Working with WCM

An author in WCM generates the material which will, at some point, be published to your website.

The author works in what is known as the author environment. This provides an easy to use, graphical user interface for creating the content. It is usually located behind a company's firewall that provides full protection.

Depending on how your instance and your personal access rights are configured you can perform many tasks, including amongst others:

• generate new content on an existing page
• edit existing content
• create new pages using predefined templates
  
• move, copy or delete pages
• activate (or deactivate) pages
  
• participate in workflows that control how changes are managed; for example. enforcing a review before publication

When ready the content is published to the publish environment. For a normal internet site, this is located inside the demilitarized zone; in other words, available to the internet, but no longer under the full protection of your internal network.

To optimize performance for visitors to your website, the dispatcher(s) implements load balancing and caching.

On the published website visitors can post comments related to the individual pages. Functionality for posting comments is developed within AEM and assigned to pages, either individually or by using templates.

Throughout WCM you can access the integrated version of this guide by using this icon; as seen below in the Sidekick.

AEM uses a web-based graphical user interface, so you need a web browser to access AEM. The graphical user interface is divided into various web-based consoles. Each of these enable you to access a different area of AEM functionality.

Although each of the consoles has different options, how you work within AEM is essentially the same:

• Double-click to open items.
  
• Access items from the tree list. Click + to expand and - to collapse those items.
  
• Click the icons to access other consoles.
  
• Available commands are above the items.
  
• Logging in and out is handled in the upper right corner.
  
• Collapse the sidebar by clicking the arrow.
  
• Search for pages using the search box.

As an author you will use the Websites tab to manage your content.

Place the root of your new website directly under the Websites/ node, as with the Geometrixx Demo Site.

Under this a hierarchical structure is developed by nesting the content pages. This will be used for generating the URLs.

Multi-language sites are also easy to construct, with the various languages being managed in parallel.

The Websites console lists your pages of content in a tree structure (left hand pane). For ease of navigation, sections of the tree structure can be expanded (+) or collapsed (-) as required.

A single click on the page name (in the left pane) will:

• List the child pages in the right pane
• Also expand the structure in the left pane.
  For performance reasons this action is dependent on the number of children nodes. With a standard installation this method of expansion works when there are 30 or less child nodes.
  

A double click on the page name will also expand the tree, though as the page is opened at the same time this effect is not so obvious.

The Website Console provides a list view with the following information about pages.

Each user has an inbox where he receives notifications which he subscribed for.

To subscribe to notifications:

If you have chosen to receive notifications in your AEM inbox, your inbox will fill up with notifications. For each notification that you select, you can:

• Approve it by clicking Approve: the value in the Read column is set to true.
• Delete it by clicking Delete.
  

Each user can set certain properties for themselves. This is available from the following menu in the top right corner of the Websites console:

Selecting Preferences will open a dialog that allows you to set:

In AEM, a template specifies a type of page.

It defines the structure of a page; including a thumbnail image, and other properties. For example, you may have a separate templates for product pages, sitemaps, and contact information. Templates are comprised of components.

AEM comes with several templates including a contentpage and home page.

To get a list of all the templates available in the repository, proceed as follows:

1. In CRXDE Lite, open the Tools menu and click Query.
2. In the Query tab
   
3. As Type, select XPath.
4. In the Query input field, enter following string:
   //element(*, cq:Template)
5. Click Execute. The list is displayed in the result box.

The content page component creates a new page for content according to a template selected by the author.

Title

The following example illustrates use of the contentpage component:

To access the search panel, click on the Search tab at the top of the left-hand pane in the site administration console.

The search panel lets you search across all your website pages. It contains fields and widgets for the following: 

• Fulltext: Search for the specified text
• Last modified: Search only those pages that were changed between the specific dates
• Path: Search within a certain subtree of your site
• Template: Search only those pages based on the specified template
• Tags: Search only those pages with the specified tags

Execute the search by clicking Search at the bottom of the pane. Click Reset to clear the search criteria.

The row of icons at the bottom of the Sidekick are used to switch modes for working with the pages:

The Sidekick minimizes in certain modes - namely Design and Preview. By clicking on the arrow you can maximize the Sidekick and return to Edit Mode:

This is the default mode and allows you to edit the page, adding or deleting components and making other changes.

In this mode, the sidekick is minimized and you have the possibility to edit the design of the page:

For example, if you click Edit on the Paragraph system you can add, or remove what components are available:

Click the arrow on the sidekick to return to Edit mode.

This mode allows you to preview the page as if it were appearing on your website in its final form. Again the sidekick is minimized.

As in Design mode, click the arrow on the sidekick to return to Edit Mode.

AEM WCM comes with a variety of out-of-the-box components that provide comprehensive functionality for website authors. These components and their usage within the installed "Geometrixx" website are a reference on how to implement and use components.

The following section includes an overview of all default components as well as a description of each component item and examples of what the components look like in AEM. 

When working with any components, you can add them either by double-clicking Drag components or assets here or dragging and dropping the component from the sidekick onto the page. Some default components are hidden from view and are usually only added by a developer. The procedure for adding these components is described in Developing Components.

The following components are included in the basic installation within the Geometrixx website. The table lists all components that are available from within the sidekick, when inserting a new component, all the components that are available in Design mode and other components that become available dependent on author. By default, every component available in the sidekick is also available in Design mode (Design of par).

The column Available indicates whether the component is available in:

• Sidekick by default on a Geometrixx Content Page
• Design mode; either with a dialog for configuration or in the (de)activation list Design of par
  
• the functionality of another component

The Content Finder is a quick and easy way to find content within the repository when editing a page.

You can use the content finder to locate:

• Images
• Manuscripts
• Documents
• Movies
• Products
• Pages
• Paragraphs
• Scene 7 Media Browser

Or to browse the website by repository structure.

On all options you can search for specific items.

This tab lists any images in the repository.

After you have created an Image paragraph on your page, you can drag an item and drop it into the paragraph.

This tab lists any documents in the repository.

After you have created a Download paragraph on your page, you can drag an item and drop it into the paragraph.

This tab lists any movies (for example, Flash items) in the repository.

After you have created an appropriate paragraph (for example, Flash) on your page, you can drag an item and drop it into the paragraph.

This tab lists any products. After you have created an appropriate paragraph (for example, Product) on your page, you can drag an item and drop it into the paragraph.

This tab shows all pages. Double-click any page to open it for editing.

This tab allows you to search for another page. All paragraphs from that page will be listed. You can then drag a paragraph to your current page, this will create a reference to the original paragraph.

This tab shows all the resources in the repository.

Any tags and any resources that match the search pattern are listed:

You can also use wildcards for search. Supported wildcards are:

• *
  matches a sequence of zero or more characters.
  
• ?
  matches a single character.

    ad-nmvtis.jpg

the following search patterns will find it (and any other images matching the pattern):

• name:*nmv*
• name:AD*
  the character matching is not case sensitive.
• name:ad?nm??is.*
  you can use any number of wildcards in a query.

Assets can be accessed from the Websites console, where the asset dialog is provided to manage certain properties of the assets.

To use the asset dialog:

1. Open the Websites console.
2. Navigate to the required folder under Digital Assets.
3. Double-click on the asset to open the Asset Properties dialog. Here you can:
• Edit the asset
• Define a Title.
• Enter a Description
• Define Tags for the asset
4. Click OK to save your changes.