Content Management

To access the main Mason-CM interface, point your web browser at $CM_HOME. On my system, I opened the URL http://localhost/mason/cm/.

Because this directory is password-protected, I had to enter a user name and password. Following a successful login, I was presented with the main Mason-CM index screen. To a large degree, the index page is a web-based file browser, allowing you to navigate through the directories and subdirectories in the various defined branches, open files for reading and writing, and search for a file by file name or content.

The index screen is easily identified by the picture of a juggler. While you can replace this with any image you prefer (setting the “juggler_src” key in cmConfig), the image seems rather appropriate for those of us who work on web sites! Clicking on this image from anywhere in Mason-CM brings you back to this main index page.

Along the right-hand side of the index page is the branch selector, listing the branches that were defined in cmConfig. Clicking on a link within the branch selector allows you to handle staging for that particular branch. The current branch appears in a slightly different background color from the other branches, so your current location should always be fairly obvious.

The current directory is identified in the middle of the screen, with the “current directory” headline (and a blue default background). Each component of the current directory path is a hyperlink to that path, making it possible to navigate using the mouse. To switch into a subdirectory, merely click on its name. Alternately, you can create a new subdirectory by using the text field in the middle of the screen.

Above the “current directory” line is a search system. I am obviously not the only person who has ever reverted to grep and find after failing to remember where a particular file is stored on a web site. Mason-CM puts both of these programs into an easy-to-understand package, allowing even non-UNIX users to search for files within the current branch. The search supports Perl regular expressions, meaning you can look for files by name or by content in a variety of ways. Be careful about what you search for, however; Mason-CM will happily search through hundreds of files for a complex regular expression, even if the execution will take a long time.

Beneath the “current directory” line is a list of files available within the current directory. Each file is identified by name, by its last modification date, by the person who performed the last modification and by the file's current status. The status is one of “staging” (meaning it exists on the staging server only), “prod” (the file is identical on the staging and production servers) and “modified” (the file exists on both servers, but has been changed on the saving server).

You can also create a new file, using a text field and the “create” button, just before the list of existing files. Do not confuse the subdirectory create button with the file create button; I modified the button definitions in the “dirTable” and “fileTable” components, so that they say “create subdirectory” and “create file”, respectively.

To view the current version of a file, click on its name in the file table. The HTML source will be displayed at the top of the browser window. At the bottom of the page, you can ask to see a rendering of the HTML, to wrap text after 80 columns (rather than displaying the text verbatim), or to display line numbers along with the HTML source.

You can also edit files from within Mason-CM, using a primitive but functional text editor. To edit a file, click on the “edit” link next to the file name. This will bring up a <textarea> widget containing the file's contents. You can modify the contents of the file by typing into the <textarea> field, and can even copy or rename the file using the text field at the top of the page.

This editor is nearly as primitive as things can get, with a barely functioning set of Emacs key bindings for cursor movement. However, the fact that it lets you make modifications easily and quickly is certainly an advantage. And it is integrated into the rest of Mason-CM, in a format that most designers and editors can understand comfortably.

From the editing screen, you can choose from a number of options:

Mason-CM uses a locking mechanism to ensure that only one user can edit a file at a given time. If you are editing a file, it is noted inside a red box at the top of the index page. That box lists the files on which you're currently working, offering links to the file editor and to the “unlock” page.

If you try to edit a file that someone else is editing, Mason-CM will refuse to display the editing screen. Once the file is unlocked another user will be able to modify it again.