Brick River | The Basics of Content Management

About Views System Administration
AddSearch Installation Instructions Content Management and Websites For Developers
Brand Assets and Templates Event Registration and Forms
Building Data Forms That Connect to Your Database System Administration
Building Your Recipient List in the Emailer Email
Categories System Administration
Communicating with Previous Registrants Event Registration and Forms
Configuring a Website Content Management and Websites
Configuring the Search Engine for your Website(s) Content Management and Websites System Administration
Copy a Website Content Management and Websites
Creating email templates Email
Customizing your emails Email
Customizing Your Website's Properties Content Management and Websites
Doing Recurring Events Content Management and Websites
Drafts and approving records Contact Management System Administration
Email Reports Email
Email Subscription Lists Email
Emailing People Database Forms Email
Finding and Merging Duplicates Contact Management
How Events and the Calendar Functions Work Content Management and Websites
How to Build a Website in Brick River For Developers
How to create a registration form Event Registration and Forms
How to make a secure link For Developers
How to Run Multiple Websites Content Management and Websites
How to send an email Email
Importing Data and Syncing Systems System Administration
Lightweight Email Mail Merging Email
Make an oData Connection to Brick River For Developers
Managing Email Bounces, Unsubscribes, and Undeliverable Emails Email
Managing Registrations and Forms Event Registration and Forms
Managing Web Pages in Your Site(s) Content Management and Websites
Mass Delete Contact Management
Menu Items System Administration
Posting and Managing Content Content Management and Websites
Posting Announcements to Internal Users System Administration
Printing Mailing Labels and Name Tags Contact Management
Publishing or Archiving Your Sent Emails Email
Registration Reports Event Registration and Forms
SASS Compiling For Developers
Search and Customize Contacts or Content Contact Management Content Management and Websites
Setting up Payment Accounts Event Registration and Forms
Setting up User and Group Permissions System Administration
The Basics of Contact Management Contact Management
The Basics of Content Management Content Management and Websites
The Files Manager System Administration
The Forms Share Lets You Browse and Use Other Customers' Forms Event Registration and Forms
The Mobile App Contact Management
The Sent Email Screen - Tracking Activity Email
Ticketing in Event Registrations Event Registration and Forms
Use Email Code Snippets to Save Time Email
Use Mass Edit/Delete to Update a Whole Bunch of Records Contact Management Content Management and Websites
Use the Activity Log to View Changes Contact Management Content Management and Websites
Using FormVites Event Registration and Forms
Using Layouts to Structure Websites and Pages Content Management and Websites
Using Reg Form Tags to Organize Your Forms Event Registration and Forms
Using the Activity Logs to View Activity on your Websites Content Management and Websites
Using the Publish Data Function to Share Data System Administration

Content Management and Websites Last updated on 9/9/2021

Content Management

The Brick River platform is highly adaptive and works well for many types of organizations from agencies, companies, and non-profits, to churches and fraternal groups. It easily handles multiple website hosting, and merges the functionality of a flexible and powerful content management system, with a contact manager. Not only that, Brick River includes an email blaster and registration forms module accessed with an intuitive and clean user interface. All under one roof.

You provide the ideas, Brick River provides the tools for creating, editing, approving, and publishing them to the wide world. Our enterprise CMS makes it easy for you to work in a document editor, a full page WYSIWYG page editor, or a combination of the two.

Static and Dynamic Page Content

Brick River provides easy tools for the creation and management of web page content - both static and dynamic content. Virtually all websites are a mixture of static pages, dynamic pages, and both.

Static content is relatively permanent and does not require routine maintenance. A simple homepage may require no more than a photo, a phone number, and headline to 'Call anytime for an appointment'. This content rarely needs to be edited - but when it does - it's nice when users can easily make changes without assistance from a designer or developer.
Dynamic, or data-driven content is relatively impermanent and changes by the month, day, and hour - sometimes by the minute for a busy news site. A blog post or news page should show an up to date index of current posts or most recent articles with older articles receding to secondary pages and eventually to an archive.

Brick River site developers control the appearance of static and dynamic content using layouts. Each page is linked to layout - and each layout contains code to present either static or dynamic content or both.

Only administrators can create and edit layouts - a process requiring at least a few lines of code - which is documented thoroughly in another tutorial.

Static Page Content in Brick River

Brick River provides a full Page WYSIWYG editor that allows users to easily maintain static content directly on the page. To use this feature, developers create layouts with one or more editable sections. Using the page window in the web console, each editable section can be populated with text, images, links etc. Any changes are immediately reflected on the web when the page is published.

Dynamic Content in Brick River

Virtually all dynamic content in Brick River is managed by using views to create, edit, and approve content and contacts records. To use this feature, developers create layouts with code which retrieves the desired content from a view and adds it to the page automatically.

For example, a site that regularly features new news articles may have a news index page designed to display thumbnails for the three most recent news articles. Content creators never need to touch the news index page. By using the news view to create and publish a news article - Brick River automatically updates the news index page to include the new article.

Mixed Content in Brick River

A developer may create layouts which include both editable sections and code to present dynamic content. For example, A news index page may use an editable section at the top of the page to allow users to easily change the page title. Below the editable section, the page may include code to display the three most recent News articles.

Example

The following is an example of a page using a layout with mixed content. The layout includes two razor helpers and a variable which drive dynamic content to the page:

@BRT.Sitemenu("in-nav"): It renders a list of links to pages related to the current page.
@BRT.BreadCrumb("breadcrumb"): It renders breadcrumb links to parent pages.
@Title: It renders the title of the page, and two razor functions which create editable areas on pages using the layout:
@RenderBody(): This renders the editable area in the center column.
@RenderSection("sidebar"): It renders the editable area in the right sidebar.

The Page Opened in Page Editor Window

Users who have permission to edit this page can use WYSIWYG tools in the page editor window to edit content in areas 4 and 5. Areas 1, 2, and 3 are rendered by the layout code and can not be edited here.