Can anyone suggest a good online or hardcopy source for picking up the EASY CMS technique and theory?
I have purchased EASY CMS and given it a brief trial (as I have a site where I need to CMS pages that my client can edit independently of the RW Project).
BUT, I have found the JW tutorial very scant and they take a lot for granted (I think) that the user will have some sort of crystal ball to understand their direction (which I feel are rather vague and ambiguous) and be able to fill in the missing info.
I am very used to RW, WordPress and Joomla - so I don;t think I am being too thick???
Can anyone suggest a good online or hardcopy source for picking up the technique and theory?
Thanks.
JW has some videos. Itās really pretty simple, you use ecms stacks instead of (or with ) regular stacks to display the content, and on the admin page you build you use ecms edit stacks. then just match the cms ID for the edit and display stacks. Thatās the basics anyway. You have to publish once before they will show up in preview. If you can be a little more specific on what you are having trouble with, Iām sure you will get all the help you need.
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We also have this FAQ that might help.
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Thanks for responding swilliam. Iām afraid I just donāt get it. Itās totally alien. I think the stack needs a decent and concise but short overview āfor dummiesā.
I donāt understand about the admin page and the actual content page - whether they are supposed to be a duplicate of each other in styling or not, can you duplicate one page so itās exactly the same? or have to rebuild it? whether they are both āvisibleā, where they admin page resides in the Project navigation, or about the container IDs and naming of them etc - I feel the JW video and tutorial really skips over all of this. In fact, when I try to follow the demo, I donāt get the same things happening.
I don;t get whether the admin page is like building a ācontrol panelā if tools and containers for building the site in a web browser? or if itās an actual page of content thatās a duplicate up in the Project and on the server - and when you have both set and uploaded - you can manipulate???
Sorry - Iām on the verge of giving up and building a WordPress site and placing it into an iframe pageā¦
I will try to help you out.
I build a separate admin page and then use the tabs stack on that page and make a tab for each page that has cms content that would need changed. Not the only way to do it but thats how I chose to do it.
Most of the time I actually make the admin page(s) first.
Each time you add an admin stack you can set the cmsID for that content
On the normal page where you want that content to show you assign that id to the stack.
You can also use most regular stacks to display the content by inserting a macro %cmsID% for example. although you still need to add a cms text stack somewhere on the page (doesnāt matter where), Iāll get you a couple screen shots to illustrate.
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This is up to you. A lot of people build an admin page that looks just like the content page. Can you duplicate a page? Yes/No, you can duplicate it, but then you will need to replace the content stacks for the admin stacks. You will also need to add an admin stack onto the admin page. We would obviously suggest you make the admin page not viewable on the menu system, so anyone can not try to access it, just be sure to remember the URL to that page.
Naming of IDs can be up to you. I tend to do stuff like this. Letās say I make a home page with a header stack, a text stack and an image stack, all that I want to edit on the homepage. Here is how I would name those IDs:
homeheader1
hometext1
homeimage1
Why use a 1 after them? In case I add more of those to the home page that I want to edit later.
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Thanks zebu
I have sen that walk through - Iām still of the option that itās not basic enough for āidiotsā like me.
But I will try it again 
okay here is an simple example:
ecms-preview is a RW preview screen, the round photos and text beneath are cms areas
ecms1.jpg is a (partial)screen shot of the actual page in RW edit mode
ecms2.jpg is a screen shot of the admin page for this area.
I can zip up this project and send it to you if you need it.
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Thanks swilliam, appreciate your help, and look forward to the screenshots. I will revisit the Project later and have another attempt. Gonna hit the sack now thoughā¦
Oh great, yes please zip and send. Thanks. shaun@spiritdesignworks.co.uk thanks
Did you download the project file I link to on the FAQ page?? That should help you too.
sent, check your pm
and the rest of the 20 characters
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@shaunspirit Rest assured, once you āgetā EasyCMS youāll find itās a much more elegant and simple solution for RW than fudging something together with WordPress.
Itās worth the effort.
Rob
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Thanks @robbeattie, I hope so
@zeebe yes, I did. I need to grasp it all better before I have anotyjer look. Thanks