Introduction to Smogon's Content Management System (SCMS)

[Desolate]

The original version that inspired this guide was made by eric the espeon, with help from jumpluff.

Introduction

The SCMS, or Smogon Content Management System, is the heart of all the content on Smogon, with the exception of the forums. Created by chaos in the late months of 2007, the SCMS has been used since, and there's little to no intention of switching. Despite the tool's age, it's still able to carry a bulk of the weight, mainly because of developments that were made routinely by users such as Articuno64 and DougJustDoug, who are still around today. To get a taste of how much the system has progress throughout the years, take a look at the first news post via the SCMS.

Getting Started

Before attempting to edit or simply use the SCMS, you should become familiar with how it's structured and how it operates.

Access Levels

The distribution of power throughout the SCMS is almost identical to that of the forums; any user visiting the site, even if they're not registered or logged in on the forums, is assigned a permission group. Note that there is no nomenclature for these groups written in stone, so they may be referred to as something different around the site.

Normal Users

Who is in this group?

• Banned users
• Unregistered users
• Logged out users
• Users who are simply registered, as opposed to users who are "community members" (those who hold at least one badge)

What can users in this group do?

Users in this group cannot view or edit the SCMS whatsoever.

Privileged Users

Who is in this group?

• Those who are "community members", or badgeholders, as they're commonly referred to. Note that users who simply have a trophy are not in this group, they are in the "Normal Users" group

What can users in this group do?

Users in this group can view the SCMS as well as make edits to it. However, before their edits are seen on-site, the revision must be reviewed by a user with a Site Staff badge. If a member of the site staff chooses to accept your changes, they will "cache" it, or make the change live.

Trusted Users

Who is in this group?

• Users who have the Site Staff badge

What can users in this group do?

Users in this group can virtually do anything with the SCMS; they can cache edits, add new sections to the site, edit existing site sections (as well as reorder them), delete pages, and upload (and trash) images.

Super Users

Who is in this group?

This group is unique in that there is no set process on how to become a super user; individuals are chosen by already existing super users on a case-by-case basis. Currently there are only four super users: chaos, DougJustDoug, mingot, and Cathy.

What can users in this group do?

Users in this group can virtually do anything with the site, bar the forums (but in every case thus far, if a user has this access on-site, they have the same on the forums as well); some examples of things that they can do are making changes to the site source code, modifying the Pokedex on the database level (they are able to add Pokemon, moves, etc.), and making general site-wide changes.

Note: Each permission group inherits the permissions of the one below it (in terms of power, not how it is laid out here).

Looking Around

Now that you've familiarized yourself a bit with the SCMS, it's time to finally access it. The Smogon Content Management System is located here. Now that you're there, look around! It's not possible to break anything or do something destructive, so be bold when you edit as it can all be reverted, and most of the time it is caught before it is put on the production site.

Walkthrough

The following images show all the possible situations you may encounter when using the SCMS.

SCMS Root

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1. A hyperlink to return to the root of the sSCMS (we are already here so the element is prefixed with an image of a green arrow and the text is not able to be clicked)
2. A hyperlink to go to the page of recent updates or changes
3. A hyperlink to go to the trash can - a section where items that are deleted sit for 30 days before being permanently forgotten
4. A hyperlink to go to your editor profile - a profile that shows your SCMS statistics
5. A hyperlink to add a section to the root of the SCMS
6. A hyperlink to the section of that name
7. The path where the section shown before it (in the "Name" row) is on-site
8. Hyperlinks to various section options
9. A field where the numerical value determines the ordering of the section on the site (you should never touch this!)

SCMS Root (bottom)

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1. The button to reorder the sections; as mentioned previously, you should never touch this!
2. A button to cache the sections you've selected (or "ticked"); usable by SS (Site Staff) only

Recent Updates

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1. A hyperlink to edit the page
2. A hyperlink to delete the page; usable by SS only
3. A hyperlink to the revision history of the page - shows previous edits and such

Recent Updates (bottom) (cached edits)

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This is identical to the image above, except these edits are cached and the previous ones weren't.

Trash

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1. A hyperlink to restore the page to where it was before the trashing; restoration of a page will reset the 30 day count
2. The on-site path where the page was
3. The user who deleted this page
4. The date and time the page was deleted at

Editor Profile

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1. The editor's username (it's the same as it is on the forums)
2. The legend defining what special symbols prefixing pages mean
3. A table of all the edits from that user

Section Root

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1. A hyperlink to add a page within the section
2. The name of the page; clicking it leads you to a page to see the content of it
3. A hyperlink to edit the page
4. A hyperlink to delete the page; usable by SS only
5. A hyperlink to the revision history
6. A hyperlink to the editor who last changed the page
7. The date and time of the last modification
8. The last editor's reason for changing the page; you may choose to leave this blank, however it isn't good practice
9. The images uploaded to this section specifically
10. The trash can of this section specifically

Add Page

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1. The name of the page in the SCMS
2. An array of the most common HTML tags
3. The field where all of the page's tags and content goes
4. An option to check if the text you entered in the field mentioned above is BBCode; the SCMS will automatically convert this
5. The button to commit the changes you've just made

Edit Page

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1. The name of the page in the SCMS
2. The revision number within the SCMS
3. The infamous array of HTML tags
4. The field where all of the page's tags and content goes
5. The field to enter the reason for the revision
6. Is the content you entered BBCode? Tick this to have the SCMS convert it
7. Click this to commit the changes you've made

Page History

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1. The name of the page in the SCMS
2. The button to display the comparison of the two revisions selected
3. A hyperlink to view the revision
4. A hyperlink to edit that revision
5. The editor of that revision
6. The date and time of that revision
7. The reason why that revision was made
8. The area where you can select the two revisions you want to compare

Page Revision (comparison of two revisions)

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1. The name of the page in the SCMS
2. The edit number in the SCMS of the first revision selected (A)
3. The edit number in the SCMS of the second revision selected (B)
4. The details of the first revision selected (A)
5. The details of the second revision selected (B)
6. An area where color is used to markup the changes between the two revisions
7. If you'd like to revert back to a revision, select the one you want to change back to
8. The reason why you've reverted back
9. Click me!

