CMS Spectra How-To Videos


I'm really glad you stopped by!

Hi! I'm Mike the creator of CMS Spectra. I've been right here on the web since 1996. I have had a long history in the computer world. I've been a Network Engineer, System Administrator, Web Designer, and now a Webmaster all in the span of the last few years. During that time I also did a 20-year hitch in the Air Force (1976-1996) where my computer involvement started and retired from that.


 I use this website to showcase CMS Spectra and its features. To see them in action visit my main site Coders Junction.

Spectra Gets Better With Every Release.

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Direct Editing

CMS Spectra lets the administrator browse the entire site and edit content directly without leaving the page he/she is on. If you see a typo there is no need to go back to the dashboard to correct it. Simply click on the edit  icon at the bottom of the content area and edit the content from the editing window. When finished, save it and close the editing window.


Repositioning

Sidebar blocks and articles can be repositioned on the homepage at any time. Simply click on the arrow  icon to open the editing window and drag-n-drop them into their new position.

 

Read More    

Articles come with this neat Read More feature for those long articles.

Just turn it on when building the article and choose how you want the Read More content displayed. It can be in a dropdown (like this one) or in a popup window or in a new browser tab.

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Turn your creativity into a website.

If you can dream it, you can build it.

Spectra is a modern Content Management System/Blog, not a fork, and I have developed it from the ground up to provide for your every need in site design. There are many powerhouse Content Management Systems out there now, but you need an in-depth study of them to get started. Lots of people give up trying to get a site up and going. That’s where Spectra is unique. The primary preference in the design process was to make this CMS user-friendly.  Once you have initially installed Spectra, you can set up and operate your full site from within the dashboards. Upgrade, and back up your full website, back up your database, import/export themes, and a whole lot more.


Pages, Articles, and Sidebars

The Content

Pages

CMS Spectra allows you to build as many pages as you need.  Each page can have sidebars, plugins, videos, and lots more and each page can be totally different than all of the others.

The powerful page builder is user-friendly and allows you to fully customize each page to suit your needs.  You get to choose if you want to add sidebars to the page and you also get to put any content you want into the sidebars.  Plugins are pre-made but you can choose which ones to display on your new page if any.  And the really good thing is that you can turn any page on or off when making edits.  Come back to the page at any time to make edits.

 

Articles

The feature of CMS Spectra that you will be using the most is the articles. A website isn't much good without articles.

You can add hundreds of articles and manage them with ease.  Using the powerful article builder you can create an article that has a background image or color or even a gradient color.  Build your new article and preview it as you go to get it just right. Once you are finished, publish it so everyone can enjoy it.

Add a video, pictures of a recent event, or whatever you like. And come back and edit it at any time.

 

Sidebars

By turning on a plugin such as the Tag Cloud and or Categories/Pages  Finder you can give your visitors the opportunity of discovering everything you have on your website at a glance and go directly to it.


As I've done here you can build sidebar blocks and add your content into them. According to the template you choose for the homepage you can choose which sidebar you want to place your block in. And if you decide to move it you can do that too. Also, drag-n-drop it into a new place in the same sidebar.

 


Full-Function Drag -n- Drop Editor

CKEditor Full

CKEditor 4 is the most stable, reliable solution on the market since its launch in 2012. It has been actively improved since then.

Wide browser support including legacy browsers.

Exceptional security: As an Open Source application with many enterprise customers, CKEditor 4 is constantly checked by pen-testers, security scanners, and source code analysis tools.

CKEditor paired with elFinder gives the site administrator a complete range of tools to be creative in how the page, article, and all other content areas are built and displayed.


elFinder

elFinder is an open-source file manager for the web, written in JavaScript using jQuery UI. As you can see its creation is inspired by simplicity and convenience.

 

 

I have integrated elFinder to work seamlessly with CKEditor to perform the operations listed below and more.

Perform all operations with files and folders on a remote server (copy, move, upload, create folder/file, rename, etc.)

High-performance server backend and light client

Background file upload with Drag & Drop support

Standard methods of file/group selection using mouse or keyboard

Rich context menu and toolbar

List and Icons view

Shortcuts

Move/Copy files with Drag & Drop

Archives create/extract (zip, rar, 7z, tar, gzip, bzip2)

Preview for common file types

Edit text files and resize images

"Places" for your favorites

Calculate directory sizes

Thumbnails for image files

Quick look

Flexible configuration of access rights, upload file types, user interface, and other

CKEditor 4

elFinder

 


 

Themes and Templates

Working hand-in-hand

 

Themes give your website an attractive look and Templates and Layouts organize the content of your website. When they are all working together you get impressive results. 

The aim of Spectra is to give you the flexibility to choose.

Themes

The powerful theme builder allows you to edit themes and also build new ones.  No more files to edit or upload just open the theme builder and start creating.  Once you become comfortable with the settings you will be able to build a new theme in 5 minutes or less.  Don't like the look of something in your theme, go back and edit it at any time.

 

Templates

Are pre-made and completely change the layout to compliment your website's content.  Whether you have a small or very large website CMS Spectra can handle it.  Because your website has grown since you first set it up and you have added a lot more content, the layout you first chose may no longer display the content correctly or the way you want it to.  You can go in and change the layout at any time.

Templates and Layouts

- 1-column

- 1 column plus (using header video)

- 2-column left or right sidebars

- both sidebars on the left or right

- 3-column

- 5-equal columns

- magazine

- newspaper

- media

- photo/image gallery

- carded content

- floating blocks

- compact articles



Users