The in-app guide

The theme decides how the site looks. Content models decide fields on sections and entries. See Admin for each sidebar item, Themes to switch skins, Templates for Blade files, and Tags for data tags.

Suggested first steps

1. In Settings, set the site name and a short intro.
2. In Themes, pick a skin and click “Use on this site”. Missing models are added; existing entries are kept.
3. In Sections, add channels (news, products, about). Each section needs a model so the list knows which fields to use.
4. In Entries, write articles. People with publish rights can publish; editors save drafts or pending items by default.
5. Open the front. If it still looks old after a theme change, clear Cache.

If you installed demo data, sections and entries are already there — just edit the copy. On an empty site, start with sections. Missing sidebar items mean this account has no permission.

What the sidebar is for

Area	What you do
Content	Sections, entries, tags, media, inbox, comments. More has flags, blocks, models, menus, forms, and trash.
Operations	Members, collectors, cache (page cache and disk HTML). More has friend links, Sitemap, redirects, and groups.
System	Sites, Settings, themes, languages, logs, admins, roles, and this help. Help stays here so accounts without operations rights can still open it.

Sections and entries

Common section types: a list of documents, a single page (about us), or an external link. An entry has one primary section (that sets the URL) and can also appear in extra sections.

The model sets the fields. Articles usually have title, cover, and body; products add price and similar. Models can be copied, exported as JSON, and imported without deleting existing documents.

Scheduled publish: before the time, the front returns 404. Drafts can get a preview link that does not count views and is not cached.

Menus, blocks, forms

If a section is marked “menu”, and the theme’s @cmsMenu has no menu yet, those sections become the header. For exact order, build a header menu in Menus.

Home banners and “latest news” blocks use Blocks. The identifier must match the template name, for example home_banner. Hand-filled items can pick an image from the media library and preview it; output it with cms_media($item->image).

Homepage friend links / partners are under Operations → More → Friend links, stored as the partners block (or friend_links). That is not the nav theme’s “link” content model, which is a URL directory.

Build contact forms in Forms and output them with @cmsForm. Submissions land in Inbox. Comments wait for approval by default; switches are in Settings. The search-engine URL list is under Operations → More → Sitemap.

Members

The front /member area handles register and login. If a model allows member posts and the group has that permission, members can submit drafts for review. Settings can turn comments and guest comments on.

Sites, backups, cache

Sites split by domain; sections and entries are isolated. Switch the site you are editing in the top bar. Backups and extra robots.txt rules are under Settings → More; backups also work via php artisan cms:backup. Cache and static HTML are in Cache. nginx and object storage are under Environment.

Common questions