CS Editors: The Basics

Logging in

Similar to ExpressionEngine and the old Security Sales, you can log into the site by navigating to a specific web address – this will always stay the same, so bookmark!

http://www.securitysales.com/wp-login.php

Once you’re on this page, you’ll be asked to provide a username (or email) and password. Once you enter these and press the “log in” button, you’ll be brought to the “back end” of the website.

Navigating the back-end

There are two navigation menus here: one at the top of the screen, and one along the left side. The side menu contains all of the links you will need, while the top menu contains only the most common choices one would need to use.

The Dashboard

The dashboard is a quick overview of recent website activity, recent comments, other alerts, and a “quick draft” option.

The Left Menu

Everything can be done on the site through this menu.

  • Dashboard
    This is a general overview page, which contains useful links and alerts, such as recent article postings and recent comments.
  • Help
    This contains all of the documentation for how to do things on the website. If you are ever lost, start here.
  • Posts
    Posts are news items or articles. Blog postings, press releases, product news, and any other ‘content’ goes here, with the exception of any items below.
  • Companies
    Company pages are created here, and they come in two flavors: basic and premium. If we write about particular companies often, a basic listing is a great way of rolling up all of the content that mentions this company into a single place. If companies upgrade to a premium listing, they get some added bells and/or whistles.
  • Downloads
    Any type of downloads or whitepapers go here, including off-site downloads such as Funnel offers. Options are available for off-site links, on-site lead collection, as well as for a freely available download.
  • Events
    Large events now have their own page, and pull in content related to that event. InfoComm, DSE, CI Summit, and ISE live here, and can include slideshows of photos and videos from the events.
  • Podcasts
    Any podcasts where we provide an audio file go here.
  • Webcasts
    Webcasts are fairly straightforward – anytime we want to promote a webcast that we are hosting, this is the place to go.
  • Pages
    These are the site pages from the old CI, and are where we create one-off pages that aren’t news, but need to live somewhere on the site. “About Us”, “Privacy Policy”, and “Contact Us” links are some examples of the content that lives here.
  • Comments
    Comments on articles are listed here, and allow editors to read, reply to, block, edit, or delete any comments that have been posted to articles.
  • Spotlights
    Spotlights and site takeovers are created here. They can be either tag or category based, or a (exclusive) combination of both. These generally appear on the home page, as well as on content selected as belonging to the Spotlight.
  • Promos, On Page
    This is where OPPs / floater ads are created. These will NOT automatically appear on the website; creating them will provide you with the HTML to insert into the ad server, and must be set up there.
  • Promos, Content
    These are for promotional items that appear within the body of an article. There are two ways to handle this, and they are both detailed in the “Promotions” page.
  • Promos, Article
    These are subscription offers that appear beneath articles, across the entire site.
  • Promos, Footer
    This is where site-wide footer promotions are created and managed.
  • Promos, Alerts
    Bar the the sits on top of navigation, used to alert audience of upcoming webcasts, breaking news or new download.
  • Newsletters
    The standard newsletters that CI sends are created here: editorials, breaking news, product showcases, and featured products.
  • Media
    This is where files and images can be uploaded, looked through, or edited. This is also accessible while editing posts, allowing one to upload and embed images within articles while writing.

Hovering over these items will often give you more options – for example, hovering over “Posts” allows you to view all posts, add a new post, or go through the categories and tags that posts can be assigned to. Hovering over “Media” will give you the option to view all uploaded files, or to upload a file.

Viewing Content

For every item on the left-hand sidebar, you can select “All Posts”, “All Events”, etc. Doing so brings you to a page where the latest content is listed out, with details about the content provided. On this page, you can find the title, author, categories, tags, slotting, as well as the publish / “live” date & time.

There is a search box in the top right of this screen, which allows you to search for a word or phrase contained in an article. Also located at the top of the screen are drop-down menus for “dates” and :”categories” – should you wish to filter the list of content you see by a particular category or date, simply choose the option you wish to see and click “Filter”. There is also a “Bulk Actions” option – we’ll come back to this feature later in the documentation.

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