After having installed Orchard as shown in http://www.12qw.ch/2014/03/getting-started-with-orchard-cms-installing-orchard it is very important to know what the first modules are that need to be installed. In this post I will give you an overview about the most important modules/features and why you need them.

The following features help you with questions such as:

• How can I get Edit buttons on my Orchard pages?
• How can I influence my Orchard Layout?
• How can I get table editing functionality in my Orchard HTML Editor.

Widget Control Wrapper

The widget control wrapper is installed by default. Once activated, it will render “Edit” Buttons for all the content sections on the front page. Therefore this:

becomes this:

Follow these steps to activate the Widget Control Wrapper:

• Log on to your web site
• Click the dashboard link at the bottom
• Click Modules in the navigation
• Under Features search for Widget
• Click enable on the Widget Control Wrapper Box

Shape Tracing

The shape tracing feature creates a menu on the web site that allows you to look at the layout structure of the page. Once activated, it displays a small icon at the bottom of the page:

The icon opens a menu that lets you analyze all the content element and look at their configuration in terms of Shape, Model, Placement, Template and HTML.

TinyMCEDeluxe

TinyMCEDeluxe extends the built-in WYSIWYG HTML Editor with more functionality, such as table editing features. So this:

Becomes this:

TinyMCEDeuluxe is a module that needs to be installed from the gallery. In order to do this, navigate to Modules –> Gallery. Search for TinyMCEDeluxe and install the module.

IMPORTANT: Before you activate TinyMCEDeluxe, you MUST deactivate the built-in editor “TinyMCE”.