August 28, 2008 - the maker 0.9

This is a feature complete but still beta release. New features will are:

On Windows after the project has been loaded the tree view is at the root of the list
BUGFIX [ 1966477 ] Todays date maker marker not working
BUGFIX [ 1970442 ] when lastProject.txt not found app crashes
BUGFIX [ 1967219 ] renaming binary files causes crash
other minor Bugfixes
default remote folders
better menu logic
'zebra' tables in some dialogs
Auto Complete in the Editor
Printing via Browser
One more template

Download and enjoy ! Please feel free to sent comments or bug reports.

Quickstart / Tutorial

This small tutorial will help you to get started in using the maker.

This document is subject to frequent changes...

revised Tue Sep 2 13:53:34 2008

We are currently working on a new set of ducumentation and tutorials. You can find them in our WiKi at sourceforge. Still the tutorial below will give you a good start.

Video Tutorials

Video Tutorials are available on this page.

index

Getting started:

More Features:

Feedback:

The Interface:

Troubleshooting:

Development:

Where to get Help ?

Your primary source to get help with the maker is this document. You will find it at http://www.makercms.org/tutorial . You may also go to the Help Menu an select Tutorial. If you do this, the maker will retrieve the current version of the tutorial from the Internet and will display it. This way the tutorial on your computer will be frequently updated.

Current Version

the current version of the maker is the maker 0.9

Download and Installation

You will find all versions of the maker at sourceforge. Unzip or uncompress the file you have saved to your disk. This will create a folder like maker-0.9 or whatever version is current. This folder can actually go to any place on your harddisk.

Running the Maker

On Windows:

Run maker.exe

On OS X:

Run maker.app

running from source using Python:

Check dependencies ! To run the maker from the source code using your Python Interpreter, start the maker.py script .

On Windows run: $ maker.py
On Linux run: $ python ./maker.py or ./maker.py
On Mac OS X run: $ pythonw ./maker.py

The First Start:

If you are running the maker for the first time the program will notice that and it will help you to create your first project or it will assist you to import all your existing maker projects.
Actually, this is all you have to do so far. You can already create a working website on your computer. To publish it you will need to setup your FTP connection.

Working On Your Project:

Backup Your Work

the maker can be considered stable. But it is strongly recommended that you backup your work especially important projects.
One way to do this would be to save your makerProjects folder occaisionally.
This folder can be found in your $home directory.

* On Windows your $home directory is not My Documents as one would suspect. To find it go to Start / Run / and run the cmd command.

Files

In the maker files are organized by their extensions. You can save, preview, create, import and delete any of these.

.content

These are your actual HTML documents or at least a part of them. The .content File is part of the HTML documents <body>. It contains the information that is displayed in the webbrowser.
You noticed the _en at the end of the filename. This is indicating that you are working on the english side of your project. The maker is also supporting an additional language for projects.
At this time the German language. The german .conent files have to _de ending.

.css

This is your projects stylesheet, where the projects design is stored. A new maker project has the default stylesheed called main.

.cgi

Your cgi scripts...

.js

For javascript

.txt

For plain .txt files like robots.txt or .htaccess

.dynamic

This is for dynamic content. This unique for the maker. Check out the video tutorial.
For example:

Let's say you have a project about music and it contains all kinds of pages. You want to have something like "This Weeks Top Ten" on yourindex page, on your hits page, and on a page that is called this week.
Every week you would need to update the information on three () pages.
This is where the .dynamic comes in handy. Just create a new .dynamic file called: weekly_top_ten or whatever you want to call it. Then link it to the pages you want to display it on.
On the index, hits and this week .content file insert the following line of code at the desired position.
<maker_dynamic:weekly_top_ten />
The dynamic content will be automatically changed as you change the .dynamic file. Notice that this is only a link to the .dynamic file. It only appears when a .content file is previewed or published.

Using Images

To work on images you need to import them. To do this go to Images / import Image. Select the image you like in the dialog and then the imagetool will appear. Here you may scale your image by entering your desired x y values. The image will be stored in you makerProjects folder and, if you have already set up your ftp connection, will be sent to your server.

To use the image go to the desired position in your HTML code and select HTML/CSS / img .

To delete an image from your system and your server go to Images/ delete Image.

Using Links:

The maker organizes all your files on the same folder. To link to an image you can use <img src="image.jpg" /> This is also working inside of stylesheets.
To link to a website you can use <a href="about_en.htm" /> the about page </a>

Now comes the fun part...

