<p><strong>How to get started.</strong></p>
<p>First of all you should read about Alchemy and its architecture in the <a class="external" href="http://guides.alchemy-cms.com/edge/alchemy_approach.html" target="_blank" data-link-target="blank">guidelines</a>.</p>
<p>The most important things to know about Alchemy are elements and page layouts.</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Elements:</strong></span></p>
<p>With Alchemy you can split pages into content parts, elements. These elements can be defined out of several base content types: essences. The basic essences are:</p>
<ul>
<li>EssenceText - <em>A single line of text</em></li>
<li>EssenceRichtext - <em>A TinyMCE powered formatted text block</em></li>
<li>EssencePicture - <em>A reference to an image</em></li>
<li>EssenceHtml - <em>HTML embed code</em></li>
<li>EssenceSelect - <em>A selection of values</em></li>
<li>EssenceBoolean - <em>A checkbox</em></li>
</ul>
<p>Elements get defined in a YAML file <strong>config/alchemy/elements.yml</strong></p>
<p><a class="external" href="http://guides.alchemy-cms.com/edge/elements.html" target="_blank" data-link-target="blank">Read more about elements and how to define them in the guidelines.</a></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Page types:</strong></span></p>
<p>You can define several types of pages, called page layouts. You can assign elements to page layouts and control how elements and the page of a certain layout behave.</p>
<p>Page layouts get defined in a YAML file <strong>config/alchemy/page_layouts.yml</strong></p>
<p><a class="external" href="http://guides.alchemy-cms.com/edge/page_layouts.html" target="_blank" data-link-target="blank">Read more about defining page layouts in the guidelines.</a></p>