The key elements

Working with Elxis, you will have to get familiar with terms like, content, content items, autonomous pages, sections, categories, modules, menus, user groups, templates, components, mambots, etc.

These actually describe the elements used to build an Elxis web site so lets start. A site build with Elxis, is a combination of all these elements.

Content: Is everything that has been written from you and is displayed on your site. In simple words you may, say that is all the text and images you have entered. That content may be organized in some way, based on the logical structure of it.

Sections: At the top of this structure you have sections. Sections can only contain a description regarding their contents. Their contents, can only be categories.

Categories: Are the second level of organizing content. Categories can contain a description regarding their contents and content items. If for example, your site is about drinks, you could define five sections. "Water", "Soft drinks" and "Hard drinks", "Juice", "Refreshments". Then under each section you could define several categories. For example, under section "Water", you could define the categories "Plain", "Tap" and "Sparkle". Then inside each category you can start adding information about each product.

Content Items: This information, that can be seen as pieces of text, are called content items. If it suits you, can imagine content items as articles.

That way of organization, although it seems strange at first, is a very effective way and one of the powers of Elxis. Later, you can ask from Elxis, to display all the content items that belong into a category, or section, or all the categories and the content items of a section.

Autonomous Pages: Apart from articles that are organized using sections and categories, we have articles that are independent (autonomous). That is also a usefull way of organizing your content. You could build a whole site only out of autonomous pages.

Menus: You build menus to provide navigation for your site. Menus consist from menu items. For the moment, consider them as lnks. Menu items can be of several types. Can be used to show the contents of a section, of a category, a single content item, an autonomous page, a component, etc. Menus are presented to your site as modules.

Modules: Are small pieces of code, that perform simple operations. Visually they are shown as menus or blocks containing info or methods to interact with site (e.g. for registering).

Templates: Elxis separates the content from the way that content is presented. That is done using templates. Templates describe the layout of your site, (where elements are presented), along with rules about the fonts, font sizes, colors, etc. You may install as many templates as you want and you can use more than one on a web site.

Module Positions: Among other things, templates define module positions. These are the places where modules can be shown. Module positions have names, like "left", "top", "user1". You can then decide which modules to show in module position "left" and in which order.

Components: Are small applications written for Elxis. They can be installed to it and act as part of it. Using components, you are able to extend the functionality of Elxis. You can control the behaviour of components, from the administration panel.

Mambots: Mambots are small pieces of code that effect content or add extra functionality to it. For example, Videos are added to Elxis using mambots. You should also know that WYSIWYG editors are also mambots and are installed as that.

User Groups: User groups are a key element of Elxis. You can use them to control the rights of users - what they can do, what they can see, if they have access or not to administration panel. Using Access Manager, you can define as many user groups you want and define their rights.