Before using webphlex, we'd strongly recommend having a good look through the documentation, especially the sections:

• what is webphlex?
• data structure
• text blocks
• templates and text replacement
• web generation

A good way of getting to know webphlex is by loading the contents of one of the example web sites into the database, and then comparing the web site with the web page group records which produced it.

First choose an example web site, either on the iphlex site or from the example sites installed with the system. The default location for these is: C:\webphlex\Web demo.

If you don't already have the necessary import/export file (.ipd) on disk, you can download it here. The default location for import/export files is: C:\webphlex\temp.

You can now import the contents of this file into the database (control panel > actions > import data).

Open the web page groups screen (control panel > web pages > web page groups) and call up the web page group you've just imported. Studying the database contents alongside the generated example site should, together with the documentation, give a good idea of how the system works.

see also:

list of actions: import from import/export file (.ipd) screen: web page groups

An even better way of getting to know webphlex is by loading the contents of one of the simpler example web page groups into the database, and then playing around with it.

First choose an example web site and import it into the database as described above.

It's easiest if you also have the example web sites on disk: that way any necessary (image) files will be present. You can download them here.

Open the web page groups screen (control panel > web pages > web page groups) and call up the web page group you've just imported.

Change the local page group location (on page 'general 1') to avoid overwriting the example files (these are usually set to read-only to avoid accidental overwriting).

Generate the web page group files in their new location by clicking the 'generate web page group' button (  ); you should end up with output files very similar to those of the example site. Note that they will not be identical to the examples: if a web page group contains references to data which is not (yet) present in your database, the system will not be able to determine the addresses for this data, and will give an error message. For instance, all the example sites have a link to the examples index page using the replacement code #Parent:PAGE_GROUP_URL#, but if the page group is not (yet) called from any other page group it does not have a 'parent' and the code will not be replaced. You can view the generated page group in a browser window by clicking the 'view web page group in browser' button (  ).

You can now experiment with changing the contents of the page group, its elements and related text blocks. Use the buttons 'preview generated code in browser' (  ) and 'preview generated code as text' (  ) to see the result. You can also use the 'view replacement codes' button (  ) to see all the available replacement codes for any given situation.

If you re-generate the altered page group using the 'generate web page group' button (  ), the system will show you where a new file would be different to the existing version, and ask if you want to overwrite it. If you aren't shown the text differences (but only asked about overwriting the file), click on 'user preferences' (  ) and check that the option 'show text differences?' is set on.

see also:

list of actions: import from import/export file (.ipd) screen: web page groups web generation: button: generating the whole page group web generation: button: viewing the page group in a browser window web generation: previewing generated code other screens: screen: preferences