Getting Started - The Basics

Q: What parts of my website can I edit?

When you log into tank you should see your website in the right frame, and CMS stuff in the left frame. The site looks a bit different when viewed after logging into the CMS because it has edit controls on it. To edit your site, click an edit control (in your site.. the right pane), adjust things in the left hand pane and click save. The edit controls are shown in a particular light blue color. Eg, to edit an article, click on the little pencil icon underneath the article, make your changes (in the left pane), and click save. To edit a menu, look for items called [Edit] and select these.

Your website design will include one or more templates (page designs) created by the designer - these define the style and layout of the pages and they determine which bits of your site are editable. Some parts of the site are not editable within the CMS.. they are part of the template and are not meant to be changed by anyone except your web designer. This is deliberate.. if you wanted to edit absolutely everything on the page you would use an html editor (like Dreamweaver or something), and the whole point of using a CMS is that you don't need to become a web designer to edit your site. Generally speaking if you are logged into tank and you do not see an edit control next to something, that means it is not editable.

Q: How do I enter or edit text?

Editing articles

Pages contain articles (some page designs or "templates" allow just one article, others have many). These contain the main content of the website.

Underneath each article there is a blue bar. To edit that article, click on the pencil symbol:

 

An article editor will appear in the left pane. Articles contain a selection of fields (eg Title and main text). Usually the article text is editable in an html editor:

This allows you to edit and write text as it will appear on the page. It works in a similar way to most word processing software programs such as Word.

Make your changes to the text and click ‘Save Changes’ when you are finished.

TIP: Try not to paste text directly from Microsoft Word into the html editor, as Word contains formatting which isn’t designed for the internet and may make your text look different from the formatting on the rest of the website. Try to paste the text into Windows Notepad first, to remove the formatting, and then paste into the html editor.


Creating a new article

Find the page you want to create new content for and click on the star symbol to create a new article. Choose an article name – this will also appear as the article heading. If this is the first article on the page then it will automatically give the article the same name as the page, unless you change it. You can also change the article heading in the “Article Title” box if you would like it to be different from the article name.

Once you are finished with your new content, Click on “Add New Article” to save changes and insert the article into the page.

Q: How do I insert or change a picture?

In most simple article types there is a slot for one image to go with the text. Click on the ‘Select Image’ button below the Html Editor.

This will open the remote file explorer which will contain all of the images which have been uploaded to use on the website. Select an image and click on ‘insert’ to insert into the article.

To use a new image click on ‘browse’ to find an appropriate image from your hard drive or network, click ‘open’ and ‘upload’ to add the image to the database. Then click ‘insert’ to put the image into the article.

To change or remove an existing image click on the relevant buttons below the image in the left pane.

You can also rotate the image 45 degrees using the rotate icons.




If you need to, TANK allows you to imbed an image in the article text at the point where you like.
Click on the image icon on the top bar of the html editor. This will take you to the remote file explorer where you can select which image you would like to insert. 

Q: How do I create a new page?

TANK structures your website rather like a newspaper or magazine. You might have various Sections such as sport, property, business etc. Within each section are a number of Pages (sections and pages work as navigation and sub-navigation buttons within your website) and of course on each page you have a number of Articles.

See also What is the difference between a section and a page?

First find the section you would like to put your new page into. Go to the website sitemap or one of the navigation panes/menus at the top or side of the page. Click on the ‘edit’ button which corresponds to the relevant section. You can also list all the sections on the website by selecting ‘Sections’ and ‘View all sections’ in the left hand pane.

Once you have selected the section you want, find ‘Section Contents’ at the bottom of the left hand pane:

Click on ‘New Page’ to create a new page within this section.

Give your page a name and select the appropriate template type.[link for more info]

Click ‘Add New Page(s)’ to finish creating your new page. You can now add content by creating articles on the new page.
 
Note: You can also create a new page via ‘Pages’ in the left hand pane and selecting ‘add new page’. You will need to choose the section the page will appear in by choosing from the list under ‘Parent Section’ in the left hand pane.

TIP: If you want to create several pages at once, you can list several pages names at once on the ‘New Page[s]’ screen. Just separate the list of names using commas in the ‘Page name[s]’ field. For example “about us, contact us, articles, products, links” would create 5 similar pages within the relevant section. 

Q: How do I change the position of articles on the page?

If you want to move the order of articles on the page you can click the ‘switch position’ icon on the blue bar underneath each article to switch places with the article directly above.

All articles created for the website are stored in the database, so can be selected at any point via the drop-down box on each blue bar on any relevant page.
 

Q: How do I add another existing article to a page?

Depending on the design of your website, pages have a maximum number of articles. Some are designed for single articles and others for up to 10, and more. If there are no articles on a page, a message is displayed which will tell you the maximum number of articles.

If you are on a multiple articles page, you can add an additional existing article by using the drop down menu (below the top article on the page) to select the article you would like to add. This will add the article you have chosen above the existing article each time. When the number of articles on the page exceeds the maximum number of articles for that page, the oldest article will ‘drop off’ and no longer appear.

If you try adding an article to a single article page it will merely replace the existing article.