The Maker - Rapid Website Creation And Management. The Web Development Platform for OS X, Windows and Linux

Quickstart / Tutorial

This tutorial will help you to get started in using TheMaker. Video Tutorials are available on the video page.

Creating a new project:

To create a new project go to Files / New Project.Then enter a name for your project and choose a template. The maker will then create all the files for your new project and will load it. You can edit files by clicking on them in the file tree.

Files

In TheMaker files are organized by their extensions. You can save, preview, create, import and delete any of these. Here are just a few examples.

.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. TheMaker is also supporting additional languages for projects. To add a language go to Tools / Project Languages / Add Language.

.css

Your projects stylesheets, where the projects design is stored. A Maker project usually has the default stylesheed called main.

.dynamic

This is for dynamic content. This unique for TheMaker.

Example for using dynamics:

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 your index 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.

Parts ?

parts In TheMaker each HTML document is split up in five "parts". "part files" are clearly indicated in the file tree with a little gear symbol. There are five types of parts.

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

.body, navigation, and foot are global wich means they are the same for all the pages. After you have changed one of these "part files" all the projects pages will be rebuilt.

To edit your pages .head go to Tools > edit .head. This might all seem a little odd at first but after you worked on our project for a while you will get used to it.
To find our more, you can preview our file in a browser by pressing the preview button. Then view the source of the built document. In the soucecode you will find comments, indicating where each part ends.

Using Images

http://www.makercms.org/gfx/imagetool_0_7.png

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 then be stored in you makerProjects folder. Once you publish to your server your images will be uploaded as well.

To insert the image go to the desired position in your HTML code and select HTML/CSS > Images And Objects > Image .

To delete an image from your system and your server go to Images > Delete Image. To sync images between your system and your server go to Images > Sync Images.

How To Use Links:

To link to an image you should do it like this: <img src="image.jpg" /> This is also working inside of stylesheets.
To link to a website you do: <a href="about_en.htm" /> the about page </a> You can also use parameters: <a href="about_en.htm?name=theMaker" />

If you publish the page, TheMaker 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. This gives you full control over links in your project.

For exaple: image.jpg will be replaced by http://www.makercms.org/gfx/image.jpg
Also, when you use links in that way, once you rename a file inside TheMaker, all it's references will be updated across the whole project.

Using Markdown:

Starting with version 1.5 of TheMaker it is possible to use Markdown from withing certain maker parts (.content, .foot, .body, .nav). To create a "Markdown area" go to Insert / Markdown or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+m.

Example:

<markdown> # This is a markdown heading. This is a paragraph... </markdown>

Here you can find out more about the Markdown syntax.

Using maker markers:

maker markers are a new feature in the 0.7 version. To use them go to the Insert > Maker Markers 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.

Setting Up Your Ftp Connection

FTP Host:

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

FTP User:

Your FTP Username.

Name for remote graphics folder:

A name for the folder your images will be stored. This value cannot be empty! Please note that this is only a NAME not a PATH.

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 one. Make shure that when you finally hit OK that all settings are correct. Otherwise existing files on your server will be corrupted.

Project url:

Something like: (http://www.myproject.com) and (!) the Path to your project. Example:http://www.myproject.com/makertest/

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. The maker will set this automatically.

remote file:

The name of the file on your server.

Actually, you can edit the "remote folder" and the remote file values, in case you want to move or reorganize files on your server. If you hit OK after making a change, TheMaker will apply these changes and reorganize your remote files. If there is a conflict in values, like to files having the same name, you will get a warning.

Publish

Files that have been edited or imported, are added to the FTP Queue. You can see how many files are in your queue in TheMaker's status bar on the bottom of the application window. If you want to publish the to the web, all you have to do is go to FTP > Publish or hit the publish button.

Make All

This will rebuild all your .content files at once.

Languages

The Maker supports multiple languages for projects. For example: (_en) for english.In the future it will be possible to add more languages. Some files are language specific. There are also .nav, .body and .foot files for each project language.

Feedback

You may report a bug or give feedback by going to Help > Feedback. You can also send your feedback to info@makercms.org

Bug Reports

If there is an error, you will get an error report. Please copy the error message to report a bug. You may report a bug by going to the Help > Bugreport.

Development

The maker is being developed by Gerald Spreer and Ian Barrow. We would appreciate your feedback, suggestions and feature requests.

Requirements

To run TheMaker from the sourcecode, via your Python interpreter, you will need: