Book Image

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Book Image

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Overview of this book

Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 is a dynamic web publishing system with which you can build websites quickly and cost-efficiently. MCMS provides the administration, authoring, and data management functionality, and you provide the website interface, logic, and workflow. Once your website is up and running, your content contributors can add and edit content on their own, without the need to work with developers or the IT department. First time developers of Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 face a relatively steep learning curve. Not only are they expected to be conversant in the Microsoft .NET Framework, they are also required to be familiar with the concepts of MCMS 2002. Many beginners to MCMS start out by looking at the example site that ships with the product; tweaking it, dissecting it and turning it inside out using the obscure code comments as markers. However, when it comes to starting their own website from scratch, many are baffled ? where do they begin? This book exists to answer that question; teaching the essential concepts of MCMS 2002 in a clear, straightforward and practical manner. Containing answers to some of the most asked questions in developer newsgroups, this book is a treasure trove of tricks and tips for solving the problems faced by MCMS developers. This is a unique resource focused exclusively on the needs of developers using MCMS. It doesn?t waste time and pages on user or administrator level information that is well covered in other documentation. It?s a distillation of practical experience that developers need to get results, fast. The authors carefully structured example project complements and extends the knowledge gained from an initial look at the examples that ship with MCMS.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server
Credits
About the Authors
Introduction

Summary


In this chapter we discussed what placeholders are and how they can be used to divide content into manageable chunks. Placeholders consist of three basic elements:

  • The placeholder control

  • The placeholder definition

  • The placeholder object

We looked at the properties of the HtmlPlaceholder, the AttachmentPlaceholder, and the ImagePlaceholder and their corresponding placeholder definitions. We added placeholders of each type onto the Plant template file. Using the Placeholder Definition Editor, we added corresponding placeholder definitions for each placeholder control and linked them using Template Explorer. As a result, we now have editable areas for authors to write content to.

Finally, we looked at how stylesheets can be applied correctly to a template file by using absolute links instead of relative links.

In Chapter 11, we will look at the Web Author Console interface and put on our author's hat to generate plant fact sheets from the Plant template.