Website Builder

Installing a new website

Building a website from scratch on ShoutCMS involves picking a Website Preset, a Theme, and a Variant. This process will help you quickly get set up on ShoutCMS, while still giving you the freedom to customize your website however you'd like.

Website Preset

The Website Preset are pre-built page designs for different industries, helping you quickly set up a new site. You can customize and adjust all of these pre-built pages, and you can also choose to install no pre-built content - if you prefer to start fresh.

1. Speed up your new site development
2. Easy to adjust & customize

Theme

You can think of the Theme as the 'design' of your website, which are the styles added to your website by default. Some of these styles include elements like buttons, spacing, typography, and responsive-layouts. Just like the Website Preset, you can adjust these using the Theme Designer or by adding custom CSS & JS.

1. Quickly apply professional styling
2. Modify using the Theme Designer

Variant

The Variant you choose to install is a sub-theme within the Theme you picked. This added flexibility helps you pick the specific styles that most closely connect to your branding, and you can switch variants whenever you need to through the Theme Designer.

1. Save even more time with styling
2. Can swap between variants at any time

Creating pages

Your website will be composed of pages, which should be organized so it's easy for site visitors to navigate through your website. Creating pages involves using the Create button in the Website area of ShoutCMS.

ShoutCMS provides a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) page-building experience, so you can see how your pages will look before you publish them. Additionally, you can build your pages using a Block system, adding different Blocks for different layouts (e.x. adding forms, galleries, basic content layouts, etc.)

Adding page information

When you use the Create button, you'll be provided with an empty page you can design, adjust, and format however you'd like. However, you'll want to make sure you've added a few key pieces of information before publishing your new page.

Make sure you add the following before publishing your page:

1. Title - The name of the page
2. Short Summary - A description for the page
3. Placement - Where the page appears in your navigation
4. Featured Image - The thumbnail image for the page

Adjusting page options

You'll want to make sure your page is set up according to how you've planned it. Take a moment to make sure you've checked the following areas of your page:

1. Layout - How the page content is organized
2. SEO information - What appears in Search Results
3. Visibility - If this page appears in your navigation or not
4. Access - Which users can view this page

Adding content

The easiest way to add content to your pages involves using Snippets to quickly assemble your page designs. Simply drag them onto your editing space, replace the content, and save the page.

1. Use pre-made design templates
2. Create your own Snippets
3. Organize, update, and add notes to your templates
   

Adding articles

Articles are sub-pages, and are organized under one or more pages. Unlike pages, they do not appear in your navigation. You'll want to use an article over a page if you need to create a sub-item for a page.

Here are some examples of using articles in ShoutCMS:

1. Writing blog articles
2. Adding an upcoming event article
3. Creating a knowledge-base article
4. Publishing guides or tutorials

Creating articles

Just like pages, you'll want to use the Create button from the Website area to add an article to your website. Follow the same instructions as adding a page, and append your article to however many pages you need to.

If you do append your article to multiple pages, it will be accessible from those pages if your page settings have been set to show appended articles.

Benefits of adding articles

Writing, publishing, and updating articles is one of the best ways to market your website. By adding useful & valuable information for your site visitors, you give them a reason to keep coming back - and increase the chance of your site appearing in Search Results.

1. Helps improve your Search Engine rankings
2. Creates better user experiences
3. Promotes your professionalism and branding

Managing your website

To improve your website performance, for Search Engines and your site visitors, you'll want to be actively managing your ShoutCMS website. This can be as simple as modifying existing page content, or creating new pages & articles.

Here are some things you can do to help with the performance of your website:

1. Writing & publishing articles
2. Updating images and text
3. Removing old and outdated content and pages
4. Checking for mistakes and formatting quirks

The value you get from your website is affected by the effort you put into it. Make sure you're spending some time each week checking your website, as this will help you optimize your site experience for visitors.

Key benefits of updating your site regularly

Managing your site actively will directly help you create better digital experiences with your website. These will improve your chance at converting more customers, and make it easier for you to use your website as a tool.

1. Removing old content speeds up your site
2. Frequent changes help with Search Engine rankings
3. New content attracts customers to come back