MojoMotor User Guide Version 1.1.2

MojoMotor Overview

Typical MojoMotor uses

MojoMotor excels in small-medium sized sites, where a highly technically skilled web designer/developer has built it, and subsequently wants to empower their clients to manage their own content. Classic "brochure" (static) sites fit this bill, as well as small, simple dynamic sites.

MojoMotor does not strive to be a full-powered, high-end Content Management System such as ExpressionEngine. It does not have categories, dynamic entries, conditionals. It does not have search, date-based input or logic. MojoMotor is simple, clean, and straightforward. It is not ExpressionEngine lite, it is ExpressionEngine junior.

Layouts, Regions, and Pages (oh my!)

Most websites are structured such that nearly all the pages are visually the same, with different content (text and images, or "copy") on each page. Without a tool like MojoMotor, as a developer, to build a simple 5-page site like this, a typical approach would be to build a single "master" page with "lorem ipsum" content, then copy and paste or re-save that page 5 times, changing the copy in each page as you go. In MojoMotor, this "master" page, or the over-arching formatting of each page (the HTML/CSS if you will, or "non-copy") is called a "Layout". The Layout itself if not displayed, but rather is used as the basis upon which your actual "Pages" will be based. In PowerPoint, it would be a "Slide Master".

The actual pages to be displayed, are all based upon Layouts. Areas of the Layout that will be different from each other, or the "copy" areas of the page, are called "Regions". While your pages will be largely identical to each other, they will have different text and images in these Regions.

Pages represent the actual webpages on your site, that are viewed by your site visitors. For example, the classic "home" or "about" pages. These pages tend to be the same as one another, only with different text. In other words, they are different "Pages" all based on the same "Layout", with unique text in the Layout's "Regions".

Example MojoMotor workflow

You are building a simple 5 page website for your client. They value your design expertise, but want to be able to update their site's content. This sounds like an ideal job for MojoMotor!

  1. Fire up your graphics editor, build a killer look for the site and get client approval.
  2. Slice and dice that page into stunning semantic standards-compliant HTML.
  3. That Lorem Ipsum text? Wrap it in a <div> and add a CSS class of mojo_page_region to it. That alone will identify it as an area of the page that your client will be able to edit using MojoMotor's simple WYSIWYG Editor.
  4. Install MojoMotor on your client's site, set up yourself as an "admin", and them as an "editor" (see more about admins and editors below. Note that at this point we could have "imported" our design, but for the sake of illustration, we'll continue manually.)
  5. Click on the "Layout" tab, and create a single Layout, using the code you created in step 2.
  6. Click on the "Pages" tab, and create your 5 pages based off the layout you created.
  7. Have your client visit the site and add their own content through easy and familiar tools, or add it for them.
  8. Invoice them, twitter about how easy MojoMotor made your job! :)

Admins and Editors

There are 2 types of members available to you, Admins and Editors. Admin members have full access to all of your MojoMotor site, and are not restricted in any way. Editors are members who need to be able to access and change editable and global regions, and add Pages, however they have no access to the other functions of your site, such as Layouts, or Member management. Editors are content custodians.

Important concept: Admin members have full access to all features of MojoMotor. Editors can access the MojoMotor Editor on each page, and edit pages, but do not have access to the other features of MojoMotor.