Initial Setup

The first thing you should do with a new LiveWhale installation is probably the first thing you’ll want to do: kick the tires.

Most of LiveWhale’s functionality works right out of the box, and you may not need to do much tweaking at all to get things running like you want to.  If you want to get users started making pages right away— and if you don’t mind a few whales swimming around in your site header— then go for it!  But there are a few things you’ll want to do right away.

Get to know your configuration files.

LiveWhale’s config files (for front end content and back end administrative functions) allow you to customize some of the details of your CMS’s operations; in general, they’re just good to be familiar with.  (They include things like default thumbnail sizes, locations for details pages, the choice of styles that are shown to page editors, and lots more.)  Each config file includes the full range of available settings. 

/livewhale/core/config.php

This is LiveWhale’s general configuration file, where basic system settings are stored.

/livewhale/client/public.config.php

Public config files cover those functions that apply to the front end, public-facing site.

/livewhale/client/private.config.php

Private config files govern the appearance and behavior of LiveWhale’s back end content management functions. 

/livewhale/client/global.config.php

Global config files contain settings for parts of the CMS that affect both front and back end (like image thumbnail sizes, whitelisted hosts for video embedding, extra buttons in the WYSIWYG editor toolbar, etc.)

Set up Twitter access.

If you’re planning on using Twitter widgets on your site, you’ll want to follow our instructions for getting a set of Twitter API keys for LiveWhale. Sound hard? It isn’t and we’ve got a step-by-step guide to help you.

Set up reCaptcha.

No one likes comment and form spam, so LiveWhale includes reCaptcha to help you manage yours. All you need to do is provide some keys to the free service. Here’s how to get them.

Get Your WOEID.

Your what? A WOEID is a unique identifier for a location that LiveWhale uses to place the weather for your location onto the Calendar. To get one, use any online service that will convert an address into a WOEID and drop it into your public config file. (See above.)

Get to know this default theme.

If you’re going to be building your site based on this starter framework, you should get a sense of how this page is laid out.  The framework we’re using for these pages is an implementation of the semantic.gs grid layout and the LESS CSS framework.  You can use your own CSS and templates entirely— and if you’ve already got a buildout with CSS and HTML, that’s what you’ll want to do.  But if you’re building from scratch, consider using this vanilla template as a launching pad.

Get to know the Admin Tools.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a LiveWhale admin. (Hi!)  There’s a set of links in the upper left corner of the back end site just for you. You’ll use them a lot, so let’s get into more detail about them