Using OpenEdit's Content Management Features

OpenEdit offers a wide range of tools that will allow you to maintain, update, and enhance your live website, all online without using any external applications.

In-Line Editing Tools

One of the most common maintenance tasks required for a website is simply updating or changing the text in some area of the site. OpenEdit's In-Line Editing tools make this quick and easy. Follow these steps and you will be managing your site's content online in no time at all.

1. You will need to be logged in as an administrator.
2. At the bottom of the Content menu, located in the OpenEdit toolbar, are several view modes you can choose from. Select "Debug Mode". This will let you view your site in Debug Mode where you will have access to the In-Line tools, among other features. This will not change how other users will view your site.

1. You will notice a few changes in the way your website is now being displayed. A red dotted line will form a box around some sections of your web page. Each of these red dotted boxes is a separate HTML page. Boxes within boxes represent pages being included within the outer page. You should also notice two icons in the top-left corner of each box; a pencil and an arrow.

1. Hovering over the pencil icon for a particular content box will give you access to the in-line editing tools for that content. You have your choice of several editing options: Visual Editor, Text Editor, Page Properties, Versions, and View In File Manager.

• Visual Editor - The visual editor will give you a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, similar to what you would see in a word processing application, to edit and format your content. Make your changes using any of the editing tools you like, then be sure to click the disk icon to save your changes.

• Text Editor - The text editor option will give you a simple text editor that will allow you to directly edit the HTML for the selected content. This option is ideal for those with some HTML ability who want to edit the code by hand. Just make your changes through the text editor, then click the disk icon to save your changes. The disk with the X on the left will save and close the editor. The plain disk on the right will save your changes, refresh the your view of the page, and leave the editor open so you may continue making changes.

• Page Properties - Page properties will allow you to edit the properties for the given HTML page. This is where you can set the title for a page, or set up customized properties.
• Versions - If you have enabled version control for your site, you can use the Versions option to see previous revisions of a page. This is ideal for undoing unintended changes.
• View In FileManager - This will open the file in question in OpenEdit's File Manager tool.

Hovering your cursor over the arrow icon for a content box will display another dropdown menu that provides you with several useful pieces of information about the content file.

• Path and Filename - First will be the path and filename for the file you are looking at. This can be useful if you do not know where certain content is coming from.
• Fallback File - Second is the path and filename of the base OpenEdit file which the file will fall back to. Fallbacks are discussed in the File Manager section below.
• Actions - The remaining lines of this menu list all of the actions that are run when this page is visited. Page actions will be covered in a later section.

OpenEdit File Manager

The OpenEdit File Manager is a powerful tool that allows you to directly manage all of the files that comprise your OpenEdit site. You can edit text, copy, delete, rename, and move files, all online without having to be physically at the computer hosting your site. The file manager is accessible by selecting "File Manager" from the Content menu in the OpenEdit toolbar.

Anyone familiar with the Windows Explorer or Mac Finder should be fairly comfortable with the OpenEdit File Manager. The tree on the left allows you to browse the file tree using the arrows next to folder names. If you click on a folder or file name, it will open in a panel to the right of the tree. In the screenshot above, I have used the tree to browse into the archive folder, then opened the categories folder. You can continue to browse into subfolders which will open more panels, as seen in the image below. By hovering over the pencil icon for a folder that is open in a panel, you can access a list of actions to perform on that folder such as Copying, Renaming, Moving, and Deleting.

If you click on a file, whether it's in the file tree or inside a panel, the File Manager will open the file in a new text editor panel. You can then edit the file within the text editor (be sure to click the disk icon above the editor to save your changes!) and also perform any of the actions displayed to the right of the text editor, as seen in the screen shot below.

Fall-Back Mechanism

While using the file manager, you may notice that some files and folders are displayed with a small arrow on their icon instead of the normal folder or file icons. The arrow indicates that the file is actually located in a "fall back" directory. Generally speaking, all files in an OpenEdit website will "fall back" to the corresponding file in the base OpenEdit directory. When you first install OpenEdit, nearly every file will actually be loading from this base. For example, if you were to browse to "www.myopeneditsite.com/archive/index.html" (this isn't a real site), OpenEdit will first look for the file "index.html" inside of the "/archive/" folder, as you would expect. However, if that file does not exist, it will then "fall back", and look for "index.html" in the folder "WEB-INF/base/archive/".

While using the file manager, it is important to remember the fall-back mechanism. For example, in the screen shot above, if you look at the file tree on the left, you will see two files called "categories.xml" inside of the "categories" folder. Now look at the icons for those two files. The first one, which is the currently selected file, has a plain page for its icon. The second categories.xml has a page with an arrow in the bottom left corner. That means that the second categories.xml is actually located in the fall-back directory for this folder.

If you open and edit a file that is marked as being in the fall-back directory, it will be saved into the local folder, NOT into the fallback. For example, from the image above, if I were to open "index.html"...

I can edit "index.html" freely, and when I save it...

Notice that I now have two copies of "index.html", just like I have two copies of "categories.xml". One is the actual local file, which is the one that will be displayed and used in the site. The second is the fall-back file which will not be used in the site, unless the local version is removed. The fall-back feature allows you to customize and build on top of our base code, without running the risk of breaking your site. If you make some changes that just didn't work out, you can simply remove your local copy of the file and OpenEdit will know to find the original file in the fall-back directory.