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Getting Started

The following is a step-by-step guide to getting started with your new Village CMS website. It will take you through logging into the system, building out your first page by adding and customizing blocks. Then you can add a a few different kinds of pages before turning to customizing the look and feel of your website.  

You have received your email from Village CMS, clicked on the link, and set your password. It is time limited, so if you did not click it in time, you can press the Forgot Password link and set it that way. If you are viewing your website, there is a little pencil icon in the bottom right-hand corner. Click that to login. 

Overview of the Admin area

When you first log in, you are taken to the main Pages screen. If you are already logged in, you go to a page editing screen, which we will cover in a bit. Click on Pages if that has happened. 

This page is split into three main areas and a link. New sites start with a home page, a contact page and sensible defaults already in place. 

  • The Pages link is a listing of all your pages in the order they appear on the website. From here you can click on a file name to view the page, Edit to edit it, duplicate it or delete it. 
  • The Templates tab contains the html (as liquid files), CSS and the media library of files and images that are the raw materials for the site. 
  • Finally Site Settings is where you set your site preferences. 
  • View Site returns you to your home page. 

 

 

Saving your work. As you build and edit blocks, your changes save automatically. The Settings, Fields, and URLs tabs are the exception — those save when you click the Save button. A good habit: click Save before you leave a page, and you'll never lose a thing.

 

Site Settings

Site settings are where you can tailor the website with your basic information, your brand, and the overall structure of your website. See Site Settings for a full description of all the functions that are available. There are also Tips for Getting Started, and a Going Live Checklist, to make sure you have all the details covered before you go live. Here you also have access to create Navigation Menus for use in the header and the footer, and add Users with different permissions. 

Creating a Page

To add a page, click Pages in the top menu, then the + New Page button. Give it a name — let's build a blog, so call it News — and choose a template. The template sets what kind of page it is: most pages are Default, but pick Blog and the page becomes a listing that gathers your posts. Click Save, and you're dropped straight into the page editor.

The Page Editor

Creating a page takes you to the editor, where you'll spend most of your time. Along the top is a small toolbar: Save keeps your changes, Parent moves the page under another, + New Page adds a page (handy for children), and on blog and event pages a Bulk Edit button appears for managing lots of posts at once. Below that are four tabs — Blocks, Settings, Fields, and URLs — and you'll land on Blocks, where the content lives.

Working with blocks

Blocks are the building pieces of every page — a heading, a paragraph, an image, a row of cards. To add one, click Add block and pick from the catalogue; it drops into the page ready to fill in. Let's add a Text block and type a welcome message, then add a couple more to get the feel — maybe an Image and a Button. Drag blocks by their handle to reorder, use the eye to hide one, or the trash to remove it. On the live page each block has a little pencil in its corner, so you can jump straight back to editing it. Click Save, then View Site to see it live. See descriptions of blocks.

Settings, Fields & URLs

The other three tabs fine-tune the page.

  • Settings controls the page itself: whether it's visible, whether it shows in your sitemap, the title and description search engines display, and — on a blog or events page — the Subpage Template. Set that to Blog Post so every page you add beneath this one is automatically a blog post.
  • Fields holds extras specific to the template — a blog post's author, an event's date and time, and so on.
  • URLs is the page's web address, and where you add redirects if a page ever moves. URLs are automatically added if the page is renamed.