Basic overview

Location: upper bar

The Navigation Tabs allow you to navigate to the main groups in SilverStripe CMS. Here, you can choose to manage pages, your stock of files and images, or your website's comments. You can also get reports on pages, and get help.  Some modules and options will add additional tabs here. Click on the relevant tab to display the associated information in the current window.

Specific tabs may change depending on what modules are installed. However, the following tabs are part of a typical SilverStripe installation:

Pages

This section enables you to access and edit the content of the pages on your website. On this tab, two extra "sub-tabs" are displayed in the left pane that enable you to display a History of editing events and a list of Reports incorporated within the system. 

Files & Images

By clicking on "Files & Images" icon, the screen will display a list of all folders containing uploaded files and images. This hierarchical view enables you to locate and select the file you wish to edit, delete or move.

Comments

If you have page comments enabled anywhere on the site, you can use this section to view and moderate them.

Reports

This section shows reports for your site, for example, pages with broken links. What you see in this section will depend on which version of SilverStripe you are running, and what modules you have installed.

Security

The Security section enables you to set up and administrate users and user groups. The various security groups are displayed in the left pane and the details of the selected group are displayed in the right pane. Amongst other things, this enables you to add and remove members from selected groups and control the access these users have to pages.

Help

Help provides direct access to SilverStripe user help. This is the site you are looking at right now!

Contents pane

Location: left side

The Contents Pane displays the contents of the currently selected navigation tab in a hierarchical format.  For example, when looking at the "Pages" navigation tab, the Contents pane will show you a sitemap, listing all of the pages on the site. Pages can be nested, so to expand the view to include subpages, click on the "+" icon.  If you wish to collapse the views, you can click on the "-" icon.  

Editing pane

Location: largest section, on the right side.

Once you have selected an item in the contents pane, the contents and properties of that item will be displayed in the right pane on a number of tabbed pages. (These tabbed pages may also contain a subset of tabbed pages). This pane enables you to edit the content and properties of selected items.  For example, if you were to click on a webpage in the Contents pane, the Editing Pane would show you the content on that page, and let you edit it.  When editing content, the Editing Pane is "WYSIWYG" - or "What You See Is What You Get." You can use the toolbar in the editing pane to edit the webpage's content, much like you would in a word processor.  

Sub-tabs

Location: On the bottom of the contents pane

These normally hidden, but expandable subtabs are typically only available in Pages view. They provide quick information about page version history, so you can easily roll back to an earlier version of a page, if need be, and site reports which detail pages that need urgent work or have not changed in a while.  

View bar

Location: on the very bottom of the screen

The View Bar allows you to switch between the three views available within SilverStripe CMS: the editing view of the CMS, how your proposed website will look when and if it is published, and what the current, live, published page looks like.  Additionally, you can find on the right side of the View Bar a place to logout or alter your user profile.