If you publish the page, the maker does update the link information with the data from the distribution table and is replacing it with the location of the referenced file on the server.

For exaple: image.jpg will be replaced by http://www.makercms.org/gfx/image.jpg

This is only working for files that are managed using the maker.

Using maker markers:

maker markers are a new feature in the 0.7 version. To use them go to the Insert Menu, then to the Markers submenu and choose one of the available markers. They look somewhat like this !makerMarker! . The following markers are available:

projectName
pageName
creationDate
todaysDate

Don't forget to surround them with the ! ! signs.

Parts ?

In the maker each HTML document is split up in five parts.

head - this is where all the meta data goes, stylesheet imports and so on
top of page - this is actually the top of your projects pages, your logo and tagline for example
navigation - your projects navigation
content - the pages content, stored in .content files
foot - your projects foot at the bottom of each page.

Top of page, navigation, and foot are global wich means they are the same for all the pages. You may edit them in the menu Parts. After you have changed one of these parts all the projects pages will be rebuilt.

To edit your pages .head go to Extra in the menu and select edit .head.

Setting Up Your Ftp Connection

ftp setup

FTP Host:

Your FTP Host. Usually something like www.myhost.com or ftp.myhost.com .

FTP User:

Your FTP Username.

Image Folder on Server:

This is where your images will be stored.

FTP Path to project

If you want to put your project on a webspace that is already used for another website then this will be the "root" directory for your new project.
For example:
In the case of http://www.myfirst.com/mysecond/you would enter mysecond here.
Click on the browse button to check out your server and to choose a directory. You may also create and select one. Make shure that when you finally hit OK that all settings are correct. Otherwise files existing on your server will be corrupted.
If you create a new project on an empty webspace just enter a slash /

Project url:

This has to be your url (http://www.myproject.com) and (!) the Path to your project and has to end with a slash /
Example:
http://www.myproject.com/makertest/

After you hit OK and all the settings are good, the maker will upload all your files to your FTP server and you can view it there.

Project Language:

This is the main language that your projects websites are written in. Currently you can choose between english and german (deutsch).

Additional Language:

If your website should feature two languages then you may choose it here.

What Is The "distribution table" ?

All of your projects files are stored on your computer. If you publish them to your webserver you need to define where each file has to go. This is done with the distribution table... The settings:

local file:

This is the filename on your computer. Notice that for .content files this is already the finished html file.

remote dir

The remote directory where your file will be stored. Be shure what to put there. If you want to put your file to :

http://www.myserver.com/index.htm

you can put a / here.

If you want to put your file to:

http://www.myserver.com/otherProject/index.htm

You need to use a . (dot) because / referes to the root directory.

ftp mode:

Can be either lines or binary although it can stay at lines for all maker fiiles.

remote file:

Finally the name of the file on your server. This can be a different one.

Publish

After you have defined the files destination in the distribution table, all you have to do is klick the publish button, enter your password and that's it.
Files that have been changed are added to the FTP Queue and are published all together.

Make All

You may publish all your .content files at once using the make all button. All other files are ignored!

More Features:

Languages

the maker at this time supports two languages for projects. English and german (deutsch). You may switch between them using Languages in the menu.
If you go to Project / setup Project you can change your language settings. The project language is the language that is loaded first.

RSS

The maker will create an rss feed from <h1> headlines for each page.

You cannot use any attributes in your <h1>. If you do <h1 class="myClass"> the maker will NOT create an RSS item from this headline.

You can edit the Title and description of the rss feed using the menu Parts and selecting Edit RSS Title . RSS Feed only work from webservers !

Feedback :

Feedback

You may report a bug or give feedback by going to the Help menu and selecting feedback. Or you can send your feedback to info@makercms.org

Bug Reports

Error messages are displayed in the Log window. Copy and Paste the error message to report a bug. You may report a bug by going to the Help and selecting Report a bug.

Make a Donation

If you find the maker useful consider making a donation.

The Interface:

Known Issues

Check the BugTracker for Bugs we are working on.
For Linux related issues see here.

Development

The maker is being developed by the makerProject. The current 0.9 version has major improvements, please see the roadmap for more information.
I would also like to ask any user to send feedback and bug reports. I would also appreciate suggestions and feature requests.

Requirements If Running From Source

There are no depecdencies if you want to run a binary version of the maker.

However to run the maker from the sourcecode, via your Python interpreter, you will need Python , wxPython 2.8.6.1.