News Item is a special type of document that becomes visible on the "News" tab and on the Home page (once it is published). This type of object should be used for announcements and things like that.

There are many other types of content in Plone 2.0 sites, and it is even possible to create custom types to fit specific needs.

Many of the functions it performs are self-evident, a few are not, and some of the tools are best not used. A description of a tool's function appears if you hover your mouse arrow over the button. Because much of Plone is constantly evolving, the bugs noted below might be clearing up in the near future. Here is a brief synopsis of them, in the order that they appear.
 
These buttons toggle whether the highlighted text is bolded, italicized, underlined, crossed out, super-scripted, or sub-scripted.
   

           This tool (the remove format tool) works only on our newer sites, and only half-way.  If you're pasting content in from Microsoft Word, it will mangle some of the presentation (especially the font).  Try clicking this button to remove the bad formating.  If this doesn't   work, you'll need to paste the content in NotePad (on Windows) to remove all formating and then copy and paste that into the text body.
  
   Text color and background color. Both conjure a color palette from which to choose a color.     The background color function doesn't seem to work.

Text indentation (left, center, right justified). Best used on an entire paragraph.

 
Ordered, and bulleted lists. We encourage you to use these instead of trying to manually insert numbers or bullets. To stop adding items to a list, delete the last bullet/number.
  
 Increase/decrease indent. Best used for excerpted text.

 For inserting a link. Use this for linking text to external URLs (web sites outside of yours).  To remove a link that you've already created, highlight the linked word (or phrase) and create a new link, only leave itblank.
   
For inserting anchors -- links pointing to parts lower down in the same page.  (You can learn more about anchors elsewhere in the site.) 

To insert the anchor, go the part of the page where you want to anchor to (this will be down the page), create anchor text. 

Highlight the text and click the anchor icon, name the anchor. 

Go to the area of the page where you want to anchor from and insert a normal internal link to the page plus the pound symbol (#) and then the name of your anchor. eg /aboutus/ourconference/#speakers
 
This button is for inserting images (although you would never guess it from the icon). Don't use it. Usually it's preferable to use a Page with Pix for managing images, or the toolbox described below.
  
Inserting a horizontal line, and tables. The former is simple; the latter is not. Tables are a little hard to format using this tool (the interface is not very intuitive), although sometimes it is adequate. If you need a complex table, do it in HTML or ask for assistance.
 
This - the toolbox - is the most useful (and cryptically depicted) tool for web editing. It allows you to insert internal links (that is, links to other pages within the site) and images into a page. It's powerful enough that we devote the next page to it.

Undo and redo edits done before the last time you saved. These buttons work with varying levels of success. Note that there is a more involved site-wide undo feature discussed elsewhere.

When you arrive at the page you wish to edit, you'll notice that it has a thin border enclosing it with tabs along the top.  You'll notice that the View tab is selected, which makes sense; you're viewing the page as it normally appears.  The parts of the page that you have access to are the ones enclosed by the green border.

Click on the edit tab to actually access the content.  The fields appear here with some explanations.  Here is some context for the four different fields:

Short name: This is only used in the page's URL.  By making it entirely lowercase, you will avoid confusion when dictating the URL to someone, since Plone is case sensitive.  Avoid creating garbled URLs by not using spaces, uppercase letters, or punctuation in your short name.  Sometimes you'll see short name called "id"; they're exactly the same.

The red square that appears to the right of the Title label indicates that it is required; Plone will protest if you leave it blank.

Title: This appears in the title bar of the browser window, as the headline of the page, in the navigation; basically any time a page is referred to, the title is used.  This field is required; it should be descriptive and not too long.

Description: This is a short lead-in to the document -- usually the introductory paragraph to the page.  It appears after the headline of the page but before the body text.  While this field is optional, we strongly encourage you to use it.  It also appears in search result listings to provide additional context, and as a pop-up when you hold your mouse over the left navigation.

Body Text: This is the main part of the page, and the part that allows you to use the selection of formating buttons that is the subject of the next page.

In the row of editing icons, the one that looks like an opening folder (oddly enough) is called the toolbox. It allows you to insert links or pictures from anywhere in the site.

Before clicking on the toolbox button, be sure to highlight the text you want to link to if you are adding a link; position the cursor where you want the image to appear if you are adding an image.

When you click on it, a window pops up looking something like this picture to the right. It gives you three different ways to help you find what you want in the site, though they may seem confusingly laid out at first.

   1. At the top, you have a search box. It's just like the search box that's normally a part of your site -- it searches the body and title of each page and shows a list of matching results.
   2. "Breadcrumbs", as they're known, provide context to where you are in the site, and also provide you a way of going up through the level of folders all the way to the root folder of your site. Each part of the breadcrumb is a link to a folder.
   3. The lower part of the window shows a list of what's in the folder you're currently looking at. When you first click on the toolbox button, this is a list of what's alongside the page you're currently editing. For normal pages, you can insert a link, for images you can insert the image.

This marks the end of the quickstart tutorial. The next step, for more involved users, is to head over to the full tutorial.