The OpenSites Web Development Platform offers professional web designers and developers a streamlined and highly productive tool to build, launch and maintain rich, functional, content-managed websites.
The sections below walk through just a few important features of the OpenSites Build Process, with screen shots provided. Nothing can beat getting hands-on with the system, however, so please take the opportunity to register now for your FREE Developer Account and experience the power of OpenSites for yourself.
The Work Area
The Work Area is the main 'home' screen from which all other parts of the application are accessed. In the Work Area, you build the page structure of your site, and add Templates, Forms and OpenSites Modules to pages.
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The Work Area offers a visual site-building interface, where you drag and drop pages into the required 'tree' structure for your site, and add Forms and Modules. (Notice that the 'News' page and the 'Contact' page have little 'wrench' icons on them. In these examples a News Manager module has been added to the News page, and a form has been built and added to the Contact page.)
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Templates
OpenSites allows you to create as many templates as you wish. Templates are attached to pages by dragging them in the Work Area, or by setting/changing the template when editing Page Details.
To start creating a new Template, you just click 'Add New Template' from the Project Template List.
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If you have already built your page layout in another tool, for example in Dreamweaver, you can select the 'Blank Template' option and insert your HTML directly.
Alternatively, you may prefer to use a Pre-designed Template, or to let the Template Wizard help you import a template.
And every template you create can be saved in your Developer Account so that you can conveniently include it in future projects by selecting 'My saved templates'.
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Here's a template being created by pasting in HTML from another application.
Notice the special tags that have been highlighted. These will become Navigation and Content Areas when the site is generated.
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And here's the same template in Design View, after the css styles and background images have been added.
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Stylesheets
OpenSites has been designed to help you create accessible, search-engine friendly websites with tableless layout. The system creates and manages a number of stylesheets, but also gives you the ability to directly manage any stylesheet yourself.
Every project is created with a 'yourstyle.css' stylesheet, specifically as a place for you to add custom styles.
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If you are less familiar with CSS, you will probably want to use the StyleSheet Manager view, which lets you point and click to set up styles.
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CSS experts will prefer the Direct View, which lets you get hands-on with your styles.
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The File Manager
If you are cutting-in a design to use as a Template in OpenSites, the next thing you are likely to want to do after bringing in the HTML structure of the page and your stylesheets is to bring in any background and foreground images your design requires.
OpenSites makes it quick and easy to upload your images with the built in File Manager.
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Forms
You can build as many Forms as you like in your project, and save them to your Developer Account to use again in other projects.
The Form Settings screen allows you to define the basic data for your form, including autoresponders.
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The Form Fields screen lets you define the fields in your form.
(Note: If you decide to use the E-Marketer Module - OpenSites' permission marketing system - within your project, you also then have the option to map Form Fields to the E-Marketer Database.)
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Editing Pages and Content
Page details can be edited by double-clicking any page in the Work Area view.
This screenshot shows the Page Properties screen, where you can define the basic information for the page, including the name that it is to have in Navigation, and the file name to use in making the page's URL.
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Content is entered/edited in the Page Content screen in either 'Design View'...
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... or Source View (HTML) .
Note that OpenSites allows you to create multiple Content Areas in your Template, and each Content Area is then edited separately.
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Being Search Engine Friendly
OpenSites helps you get the basics right with the Search Engines, including allowing you to define the file names for all your pages, and producing clean, tableless markup from all modules.
Additionally, OpenSites gives you full control of your <Description>, <Title> and <Meta> keywords tags, and to make it even easier to keep your client's site up to date with the Search Engines, OpenSites automatically creates an XML site map file ('Google Sitemap'), and allows you to set the Change Frequency and Priority page-by-page.
You can also use the 'Additional Information' box to enter any additional content you wish to include in the <head> section of the page, such as additional scripts or stylesheets, or additional directives for search engine spiders.
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And if you find it too much of a chore to set up your titles, descriptions and keywords as you go along, OpenSites also gives you the opportunity to export all this data to update offline and re-import into your website.
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Generating the Site
OK. You've built your template and loaded your styles. You've set up some pages and some content; perhaps a form. You've added some Modules. It's time to click on the 'Create Website' button and get a look at your site...
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Every time you generate a site, OpenSites creates three things:
- The website, in a development staging area where you can show it to your client and continue to work on it.
- All the selected Modules.
- An Administration Panel for the OpenSites Content Management System, comprising both the editing tools you have just seen, and Admins for all the selected Modules.
Note: The OpenSites staging area is located on an 'anonymous' URL (www.development-draft.net). We put no branding on your site, and the Content Management System is also unbranded, so you retain full control with your client at all times.
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Here's the finished website, with a bespoke layout (template), navigation items generated automatically from the pages 'tree' structure, and two content areas.
And remember, everything is fully updatable, so you can go back and add more Modules and pages, or allow your client to add more pages and edit their content through the Content Management System Administration Panel.
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