Before You Do Anything Else

It is important to understand the role of the various directories involved in a ccHost installation. Using the correct directory structure and setting up the corresponding paths in the Global Settings/Paths configuration screen means that you never have to worry about losing any work or configuration when you update to a newer version of ccHost.

The install program for 3.1 and above has set you up with a default structure that you are welcome use as is. Future upgrades of ccHost will never interfere with that structure.

Edit Your Home Page

If no other command is specified, the system defaults to executing the homepage command. Admins define the actions of the homepage command via the Manage Site/Setting.

Assuming you have followed the instructions in the section Before You Do Anything Else the default home page is in your viewfile directory called home.xml. Edit this file to create your custom home page. Before you get too frustrated you should probably read the section on XHTML do's and don'ts.

If you want a different home page for a specific virtual root:

1. Create a new file in your files directory called something like home2.xml.
2. Go to Manage Site.
3. Select your virtual root from the drop down selection box
4. Select Settings
5. In the Homepage field change viewfile/home.xml to viewfile/home2.xml.

Setting the 'Home' Tab

Most sites with want a 'Home' tab in their navigator tabs and they will want to have that tab highlighted when the root url of their site is requested. In order to set that up follow these steps:

1. Go to Manage Site/Navigator Tab Sets
2. Click on [ edit tabs ] for the first tab set.
3. Set Name for the first tab to 'home'
4. Set Text for the first tab to 'Home'
5. For Function select "Execute URL"
6. Set Data to viewfile/home.xml
7. Click on Submit
8. Go to Manage Site/Settings
9. For Homepage field enter view/media/home

The above steps makes some assumptions (e.g. your actual home file is called home.xml and your default tab set is called 'media', etc.). You should make the appropriate adjustments for your setup.

Edit Your Welcome Page

Assuming you have followed the instructions in the section Before You Do Anything Else the default welcome screen for newly registered users is in your viewfile directory called welcome.xml.

Edit this file to create your custom welcome page but before you get too frustrated you should probably read the section on XHTML do's and don'ts.

Create New Pages

Creating a new page in your ccHost system is simply a matter of creating a new XML file in your viewfile directory. If you haven't read the Before You Do Anything Else yet, now would be a good time and before you get too frustrated you should also read the section on XHTML do's and don'ts.

Viewing Your Pages

All XML files in your viewfile directory are viewable in a ccHost page by using the viewfile command and the filename as the parameter:

http://example.com?ccm=/media/viewfile/terms_of_use.xml (Pretty URLs off)
http://example.com/media/viewfile/privacy.xml (Pretty URLs on)

HINT: If you are using Apache's mod_rewrite module you can pretty the URLs up even more:

RewriteRule ^terms$    /media/viewfile/terms_of_use.xml [L]
RewriteRule ^privacy$  /media/viewfile/privacy.xml [L]

Which would yield:

http://example.com/terms
http://example.com/privacy