Blog about concrete5 cms

Just a quick tip for concrete5 users: When you are moving blocks on the page (from area to area, or just arranging blocks inside one area), try to point your mouse  closer to middle of the block (vertically). This way it will be easier to target destination space, than if you take the block close to the bottom or top border.

Take a look at the picture.

This behavior possibly depends on which browser you use, I don’t know, but taking block at the middle works in any browser perfectly. I mean modern browsers and not IE 6

admin concrete5 for dummies

In fact it is very easy to copy pages in concrete5, but many people (especially those who use concrete5 for the first time) don’t know how this can be done.

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admin concrete5 for dummies

Maintenance mode disables website frontent for usual visitors, however admin backend is available for website owner. Enabling maintenance mode is recommended on high-traffic websites while doing backups and other maintenance procedures.
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admin concrete5 for dummies

Some new concrete5 users get confused when they cannot find a way to add table to a page at their concrete5 website. However in fact there are several ways to do that. I will describe 4 ways to add table on the page with concrete5 cms… Read more…

admin concrete5 for advanced users, concrete5 for developers, concrete5 for dummies

Some concrete5 themes allow to customize background color from admin dashboard. Try this:

1. Sign in to concrete5 dashboard.
2. Go to ‘Pages and Themes‘ section.
3. Click ‘Customize‘ button for a theme you want to edit.
4. If the theme supports the feature, you’ll see ‘Background‘ in theme customization options. You can choose any color using color picker and preview it almost immediatelly. Click ‘Save’ to apply the change.

admin concrete5 for dummies

In previous article we described how to replace sitename with logo by html editing. That was for older versions of concrete5 cms. In the latest cms you can do it without any html knowledge. Here is step-by-step instruction:

1. Sign in to admin dashboard.
2. Go to ‘Scrapbook‘ section.
3. Open ‘Global Scrapbook‘ there.
4. There will be one block there – Content: “My_Site_Name”.

You can go 2 ways: you can either edit this content block and add the picture via ‘Add image’ button, or you can do the following:

1) delete the content block (My_Site_Name);
2) Add new block of ‘Image’ type (it will allow you to choose/upload the logo and set logo dimensions you want);
3) after you add the image block, it will be assigned a default block name like ‘Global Scrapbook 34′. You should click ‘Rename’ button and change the block name to My_Site_Name. Click ‘Save’ to finish the renaming procedure;
4) go to the site frontend and check if the logo is used instead of sitename. If not, that might be a problem with concrete5 theme (currently only cordobo green park theme supports it on our website, but we’ll update the other concrete5 themes soon). You’ll need to edit html code in this case, see this article then.

exclusive concrete5 for dummies

If you accidentally clicked on the "Remove" button for "Generate Sitemap File" job and cannot restore the job. Don’t worry. It can be easily done in the following way:

1. Move (not copy) generate_sitemap.php file from /concrete/jobs/ to /jobs/
2. Go to Dashboard, then open Maintenance section.
3. You should see the Generate Sitemap File job and Install button next to it. Click the Install button.

It was easy, wasn’t it?

admin concrete5 for dummies

There could be a situation when you might need to copy some content from one concrete5-based website to another. You can try doing "Edit page" -> "Edit block", then select all and paste on the new website. It will work if you don’t have text formatting in the block, otherwise it might been copied with some format losses.
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admin concrete5 for dummies

This instruction describes the process of installing concrete5 themes that can be found on this website, but should work for any other themes as well.

We distribute themes in zip packages, so you will need a program to extract the files from archive. For example, you can use an open source archiver – 7-zip

Follow step-by-step instruction below:

1. Download theme from our or any other website.

2. Inside zip-archive you will find other ‘themes’ folder or a folder with theme name. You should extract and upload (if your concrete5 is hosted on remote server) the theme folder to ‘CONCRETE5/themes/’ directory, where CONCRETE5 means the root directory of your cms.

Attention: the ‘themes’ directory is empty by default. It shouldn’t confuse you. This folder is used mainly for custom themes and not for themes distributed in default concrete5 pack. There is ‘concrere/themes’ directory (this one not empty) with default concrete5 themes. You shouldn’t upload there anything unless you are going to make some changes to default theme.

Tip: most probably there would be a ‘README.txt’ file with the theme. Please check the archive for such a file, it might contain specific instructions for the theme you’re installing.

3. It’s strange, but you’re almost finished with the theme installation. Now open your dashboard and go to ‘Themes’ tab (since concrete 5.2.0 – “Themes and page types” )

If you do everything properly you will see the newly added theme in the bottom of the page. There should be an ‘Install’ button. Click it.

4. Once the theme is installed, you can choose its design for certain pages. For example, open a page, click ‘Edit this page’ and then click ‘Design’ button. You should see the theme thumbnail among available designs. If you don’t see it, the theme wasn’t installed correctly, or if there are several themes installed, you might need to scroll the selection (click the right arrow button). If you select the new design, this selection will be applied to the page.

You’ll have to select the design for each page unless you activate the theme. To activate it, you should click appropriate button in the ‘Themes’ section of the site dashboard. Note: this action will reset all previously set custom selections, i.e. all pages will be associated with the new design.

Just a reminder: Don’t forget to check ‘README.txt’ file of your theme before installing it.

admin concrete5 for dummies

When you set up a website you’ll most probably have some blocks that are repeated from page to page. There is no need to create a new block each time you add new page. It can be done through Page Types functionality of the great cms called concrete5. So, let’s say you need to have some content in the sidebar that is repeated on every page, here is what you should do to save your time:

1. Log in as admin of your concrete5 installation.
2. Open ‘Dashboard’.
3. Go to Page Types section.
4. Click on ‘Defaults’ button of the necessary page type.
5. Concrete5 will redirect you to the page where you can get into editing mode and add blocks that you want to be created on the page type pages by default.
6. You can also set default permissions the same way.
7. Once you exit editing mode and click ‘Publish changes’, default settings will be applied and every time you create a new page with that page type, it will have pre-defined set of blocks and permissions.

admin concrete5 for dummies