Typo3 in 15 minutes

Ok, the title is a little exaggerated. You'll need to install Typo3 yourself and I assume that you can log into the backend. But if those are given, you're pretty close to creating your first Typo3 site.

In the backend, go into the Web->Page view. Click on the small world icon in the tree view (the second column). Click on New. The main column will give you a few choices, you want to create a Page (inside).

After that you will see the page information for your new page in the main column at the right. Uncheck the Hide page box. Fill in some Pagetitle, I like to call my first page siteroot for various reasons I won't be going into right now. That's it, click on the save & close icon (a floppy with an x). Great! You have created your first page.

The new page should appear in the tree view (click on the small plus next to the world icon). Then click on your new page, this time click on the name, not the icon. The main colum will show various columns for page content. Click on Create page content of the column Normal. Now you get a list of possible content elements, for now take a Regular text element.

Ok, now it's time to fill your text content element with some text. In 4.2 you need to click on the Text tab, and the visual editor opens. Just type some random text in there. Click on save & close. That's it! You have created your first content!

This was all easy I hope. Now comes the harder part of Typo3, working with templates. I'll take a simplistic approach. I use it in real life as well, but many people prefer using lots of markers or TemplaVoila. Ok, let's go to the Web->Template section of the main navigation to the left. When you click on the link you should see the option Create template file for a new site. Choose that. If you don't see it you may not be viewing the template for your first page but for the site.

Typo3 will ask you if you are sure you want to do this, and you'll tell it 'Hell yeah!'. You probably are in the Constant Editor now. Select Info/Modify from the dropdown menu. Then click on Click here to edit whole template record.

Here, you see some form fields. One of the is labeled Setup. Delete it's useless content and paste this code into it:

 
page = PAGE
page {
	10 = HMENU
	10 {
		# Throw in some primitive navigation
		# This is the first level
		1 = TMENU
  		1 {
        		expAll = 1
        		wrap = 
<ul>|</ul>
       			NO = 1
        		NO {
        			wrapItemAndSub = 
<li>|</li>
        		}
        	}
		# Copy the first level to display a maximum of three levels
        	2 < .1
        	3 < .1
	}	# Insert the content from the Normal column
	20 = CONTENT
	20 {
		table = tt_content
		select {
			where = colPos = 0
			orderBy = sorting
		}
	}
}

 

Then click on the Includes tab. There's an select field labeled Include static (from extensions): that contains an entry CSS Styled Content (css_styled_content). Click on that entry.That's it, save your template! You can go to your site main URL now (not the backend) and see your first content page. One final note before you proceed: When you create new pages, make them all subpages of your first page. You should change your first page to be a shortcut to a page one level deeper that will act as your homepage.Your next steps should be to read the docs at typo3.org, TSref and the wiki. There's a lot more to learn.