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Documentation

Frequently Asked Questions

Persistency

How can I make the contents of a Pier site persistent?

The built-in support is via the so called Image Persistency. This creates backups of the entire Squeak image with all the content. To setup the Image Persistency, go to /system/management/persistency and choose it from the drop down.

Global appearance

How can I add new tabs? For now, I have "Home", "Blog", "About". What should I do to have a new entry here?

In the /system/components/header you will see that it embeds a /system/components/menu. Navigate there, and you will further see that if you edit it, it’s not a page but it is a component. Then invoke Edit and you can add a new item in the list. The nice property of the Menu component is that it adds an "active" CSS class to the most specific link that it finds in the text of the component. This is how we can render the active tab.

How do I get different layouts in some pages? How do I change a template?

In the Settings of the page look for the section Layout Settings. The field called Template points to another page that is the template of this page. If the field is empty, the template of the parent page is reused. Templates are typically stored in /system/templates. You can manually navigate there and edit templates like normal pages, or use the Edit Design command which allows you to edit the template and the stylesheet in the context of the page that is using it.

How to change the browser title bar?

Go to /system/components/contents, and edit the Head Title.

You have access to the following special constructs:

Construct Description
%ccurrent command
%rcurrent root structure
%tcurrent structure
%kcurrent kernel name

I added a new component in /system/components, but it does not get displayed when I am not logged in. How can I fix it?

By default, the user rights of a newly added structure are copied from the parent one. Thus, given that /system is a protected page, your newly added structure will also be protected. To make it be seen by others, you have to:

  • Invoke the command Change Others
  • Make sure that View is selected
  • CLick on Apply

How to have a ’back to top’ link at the bottom of my pages?

Put a link *Top>.* to the bottom of your page. You can also use the @ syntax to jump to a particular location in a page.

How do I hide some structures in the menu on top?

There are different ways to do that: - Go to Settings of the element and select Hide from menus - Move the element under the /system page - Use the Menu component as explained here

How do I link to a page through an uploaded image?

*+/link/to/image+>/link/to/page*

How to add a download link to a file?

Add the file to your Pier website and link it like this:

+pathtostructure|download+

Security

How can I manage user rights?

Security is an access control layer for Pier that is similar to the UNIX security system for file access. It knows about users, groups, and permissions. For every command (such as View, Edit, Move a page) and every page you can assign access rights to ’user’, ’group’, and ’others’. The superuser has access to all commands. There are commands that let you change the security settings for a document and all its children.

Security offers three commands Change Owner, Change Group and Change Other. Select the page you want to change from the tree (e.g. the root page) and select Change Owner. Check Recursive, i.e. change all sub-structures as well. Select admin from the Owner-Select-Box to make admin the owner of everything. As Operator you want to have Set. Finally you can specify the access to the different available commands for that user.

How do I change the admin password?

Go to /system/management/users and edit the user. Go to /system/management/groups to manage the groups.

What are the default user login and admin password?

Login is admin and password is pier.

Design

Pier Design Tutorial

How to work with a special CSS for a particular page?

  • add a File (let’s say you created /system/components/another.css)
  • go to the page you want to add the stylesheet for
  • go to the settings of this page
  • in the stylesheet field add /system/components/another.css
  • access Edit Design command and you will have an editor for the new CSS file

How to refer to a Pier file from the CSS

Suppose you have a file in /system/components/logo.gif. You can refer to it from CSS in the following way: url(/system/components/logo.gif?view=PRDownloadView).

How to change the size of an inlined image?

You can either set it via CSS, or directly using the following syntax: +logo.gif|width=300|height=200+

How to make texts appear below images?

Insert the following code between the image and the text:

<div style="clear: both"></div> 

Structure

How to setup a blog?

  1. Invoke the Add command and select Blog from the drop-down menu.
  2. To get the archive in the blog, add an Blog Archive component somewhere else, and embed it in the template of the Blog.

How to post to a blog?

  1. Go to the blog.
  2. Invoke the Add command and select Post.
  3. Enter the content.
  4. If you want to publish it for everyone to see, enter the publication date (you can also click on the current button).

How to delete a broken page/component?

  1. Go to the parent page.
  2. Select the Browse View.
  3. From the listing, choose the r corresponding to the Remove command.