Working with your new site

Understanding your workspace

neatComponents is a 'component' based website construction system. The components are used to build a website in a conventional tree-structure. A basic principle of neatComponents is that the content of the website is divided from the appearance: you control what is in the site, separately from how it looks.

 

There are many different types of component. This 'Hello World' example only uses a few components and features, and describes only the minimum of the settings - just to keep things simple whilst you are getting started.

What do I get?

When you open your Trial Site you will see a basic tabbed navigation-bar website, with:

• A simple 'Your site name' banner
• Section 1-tab (selected with a page to view)
• Section 2-tab
• Admin-tab (mouse-over for a drop-down menu)

This Quick Start guide will work you through your first steps: the other entries, repeated below, are there to give you a helping hand when using other Tutorials. By all means have a look at them now if you want to - but don't worry if it isn't clear what they do, right now.

Pages and Layout

In the example shown above there are two main elements: the Page and the Layout.

The Page holds the non-repeating information - the regular page content. The Layout controls the repeating elements at the top of the page - the head graphic and the navigation.

The toolbox gives you access to the edit controls. The 'Edit Page' or 'Edit Section' option will allow you edit the content of the page to view. Selecting 'Layout Manager' will allow you to work with the site itself - add pages and other components, and modify the Layout Elements and Navigation.

In the next step we will edit a page on the site:

Let's edit a page ...

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More information

When an ordinary visitor sees a website created and hosted in neatComponents they are not aware of any differences from a regular website.

When you are logged in to the site with edit permission you will see a small 'toolbox' icon floating in the bottom-left corner of the window. The toolbox confirms that you are logged in, and gives you access to the website design tools.  As a site designer, you have total control over the site including page content, navigation and site layout - as well as embedded components.