The new CMS exists alongside the roster (of which a new version is currently under development, probably for introduction at the end of this year).

There will be a log in page, with facilities to recover lost passwords and change passwords. The current plan is to have a small number of administrators (initially me) who create accounts for new users, i.e. it will not be possible for A.N.Other to register a new account for him/herself without assistance (this is a security feature).

Once logged in, you will have limited permissions which means that some people will only be roster users, others CMS authors, editors or whatever, maybe both. (We'll be able to evolve the necessary roles as time goes on.)

General Principle

The CMS works by having two types of editing page: (a) lists of items; (b) forms for editing a single item. On the list pages, there is a main table containing a row for each item of content, and there is a sidebar on the right for filtering a selection of rows only.  As the amount of content grows, the filters are very useful and it's worth getting the hang of using them. Typically, it is possible to put '*' wildcards into the text boxes, for example to show all the pages called "about..." something use the filter string "about*". If you end up with an empty table, the content hasn't got lost - you've simply hidden it from view. The reset button gets back to the starting point.

Text Editing

The rich-text editor is called FCKEditor and there is an online user guide to help you.

News Articles

There is a system for creating and publishing news articles. In the 'edit' topic, this is reached via the menu item Content -> News. New articles are initially not "published", until a conscious decision is taken to make them so. Even then, their (non-) appearance is governed by the dates set for them to appear and then expire, which happens automatically.  Unpublished articles are hidden from view, regardless of their appear/expire dates. You can publish or unpublish an article with the tickbox on the article editing form.  You can also do it by clicking on the red or green icon in the 'Published' column (the leftmost column).

Web Pages

There is a system for creating new web pages. New pages are initially not "published", until a conscious decision is taken to make them so.

Each new page is given an address (e.g. "about/contactUs").  Most pages "belong" under some specified parent page and this determines where the page appears in the main menu (if at all).  It is possible to alter the ordering and parentage of pages later as needed.

There is an editor for web pages. This is a rich-text editor, a bit like a word processor.  There is no need to write HTML (in fact in some cases it isn't possible).  The editor allows images to be arranged with the text.

Media Library

There is a media library which allows images, sound clips etc to be uploaded to the server so that they can be used in pages.

Sidebar Blocks

When pages are displayed, they may possibly have side-bar blocks down the left and/or right sides.  The menu block is always present at the top of the left side-bar.  There is a tool for creating blocks and assigning them to pages; this tool also has a rich-text editor and allows small images.  The blocks are actually independent of the pages (but of course this doesn't stop them being created with content that is directly relevant to the page(s) they appear on).

Some blocks exist with special functions - the left-hand menu is the obvious example. Also on the home page there will be a "news headlines" block placed at the to of the right-hand side-bar (as per old www.whr.co.uk website).

Different Languages

All the content has a language attribute (with the exception of news articles). Therefore is is possible to write English and Cymraeg versions (and potentially any other languages) for each page or block. Users can auto-select with their browser or follow links to change language. Well, that's the theory at least.

The Cache

Because the website content changes quite slowly compared to the number of page views, a strong caching system has been used to improve performance for site visitors. This means that the first person to view some content may have to wait a few seconds whilst it is fetched from the database, processed and then rendered. However, all subsequent people viewing this content get it straight from the cache, which is much quicker. When you are editing content, the system keeps track of the fact that you've changed things and that the cache is stale.  However, the cache stays stale until you decide to flush it.  After flushing, the next person to view the content has to wait a bit ... etc as before and then the cache rebuilds itself.

You can tell that the cache is stale because a green wastebin icon appears in the centre of the top menu bar. When you've finished editing, click on this icon and the cache will be flushed. You can then view your edits by looking at the relevant pages on the frontend section (i.e. the main part of the website).

One more thing to bear in mind is that we currently have two servers and each has its own cache. When you flush the cache, you only do so on the server you're using so the other server may probably remain stale.

The caches on all servers are cleared automatically every night so things never stay stale for more than a day.