The screenshot below shows what the default front page of a freshly installed GovCMS site (with some demo content added) looks like.
The horizontal sections are also often referred to as “regions”. From top to bottom, these are:
The Site logo and search bar.
The Main navigation menu.
A “hero” block with a full-width image and a welcome message.
Informational text with a link to a page with further details.
Some more informational text using different colours for background and text.
A listing of some pieces of content, rendered as “tiles”, with links to the actual content.
A section with a secondary navigation menu.
The top section that contains the site logo and the main navigation menu (sections 1 and 2 in the screenshot above) is usually referred to as the “header”, while the section at the very bottom of the page (7) is referred to as the “footer”.
Tip: Remember, because GovCMS allows web developers and designers to lay out and style the site according to the needs of each agency, the homepage and other pages may differ visually to the GovCMS site you will use during a training course.
However, the content administration experience will generally be consistent across GovCMS sites, because this task is performed after you login to the administrative interface.
Hover your mouse over the various sections of the page. Notice that for some of them, a small round button with a pencil icon appears over the top-right corner. These are called “Contextual Links” and they provide an easy way to quickly access some common tasks, related to the element the contextual menu belongs to. In the left-hand screenshot below you can see what the contextual icon looks like when hovering over one of the tiles in the Content example (demo). When you click on the pencil icon, the available actions/tasks are revealed, as shown in the screenshot below.
Click on either the “GovCMS Training Site” logo at the top left of the page, or on the “Home” menu link at the top of the page to go to the site Home page.
You’ll notice that the Admin menu is still visible, but now you also see the contents of the Home page as a site visitor would see it.
Note The Admin menu and other components (highlighted in the screenshot below) are still available, as you are still logged in to the site. These components are discussed later in this course.
To return to the previous page, add /user to the end of the URL in your browser.
Tip: If you’ve navigated away from the home page, the link on your browser may differ from the one provided. To get back to the homepage, you can click on the “GovCMS Training Site” logo at the top left of the page, or click on the “Home” link in the main navigation menu at the top of the page.
The regular pages that contain the actual content your site visitors see (blog/article text, images, etc.), are often referred to as the “frontend”, while the Admin interface may be referred to as the “backend”.
