• over one million downloads of CMS Made Simple™
  • almost 70% of our users based in Europe
  • winner of the 2010 Packt Publishing Awards 'Overall Best Open Source CMS'
Come and join in with everyone in Northampton, Central UK.
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Workshops - 8th of March

Below you will find this year's pre-conference workshops where experts will give hands-on workshops for half a day of focused learning on various subjects.

This year we have two rooms for workshops.:

The first room will be running a day of workshops for Site Owners - showing the system off from an editors point of view. If you have customers that would benefit from a day's worth of training in CMSMS delivered in friendly straightforward chunks, then this is for them!

Our second room offers practical workshops for developers and designers to enhance their skills in delivering robust, high quality websites for their customers. Look to the bottom of the page for the first two workshops on this day.


Site Owners Room - Using CMSMS an introduction to the system

Finding your way around the while system

Area: Site Overview - Level: Site Owner - Basic - Time: 9:00 - 09:45
Trainer(s): John Scotcher

Summary: This workshop will show you around all the main content sections in admin then give practical tutorials on working with the file and image managers including basic image editing.

Site Owners Room - Working with pages

Tips and tricks with pages

Area: Page editing - Level: Site Owner - Basic - Time: 09:45 - 10.30
Trainer(s): John Scotcher

Summary: Many sites require custom modules for storing particular types of data, which can be time consuming to write from scratch for a single site or purpose. Learn how using MCFactory and ModuleXtender can speed up development significantly by removing the need to write modules for custom content types. In fact, these modules were used to create the very page you're reading.

Site Owners Room - working with Smarty tags

How to add functionality to your site.

Area: Working with Smarty - Level: Site Owner - Intermediate - Time: 10:45 - 11:45
Trainer(s): John Scotcher

Summary: This workshop will deal with the basics of smarty tags and tour some of the basic tags available in the system. It will also deal with Global Content blocks, how to create them and how to use Smarty to add them to your pages.

Site Owners Room - the News module

CMSMS's most flexible module!

Area: Working with articles - Level: Site Owner - Intermediate - Time: 11:45 - 12:45
Trainer(s): John Scotcher

Summary: A look at the news module and all of its many uses including adding custom fields, using different catagories and how news can help you to get your visitors to provide content for you.

Site Owners Room - your site and search engines

Optimising your site

Area: SEO - Level: Site Owner - Intermediate - Time: 13:45 - 14:30
Trainer(s): John Scotcher

Summary: Ways in which you can use CMSMS to optimise your site for search engines, specifically Google.

Site Owners Room - popular Modules

Formbuilding, working with shops and working with members

Area: Working with modules - Level: Site Owner - Intermediate - Time: 14:30 - 15:15
Trainer(s): John Scotcher

Summary: A tour of some of the popular modues your site may run including FormBuilder, front End Users and Online shopping - a quick and dirty guide to where you will find the various administration options available to you and how to use them.

Site Owners Room - open forum; ask us your questions.

Your questions answered

Area: Q and A - Level: Site Owners all - Time: 15:30 - 16:30
Trainer(s): Ted Kulp, Robert Campbell, Anne-Mieke Bovelett, John Scotcher

Summary: Do you have questions relating to your own website administration? This session is for you to get the answers to those problems that are bugging you.

Design / development room - How to create a professional CMSMS-website

- Time: 09:00 - 10:30
Trainer(s): Sander van den Brock


Design / Development Room - Module Development

A 101 on how to create modules

Area: Module development - Level: Intermediate - Time: 10:45 - 12:45
Trainer(s): Robert Campbell

Summary: This workshop is am must! Presented by Robert Campbell, veteran module developer and project manager of CMS Made Simple, this workshop will show you the steps to creating your own modules, including:
  • Simple module skeleton
  • Action files
  • Interacting with the database
  • Interacting with smarty
  • Interacting with the content page
  • Ajaxy CMSMS


Design / Development Room - Working with existing templates

Why start from scratch?

Area: CMSMS Site design - Level: Beginner - Time: 13.45 - 15:15
Trainer(s): John Flanagan

Summary: A workshop about utilising what’s 'already there' as a starting point for projects by taking a look at the templates and css, firstly to see what’s there in the framework and then to see how it can be adapted. Areas covered:
  • What’s in the header and why?
  • Accessibility elements
  • Template and CSS framework – making changes to suit what you want
  • Design – making the template your own
  • Looking at contemporary practices in styling and site structure
  • Admin – some additions you can make in the templates to make it easier for your clients to update their pages
  • Using the Forum to find what others have already done.


Lunch and Refreshments

All workshop attendees will get lunch included as part of their day:

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