The SobiPro Control Panel is the main SobiPro screen in your Joomla! administration (back-end), from where you can access all sections and the global (section-independent) configurations and functions. If gives you an overview of the SobiPro status, the version numbers of SobiPro and its applications and direct access to SobiPro functionality. Access the control panel from the Joomla! components menu by selecting SobiPro.

The SobiPro Control Panel is divided into six areas.

1. SobiPro Toolbar
2. SobiPro System Status
3. SobiPro Information Pane
4. SobiPro Quick Links
5. SobiPro Sections List
6. SobiPro Entries/Categories Statistics

1 SobiPro Toolbar

The SobiPro toolbar at the top of SobiPro's control panel consists of two buttons showing drop-down lists. The first button, the Section button, allows to un-publish, publish, add and delete SobiPro sections. Sections in SobiPro are independent directories. The second one, the Menu button, gives you access to all section-independent administration functions.

The Section toolbar button
If you click on the Section toolbar button, a drop down list is shown. Select Add to add a new section. To delete a section, choose the section from the sections list on the left side and click on Delete. To publish or un-publish a section, choose the section from the sections list on the left side and click on Publish or Unpublish.

If you want to delete a section, make sure that it is empty (no entries, no categories) and the cache for it is cleared first.

The Menu toolbar button
The Menu toolbar button gives you access to all section-independent administrative functions. These are the global System Settings, the Access Control List (ACL), the Application Manager and the Template Manager for all SobiPro templates on your system and to the SobiPro Help pages.

The Menu toolbar button is available for all SobiPro main pages to give access to the section-independent administrative functions at any time. If you are not on the Control Panel page, you can access also the Control Panel via the Menu toolbar button.

2 SobiPro System Status

The SobiPro System Status shows the state of important SobiPro settings of your system. Make sure to have them all in green when you go live with your site. Especially there should not be any messages shown in red.

The state of the following settings are monitored:

• SobiPro Data Accelerator
• XML Cache
• Javascript Cache
• CSS Cache
• Displaying errors
• Debug level
• XML output

Change the state of the data accelerator, the XML cache, the Javascript cache, and the CSS cache in System Settings ➜ Global Configuration ➜ Optimisation.

Change the state of displaying errors, of the debug level and the XML output in System Settings ➜ Global Configuration ➜ Debug & Error Logging.

The system status check also monitors wrong section-depending settings in your system. If there are such problems you will see an orange button, telling you the number of issues found. Click on that button to see the issues in detail.

Go to the given section and correct the mentioned issue(s).

3 SobiPro Information Pane

The SobiPro Information Pane features five different content areas you can access by clicking on each title. About SobiPro, Version and Updates, News, Credits and License Conditions.

• About SobiPro This pane gives a brief description of the SobiPro component, the developers and also links to the list of available subscriptions for the SobiPro club and to the support area.
• Version and Updates This pane automatically checks your SobiPro installation to see if it is up to date with the latest version of SobiPro and its applications. For that SobiPro contacts the Sigsiu.NET repository for SobiPro (outgoing access has to be allowed!). This check happens only, when you click the Version and Updates title bar to open the pane.
  
• News The News pane is a direct RSS Feed from the Sigsiu.NET site (News). You can find here the latest update and release information about SobiPro and its applications (https://www.sigsiu.net/news/view,rss). If outgoing access is not available or allowed, or if the news feeds aren't available for any reason, this pane will not be shown at all.
• Credits This pane contains the names of people, projects and websites that contributed code, images or documents to the SobiPro software.
• License Conditions In this pane you will find the license that SobiPro is released under. SobiPro is released under the GNU General Public License v3 (GNU GPL v3) with additional terms according section 7 of GNU/GPL V3. If you plan to distribute, sale or share a modified version of SobiPro with anyone besides yourself, you should read this license very carefully and understand it as there are restrictions to pay attention to.

4 SobiPro Quick Links

SobiPro's quick links are just what they say, quick links to the global System Settings, the Access Control List (ACL), the Application Manager and the Template Manager for all SobiPro templates on your system.

5 SobiPro Sections List

The sections list allows to access the section-dependent SobiPro functions by clicking on the section name. The section-dependent functions include the Fields editor, the Entries and Categories manager, the Section Configuration, the Section Applications and the Section Template for a section.

By ticking the check box left to the section name, followed by selecting the corresponding function from the Section toolbar menu, you can delete, publish or un-publish a section. You can employ the function on several sections at once by ticking the check box of multiple sections.

The shown Id is the id of your section and the State shows the current publishing state of the section. A green tick (checkmark) () is shown for published sections and a red X () for un-published sections. You can click on the sign to change the state from published to un-published, or vice versa.

The Order by drop-down button menu allows to sort the list of sections by Name ascending, Name descending, Unpublished state first or by Published state first.

6 Short Statistics

SobiPro can show a small 'statistic' in the Control Panel. These are the 5 most popular entries, the 5 latest entries and the 5 newest un-approved entries from all sections.

SobiPro can also show the 5 most popular categories and the 5 latest categories from all sections if enabled in the global configuration.