Building Sites
Once you have already installed the homesite maker code, the next step is to configure how it looks like, and what sections do you want for your site. All these things are configured in the config_site.php file. In the next section you will be guided about the different options that you can modify to do all these things.
The configure site file
The configuration file is located in the includes folder and is called config_site.php.
This file is provided with a default configuration, but you can modify it to satisfy your needs. All the entries are widely commented in the file.
How to edit the config_site.php file ?
The [REQUIRED] variables should be modified with your own site values
You must to customize the variables identified with the [EDIT] tag
The [OPT] ones are optional, and you can leave they untouched
The [TRANS] tag is used when the only thing you need to do is translate the value to you own langauaje
Don't edit the variables with the [STOP] comment if you don't know exactly what you are doing
First of all, you need to know that all the content that you can put into your web site needs to be placed in one of the four tabs available. Every tab can have up to four sections.
Below, you can found a brief description about every entry of the configuration file.
TITLE
The text that will be shown on the title bar of the client browser.
DESCRIPTION
Use it to add a brief description of your website.
URL
Only included for future uses.
HEADER_WIDTH
Set the width of the header area. Use porcentual values (%) or in pixels
BODY_WIDTH
Set the width of the body area. You can use porcentual values (%) or in pixels.
RSS_ENCODING
Set the character enconding for the RSS feeds. If you have problems using UTF-8, use ISO-8859-1 instead.
SKIN
The value of this option establishes the look and feel of your site. It changes the fonts style and the boxes design as well. Currently, you can choose one of these three skins: Aqua, Rainbow and Simple.
LANGUAGE
This lets you to choose the language of your site.
DB_USER, DB_PASSWD, DB_NAME
Read the install documentation in order to know how to set these values.
DEFAULT_TAB
This option define the tab that will be shown in front when the visitors join in your website
DEFAULT_SECTION
Acts as DEFAULT_TAB but with the section that will be shown inside of the default tab.
TAB_1 - TAB_4
These options are used to set the name of the four main tabs. By default are preconfigured as Home, Albums, Diary, About. But this is only an example.
TAB_5
This is the title of the control panel section.
TAB_11 - TAB_44
This variable Sets the title of the first section of the first tab. If you set its value to NO, then this section will not be shown.
SECTION_TYPE_11 - SECTION_TYPE_44
This if for setting the type of the section 1 of the first tab. Currently only can be one of the
following values: info, news, diary or NO. If you say NO in the corresponding to the tab variable,
then you need to say NO here.
TAB_51 - TAB_55
These are the titles of the control panel section. Do not edit the default values.
SECTION_TYPE_51 - SECTION_TYPE_55
These are the available section types for the control panel section.
LOGO_BOX1 - LOGO_BOX5
These are for setting the text or images that will be shown on the lateral boxes. If you want to show images on these boxes, then you need to put it on the folder images/logos/. By default, the box number five shows the HomeSite Maker logo.
SIZE_BOX1 - SIZE_BOX5
These tags allow you to modify the height of the box[n]. The allowed range is from 1 to N (Default 90). If SIZE_BOX[n]=0 the box is not displayed.
SKIN_BOX1 - SKIN_BOX5
You can use different skins for every box. Furthermore you can say "NO" for drawing borderless boxes.
COLOR_BOX1 -COLOR_BOX5
Depending on the skin you choose, you can select between up to four (B,Y,M,G) different colors for every box. You can use also color codes like #nnnnn. It's useful to integrate special borderless boxes with the background color and SKIN_BOX[n]="NO")
LOGO_BOX1 -LOGO_BOX5
Use LOGO_BOX to add content (text or images) into the boxes (HTML tags are allowed)
LOGO_FOOTER_TEXT
The text that will appear in the footer page. Please if you modify this text, do not forget to say that this site is powered by HomeSite Maker and is licensed under the GPL.
Sections Types
info
This type of section lets you show text or text with attached image if you need it.
news
This is the typical news section that you can find in any weblog. You can attach images to your news and send comments.
diary
This section shows a calendar of the current month. You can add events to the calendar and view those which have been entered by other users.
album
This is a full featured photo album section, with a complet access control, allowing you to control who can see the content or add new photos to an existing photo album.
users
This section is part of the control panel section and allows you to manage your site users.
Once you have finished, save the config_file.php and check the resulting website with your browser.
The next step is adding content to the new website. You can do this via browser. Join in the website as an admin user (with default password "adminpassword"), and starting with the configuration of the admin user.
Have fun! | 
