This article will help explain some of the key concepts and terms used within the blueBlocks Editor module. Before reading this, please ensure that you have read and understood the concept of members and roles. You can find out more about these terms in the blueBlocks Members support article.
Pages & Page Items
The blueBlocks Editor module gives you the ability to add, remove and alter any of the pages in your website and the content/page items within those pages. Every page is fundamentally a blank template consisting of a number ofeditable areas. As a "Content Editor", it is your responsibility to bring those pages to life with page items. Page items (sometimes known as content items or assets) are the elements within a page. A page itemcould be a simple image, a paragraph of copy, or a piece of pre-builtfunctionality such as a "change password" control. You can put any page item in any of the editable page areas.
By default your website will have at least one editable page. If you aresigned-in and are part of the "Content Editor"role, you should see an "edit menu" in the top right-hand corner of your screen. Clicking this will reveal a small number of options including a checkbox labelled; "Edit Mode". If you tick this box, the page will reload (now in "edit mode") and you will see a number of markers on the page. These markers represent editable areas on the page and they provide the ability to "Add" new items to that area, or edit items already on the page. Clicking either add or edit will invoke a small window where you canbuild your new page item. The first tab requires only two inputs;"Description" (your reference for the page item) and "Item Type". Your page item can be one of just three item types. These are:
- HTML - a chunk of editable copy that could include pictures and other static objects.
- Control - a pre-built piece of functionality such as a "contact form" or "registration form".
- Image - a quick and easy way to add a single image - useful for banners and site adverts.
The form may require further information if you choose a "Control" or "Image" item type.
Both pages and page items can be configured to be visible only to certainroles. For example, lets image you are building a website to sell yourspecial, homemade cupcakes. You may have a small subset of customersthat are "VIP Customers" and you might want to offer them someinformation - such as your recipes - that you don't want to makeavailable publicly or to other customers. By creating a role called"VIP Customers" and assigning those special customers to that role, youhave an easy way to identify them. In the "Roles" tab of both the pageand page item dialog windows, you can now specify who the page or itemis shown to. By default, all pages and items are "public" - that meansthey are visible to all members and visitors. Unchecking the "public"checkbox will load a table of the roles you have set-up in your websiteand you can then select which roles you want this page or item to beshown to.
In addition to limiting page access by role, you can also restrict pages to those users who have simply logged-in. This avoids the need to create a role simply to isolate recognised users from anonymous visitors. By checking the box labelled; "Authentication Required" under the page details, that page will only be accessible to users that have authenticated.
Navigation Menus
The navigation bar on your site is automatically created from the pages you have added to the site. However, only pages that have the property "Nav Display" set will appear in the navigation menu. This allows you to keep the navigation menu clean and simple whilst ensuring that you can create deeper content that is accessed from links within your site copy.
Another checkbox on the page details tab is the "Map Display" option. This controls whether or not the page is listed in the Google Site Map file. Some pages may be of little relevance or duplicate other page content - in these cases it is best not to submit the URL to Google.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search Engine Optimisation is the process of making your website as accessibleas possible to the search engines such as Google and Yahoo! The blueBlocks Editormodule has been built in such a way that most of this is done for youbehind the scenes. However, it is still worthwhile making sure thatyour page title and meta description is unique and relevant on each andevery page. This will help increase your search engine rankings whenthose words are searched for. By editing an existing page (or atcreation), you have a third tab in the page details dialog windowlabelled; "SEO". In here you can specify a page title, the descriptionof the content on that page, and any keywords that you think arerelevant to the page. These keywords should be submitted as a short andconcise list (say 10 words) separated by commas. The words you chooseshould be relevant to the copy on the page itself. It is worthpointing-out that these keywords alone will not get you to the top ofsearch listings with the likes of Google. Although they are importantin getting you listed, the ranking of your position in the results isbased on the number of other websites linking to that page.