The Administration Application
What Is It?
The administration application is a web application that is always installed with Liquid Site. Though it, you can handle all the management and administration of Liquid Site, such as creating and designing web sites, writing web content, and managing users and permissions.
Where Do I Find It?
The administration application is really just a special type of
web site, and Liquid Site allows you to move the location of it as
you wish. By default it is available from the same URL as you used
when installing Liquid Site, i.e. usually
"http://localhost:8080/". If you use Liquid Site in a
hosted environment, your hosting provider should give you the URL
to the administration application.
Login & Security
Obviously you don't want to allow everyone to make changes to your web sites, so the administration application is protected with a mandatory user login. Any user with a valid user name and password and with read access to the administration web site is allowed to login, but anonymous access is not accepted. In the figure below you can see what the login screen looks like.
Figure 1. The administration login screen. Only users with at least read access to the administration site are allowed to login here.
Normally you would restrict read access to the administration web site to only those users that really need to use it. Allowing other users to access the administration application is a security risk and should be avoided if possible. Note though, that users must have write permission to the objects themselves or they will not be editable. Likewise if a user without read access to some objects will not be able to see them even in the administration application.
The Home View
When logging in to the adminstration application the home view is shown, allowing the user to modify information about themselves in Liquid Site. Things that can be modified in this way includes the real user name, email address, and password. See the figure below for an example of how the home view can look.
Figure 2. The administration home view. This is the default view after a successful login and allows the user to modify his or her personal information.
The home view is accessible to any user that can login to the administration site. The user can also see and modify all the information about him- or herself (except the comment field, see later section Users, Groups & Permissions) as it is considered to be owned by the user. It is important to be aware of this, so that one does not rely on the user information to stay exactly as originally created.
The Site View
The site view opens when clicking the "Site" tab in the top menu. Inside the site view you can find everything related to creating and maintaining web sites. The view itself is split into an object tree to the left and a detail pane to the right. The tree contains the domain at the root and all objects belonging to it thereunder, such as sites and templates. The detail page is updated each time an object in the tree view is selected. See the figure below for an example of the initial site view.
Figure 3. The administration site view. This view allows managing everything related to the web site design, structure and layout.
Modifications to the objects in the site view is made by clicking a corresponding button in the detail pane which either brings up a dialog or moves to a sequence of forms. All buttons are not shown at once, as they cannot all be applicable at once, and if a user lacks the required permissions they may not be shown all. Below is a list of all the available buttons (and thus operations) in the site view.
-
New
Displays a form for creating a new object under the currently selected one. For instance, to create a new site the parent domain object should first be selected. -
Edit
Displays a form for editing the currently selected object. The form is mostly similar to the one used when creating the object. -
Publish
Opens a publishing dialog for the current object. By default the current date and time are suggested, but these may be modified for publishing at a future date. -
Unpublish
Opens an unpublishing dialog for the current object. By default the current date and time are suggested, but these may be modified for unpublishing at a future date. -
Revert
Opens a revert version dialog for the current object. This allows the deletion of the latest version of an object, effectively reverting to the previous one. -
Delete
Opens a delete dialog for the current object. This allows for the complete removal of all versions of an object, something that should normally be avoided (use unpublishing instead). -
Permissions
Opens a permission dialog for the current object. This makes it possible to modify the permissions for the current object. -
Unlock
Opens an unlock dialog for the current object (only if it was locked). All objects are locked during editing, and if the "Save", "Cancel" or "Previous" buttons are not pressed when done, the lock will remain until manually removed through this dialog.
The exact workings of each of these operations are described in detail in the chapter Designing Web Sites or Security & Workflow for the permission and publishing operations.
The Content View
The content view is accessed by selecting the "Content" tab in the top menu in the administration application. Inside the content view you can find things related to creating and maintaining non-site specific web content, such as documents and other data. The content view should contain all the text and data you wish to publish on the web, except for the actual web site design.
The content view is split in the same way as the site view and has the same button and operations. The difference between the content and site views are which objects are visible in each one. In the content view, only the sections, documents and related objects are visible. See the figure below for an example of a content view.
Figure 4. The administration content view. This view allows managing web content unrelated to the web site design.
The intrincate details of creating web content are described in the chapter Creating Web Content.
The User View
The final view (for most users) in the administration application is the user view, that can be accessed by selecting "Users" in the top menu. The user view allows for adding, modifying and removing both users and groups. See the figure below for an example of how the user view can look.
Figure 5. The administration user view. This view allows managing the web users and groups.
The selector "Type" at the top allows for selecting a list of either users or groups. An additional filter is available, allowing for a quick search in the list of users or groups. By pressing the button "Add New" at the bottom of the screen a new user or group can be added, depending on if a user or group list was being shown. Users and groups can also be edited by clicking their names which brings up an editing form.
For the exact details on how to manage users and groups, please refer to the section Users, Groups & Permissions in the Security & Workflow chapter.