Documentation Wiki

Adding Content

Now your PostNuke site is up and running. You have checked the administration menu, know what a module is, and how to work with blocks. Then comes the most important question - how on earth are you going to add content to your site?

That's not something to answer in one paragraph since "content" can be many different things. Here's some examples:

• News
• Pages (Articles)
• A catalog
• A wiki
• A book
• An image gallery
• A FAQ
• Displaying existing static HTML files on the webserver
• Blogging

PostNuke can do some of this out of the box, if you install the full addon package, but definitively not all of it. What it can do is to publish news stories, add simple pages, manage a FAQ, and manage a menu. All of the rest can be done with third party modules you have to install by yourself.

The following is an ultra short introduction to the things you can do with a basic installation.

News Stories

Go to the administration and find the module "News" (index.php?module=News&type=admin). Here you can add news stories and configure how to use them. When you have added some stories you can display them on the front page as described here - there's no need to set function type or function. Just use the News module as the front page. You can also add various blocks to display the newest or most read stories. Unfortunately there's no built-in image handling.

Pages

Go to the administration and find the module "Pages" (index.php?module=Pages&type=admin&func=new). Here you add simple pages, categorize them, and configure how to use them. Pages will not be added automatically to any menus!

If you want more features than this then you must look for a third party module.

Menu

Menus in PostNuke are managed through the block administration. Here you must add a "Blocks Manager/Menu block" block. The menu lets you add items consisting of a title, a link, and a mouse-over description. You have to figure out the link URLs yourself - there's no help to get from the system. You can also only add one menu item at a time.

The extended menublock (ExtMenu?) offers some more userfriendly options. When this block is active it shows an option to add the recent page to the menu with one click (plus a confirmation and adding some more info like title etc.). It's admin panel is Ajax-driven and allows you to add any numbers of new links in one step, moving the menu items with drag and drop or (de-)activating a link temporarily without removing it from the settings.

FAQ

You can manage a rather simple FAQ consisting of, well, Questions and answers. As before, you find the module through the administration panel.

Reviews

Almost identical to Pages.

Third Party Modules

There are lots and lots of third party modules for all kinds of tasks. Listing them all won't help you, so here's a short list of modules for typical "content tasks" to get you started:

• Image handling: Mediashare, Copper Mine, Gallery, PhotoGallery? (there's a whole forum for this topic∞)
• Articles and pages: Content∞, PagEd?, Pagesetter, Scribite for wysiwyg editing, ContentExpress?
• Menu: Dynamenu, Activemenu
• File upload/download: UpDownload?, pnUpper?, Pagesetter+Folder, Mediashare
• Wiki: pnWikka?
• Static HTML: htmlPages?, PostWrap?
• Blogging: pnWebLog?, v4bjournal
• Book: CoType?, pnBook?
• Forum: pnForum?, pnPhpBB?
• Comments: EZComments
• Tools: MultiHook?, pn_bbcode, pn_bbsmile

You should be able to find the modules in the extensions database∞ and most of them has been debated in the forums.

Try also these threads in the forum

• Yet another Rec's for Building a PN eLearning site∞
• Suggestions for a family "community" site∞
• German list of suggested modules∞