Editing Comfortably

Metadata

In order to establish metadata for a page, you have to use specialized tags exclusive to the SCMS. For a tag to work, it must be the only thing on a line; the content after the tag's line is what will belong to that tag (note that once another tag is declared the process will repeat). The three most common ones are:

[title]

Declares what the title of the webpage is.

Example

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[title]
Introduction to Smogon's Content Management System (SCMS)

[head]

Declares what will go in between the <head> and </head> tags. Unless you're working on a project such as The Smog or you know HTML and CSS enough this should never be used.

Example

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[head]
<meta name="description" content="An introductory guide to Smogon's Content Management System, or SCMS." />

[body]

Declares what will go in between the <body> and </body> tags. This is probably the tag you'll be using the most as it is needed to define actual content on a page.

Example

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[body]
<h1>Example</h1>
<p>I am an example paragraph.</p>

Note: In both the [head] and [body] tags, you must use valid HTML; take a look at the web's HTML standards as well as its validator.

Section Configuration

Each section (with the exception of the news section) must have a file called "_config". Configuration files only have two usable tags, both different from the ones mentioned above (only use one of these tags per each "_config"!):

[navigation]

Declares what text and what it hyperlinks to in the navigation field (the leftmost part of each page on-site separated from the content by a vertical rule or line).

Example

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[navigation]
Home | /
About | /about
Credits | /credits
Philosophy | /philosophy

The text before the vertical bar declares the text that is hyperlinked; the text after the vertical bar must be a correct path on Smogon; the text after the vertical bar is the hyperlink mentioned earlier.

Remember: Sections have a trailing forward slash ("/") (e.g. "/bw/"), pages within sections do not (e.g. "/bw/pokemon/koffing").

[base]

Declares what HTML file should be used as a template. Unless told otherwise, you should never use this tag and should always use the navigation one shown above.

Example

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[base]
/dex/bw_base.html

To learn more about how our base files work, visit the website of the web interface we use, Werkzeug.

After modifying the "_config" file, the whole section must be cached in order for the changes to appear.

Tips

• Paths on Smogon are not case-sensitive, but as a general style rule, paths should be in all lowercase
• All images displayed on pages must be hosted on Smogon unless given permission otherwise

Well, folks, that pretty much covers the basics - happy editing!

[Furai]

Oh yes, this is just great. But shouldn't the SCMS bookmark be mentioned as well? It's pretty damn easy to just open the page you want to SCMS, and click the bookmark --

javascript:window.location%20=%20%22http://%22%20+%20window.location.host%20+%20%22/scms/jump?url=%22%20+%20window.location.pathname

[Desolate]

I knew I had forgotten something! Thanks Furai.

I personally don't use the bookmark.

[Fatecrashers]

take note that for pokemon who have a dream world analysis in addition to their normal analysis page, clicking the SCMS bookmark on their normal analysis page will take you to the SCMS page for their dream world analysis instead of the SCMS page you actually want

just a pleasant surprise really

[DM]

what I get from this thread is that I am one step down from the 3 most powerful people on Smogon

thanks for the ego boost!


good thread though

[Lockeness]

SCMS has been rather confusing for me. Thank you for helping to clear it up. I'll be sure to use some of these tips if I catch any errors on site.

[darkie]

good thread!

stickied

[Swaggersaurus]

idk why we didn't have this already, tyvm

[sandshrewz]

Originally Posted by Fat Fatecrashers

take note that for pokemon who have a dream world analysis in addition to their normal analysis page, clicking the SCMS bookmark on their normal analysis page will take you to the SCMS page for their dream world analysis instead of the SCMS page you actually want

just a pleasant surprise really

Just posting to say there's a workaround for this. By appending a /ou or other tiers after the address like http://www.smogon.com/bw/pokemon/blissey/ou instead of http://www.smogon.com/bw/pokemon/blissey will lead you to the OU analysis instead of the Dream World one by using the bookmark. Is there a way to allow the bookmark to lead to the correct SCMS? Just wondering, doesn't matter if there isn't lol.

[sandshrewz]

Double posting to highlight something from the OP >.>

Originally Posted by Fat OP

After modifying the "_config" file, the whole section must be cached in order for the changes to appear.

the _config entry doesn't show its changes after being cached. All entries in that section have to be cached again for changes in _config to work. This is just something useful / interesting to note when making changes to _config because it doesn't show up until everything is cache .-. /me slap _config lol

This is unlikely to be applicable in the Dex or anything C&C related, but it's good to know I guess, especially for other sections >.>

/me runs

Edit: erm iirc the entries have to be cached manually one by one too >.>

[GatoDelFuego]

Originally Posted by Fat sandshrewz

Is there a way to allow the bookmark to lead to the correct SCMS? Just wondering, doesn't matter if there isn't lol.

Sorry to revive such an old topic, but is there really no way to get this bookmark to link to the analysis you're on? This was really confusing until I figured out what was happening. Perhaps changing the page that you get linked to when you click on an analyses outside of the scms to make it automatically the /ou tag?