How to use this Tutorial

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What we cover:

This tutorial gives you some immediate experience of using the system, working with components, and layout, seeing how a site is constructed and generally getting into the mindset. You will:

• Create your first application 
• Login to your app to edit it
• Change the appearance of the app
• Add, and move pages around the app
• Modify the content on the pages
• Get started with data handling - tables, forms, queries, and emails

How long?

You'll need to set aside about half an hour or so for this tutorial.

Orientation

Before we get started, here are a couple of handy tips worth knowing:

Toolbox

 
... notice the floating Toolbox in the lower left corner of the window when you are logged in to your own site - it's the key to working with the system.  You can hover over it to display its menu.

Dialogs are context aware

The dialogs that control the system behavior are context aware. This means that you are presented with only the controls you need for the task in hand. As your task changes, so the available controls change - automatically.

As you build more advanced applications the appropriate control dialogs will become available. You are never faced with a large array of confusing controls. 

Use the default settings

The system has been designed as a full-stack system to 'simply work' - many actions work automatically by default. If you are coming from a traditional hand-coded relational database environment you will find that many common tasks happen automatically. 

You do have fine grain management over all controls, but you will find that the default settings are often already optimized. 

Let's get started...

You simply start following this short walk-through - the first few steps are fully detailed, but as you work through we increase the pace - so you don't get bored.

Click on the appropriate link below depending on where you have the system: 

 Using your Cloud Trial

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Running on your own server

If you are running your own server you will need to create your own 'Starter Site' to use for this Tutorial.
Learn how to make a Starter Site here: Running on your own machine... 

 Using the Cloud trial?

When you are using the free Cloud Trial your site has already been created for you.

We still recommend reading through the beginning section of 'A First Site' so that you understand the context you are working in, but the instructions on that page are only needed by users doing a trial install onto their own server.

Cloud trial limitations

Naturally there are a few limitations on the free Cloud trial. There is a Bandwidth Limit and you don't have access to the Server Manager so, for example, you can't access charging-plans and template site creation. Emails are redirected to the site owner - that's you.

None of these limits will affect your trial usage and, of course, they do not apply to full licenses.

Site Export

When you come to the end of your Cloud trial you can export the website or application you have made. You can then import it into your own Installation using either a Free or Premium license.

Read how to Export and Import sites...

More advanced usage

This tutorial is of a very simple usage, so you can quickly see how things work. The online documentation also contains detailed information for more complex uses:

• Form construction,
• Data integration, email - RSS - XML  feeds and aggregation.
• Data manipulation, and custom web and data applications
• Creating your own e-commerce sites, membership management.
• Replicating sites.
• Hosting and Domain management
• SaaS service reselling sites (including setting up automatic billing).
•  Search engine optimization, site-maps, direct-URLs.
• ... and much more.

You will find detailed information, tutorials and configuration advice 'here'.