Overview

In this section you will learn what Flash CMS is, what requirements you should follow to use the product and what license terms are applied to Flash CMS users. Here you will also find detailed information concerning product installation and Flash Control Panel basic setup both for standalone version and Flash CMS pack (CMS + template).

What is Flash CMS?

Flash CMS is a Flash content management system. Using Flash CMS you may edit your website content, add new pages, edit and delete the existing pages, manage your website's menus, galleries, contact forms, upload videos and music, etc... Due to the SEO support, ability to upload your own fonts and integrate external modules and widgets, Flash websites empowered by Flash CMS have a range of advantages over the ordinary Flash websites.

Flash CMS website is a complete Flash website created on the basis of Flash Content Management System components and equipped with a control panel that gives you the ability to manage your Flash website information.

Flash CMS control panel is an online application that should be installed on your web server together with a Flash website. The biggest advantage of this control panel is WYSIWYG editor that makes website editing even easier.

Flash CMS templates cannot be considered as design themes for Flash websites at the moment, as they cannot change a website design without changing its content.

Flash CMS is provided in two versions:
- with a Flash template;
- as a stand-alone version.

Flash CMS templates are first of all, for users, who don’t want to spend money on purchasing additional software, and second, for those, who don’t want to contact Design Studios for creating a Flash website.

The stand-alone version of Flash CMS goes without a template and is intended for Design Studios and also the developers who want to create a Flash site and provide their customers with an opportunity to edit it easily.

Flash control panel and Flash CMS components are created on the basis of PureMVC Multicore using ActionScript 3. All the data is stored in XML files, so Flash CMS doesn’t require a database.

The process of creating a Flash Based CMS website does not make it difficult for Flash developers that possess ActionScript skills and have learned Flash CMS general principles. Most likely it is a usual website creation excluding the part of work done by Flash CMS that makes it easier for Flash developers. A Flash animator that wants to create a website, but doesn’t know much about ActionScript, might consider this process a bit difficult, but it is absolutely possible to achieve.

Requirements

Flash CMS Control Panel

Flash CMS is a cross-system that is based and works properly in all major web browsers on all operating systems which are supporting Flash Player 9 or higher.

In order to launch a Flash website and a control panel you should have a hosting and domain name or a local web server with PHP 5.2+ and Zend Optimizer 3.3+ support, or PHP 5.3 and Zend Guard Loader support.

Requirements :

For the servers with PHP 5.2 installed:

- Flash Player installed, version 9.0.23 or higher
- Zend Optimizer 3.3

For the servers with PHP 5.3 installed:

- Flash Player installed, version 9.0.23 or higher
- Zend Guard Loader

Flash CMS control panel runs on a flash player and requires a flash player to be installed in your browser. There are no restrictions for an operating system or a browser to use. Flash Player currently runs on all popular operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, Linux) and the browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc). The only requirement is a flash player with the version higher than 9.0.23.

Another requirement is PHP 5.2 or PHP 5.3 which are used as a server-side logic. All website data is stored in XML files, so it doesn’t require a database. There are also some PHP extensions that should be installed. All of them are usually included by default, but sometimes (not often) a few of them could be turned off for some reason. They are spl, dom, reflection, mcrypt, curl.

For security purposes Zend Optimizer 3.3 or Zend Guard Loader is required to be installed on your server. Most of the hosting services on the web already have one of them installed. If not, this software is free and can be easily installed by contacting your hosting provider.

Note: You may not install any PHP extensions or Zend Optimizer/Zend Guard Loader by yourself. You can only enable or disable them in case they are installed from your webhosting's control panel, otherwise please contact your hosting provider.

Flash CMS Templates Development

Flash CS3, or Flash CS4, or higher versions are required to create custom website designs and animation with Flash CMS or to convert existing flash websites to Flash CMS templates. Movies that use Flash CMS components may only be published for Flash Player 9 or higher, ActionScript 3.0.

The process of creating Flash Based CMS templates is not difficult, but it still requires some Flash development skills. The complexity usually depends on the website design and animation.

Licensing and Flash CMS Accounts

Our product is licensed on a per-domain basis. It enables you to use Flash CMS on a single website only, belonging to either you or your client. You have to purchase the license again if you want to use our product for another project.

All your license agreements and products can be managed through your Flash CMS account that will be automatically created after the purchase. You may activate and deactivate products and change product activation data if needed.

To activate the product you should enter the domain name and IP address in your account settings. This information will be displayed by the first Control Panel launch. In case you need to change your server data or move your files to another server, you should re-activate your product account settings and put your new domain name and the IP address. Please refer to the control panel activation section to learn how to activate Flash CMS.

Due to security reasons the number of product activations is limited to 10. It was done to exclude the opportunity to use the product on different domains by means of changing your activation data. If you need more than 10 activations on the score of testing or working on a local server, activation counter can be reset to zero. In order to do this, please contact our Support team at support@cms-guide.com.

If you buy several products, they will be added to the existing account where you can control them in one place.

Flash CMS Templates

Flash СMS Pack (template + control panel) is an ideal solution for those who want to manage the Flash site content easily, without purchasing additional software. All you need is Flash CMS with a ready-made template and hosting that corresponds to our requirements.

Package:

- Flash CMS Template
- Flash Control Panel
- Sources included for developers (PSD, FLA, fonts)*

* The source files (.PSD and .FLA) are intended for Flash developers. These files are not required for launching and managing the Flash CMS site, and for working with them will require the developers to use additional software.

Purchasing Flash CMS Templates

When purchasing a Flash CMS template, you have the opportunity to check its functionality by using a Live Demo. Though the Flash Control Panel works in the Demonstration Mode, you can see what editing features it provides; for example, what design elements you can edit, what maximum number of menu buttons you can add, what modules and widgets are included in the given template; you may also check fonts and media gallery of this template etc...

Also, you may test any of our templates on a fully functional 30 day live demo.

After using the30 day trial version and purchasing the template, user can make a special request to technical support and get the backup files from their demo. So, the changes that were done through the trial period can be restored to the user's website.

After the Flash CMS template has been purchased, you will get an e-mail with a download link that will stay active for 72 hours. After that you will get one more e-mail with your Flash CMS account details, which are required for product activation.

Launching a website

Please unzip the downloaded .zip file to your hard drive and find the folder named "site_flash". The content of this folder is what you should upload to your FTP server.

When using FTP software, please make sure that you have set a binary mode for the file transfer of your FTP client. Don't change the file names (i.e. don't convert the file names to lowercase).

You can upload the Flash CMS template files to a remote server in the usual way. There is no need to perform any additional adjustments after you have uploaded your template.

However, please make sure that your server configuration fully meets the software requirements.

You should have the following php extensions on your server to run Flash CMS:

• GD library for php

• mcrypt extension for php

• curl extension for php

• Zend Optimizer extension (for php 5.2).

Please contact your hosting provider regarding this.

After uploading your files you can open your template on the server.

Then go to your website and see the results. In order to access the admin panel please, add "/admin" to your site’s URL , for example: http://mysitename.com/admin. To get more detailed instructions on Flash CMS control panel start-up please read the section: Control Panel Startup and Setup.