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getting_started.shtml
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getting_started.shtml
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<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
<html>
<head>
<title>Slash Site: Slashdot Like Automated Storytelling Homepage</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Mozilla/4.72 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.5-15 i686) [Netscape]">
<!--#include virtual="/slashhead.inc"-->
<h1>The slashcode admin interface getting started guide.</h1>
<ul>
<a href="#start"><li>So I have slashcode installed, what do I do now?</a>
<a href="#logging"><li>Logging into the admin interface</a>
<a href="#stories"><li>The Story list</a>
<a href="#newstory"><li>Submitting a new story</a>
<a href="#submissions"><li>Submitting user submissions</a>
<a href="#topics"><li>Topics</a>
<a href="#blocks"><li>Blocks</a>
<a href="#colors"><li>Site Colors</a>
<a href="#sections"><li>Sections</a>
<a href="#filters"><li>Comment filters</a>
<a href="#authors"><li>Authors</a>
<a href="#variables"><li>Variables</a>
</ul>
<a name="start"><p><b>So I have slashcode installed, what do I do now?</b></a>
<p>The site is running, you can get a front page to display, and slashd
is generating static .shtml files. What do I do now? How do I administer
the site? How do I change the way it looks? How do I post stories or user
submissions? This guide is to answer these and other questions, questions
that I've seen asked on the mailing list time and time again. There's been
a great need to explain the admin interface for quite some time now. This
should hopefully satisfy this need.
<br>
<a name="logging"><p><b>Logging into the admin interface</b></a>
<p>The first thing you need to do (and you should do this to get the most
out of this document) is access the admin interface by going
to the URL <a href="admin.pl">http://www.yoursite.com/admin.pl</a>. (<b>note:</b>
make sure that the author you log in as has a seclev of at least 10000. The
default author "God" has this security level.)
At this point you will be presented with a login page. Enter the the user
God with the password that you changed to for this user as per the INSTALL
documentation. The next page that loads is the story listing page. You will
also now see a navigation bar, or navigation list on the top of the page.
This is the admin menu. In this list there are the URLs to the various
functions of the admin interface. This admin navigation bar will only show links to
the admin tasks that the user you're logged in has access to (the "seclev"
value for this author).
<a name="stories"><p><b>The story list</b></a>
<p>This is the page you should be seeing, and if you aren't, click on the
link "<a href="admin.pl">Stories"</a> on the admin menu. On this page you'll see the stories that
are running on the site, grouped by the day that they are running on.
<p>The first column is a number. This is a link to edit the story. Go ahead
and click on any one of the numbers for any story that's running. This
will take you to a story editing page. The top of the page is the title
and body of the story, as it would be displayed. Going down, next you'll
see a block that has three buttons, three pulldowns, and two text fields.
The buttons do what they are labeled as, the first pulldown is the topic
the story is categorised into, the next pulldown is what section the story
is running in, the third pulldown is the author the story is running as.
The next text field is the stories title, and the text field below that
is the department that it runs as. Each word that you type in this text
field is displayed with dashes between each word. If you enter "this is
a test", it will be displayed as "from the this-is-a-test dept.". Next,
you'll see two more pulldown and a text field containing a date. The first
pulldown gives you three display options. You can select to not display
the story at all, restrict it to one section, or run it for every section
(default). The next pulldown selects whether a story can have comments
or not. You can use this to restrict the story to being read-only. The
timestamp text field contains the time and date that the story will run
on. Below this you'll see a text area for the story copy. This is the full
text of the story. You can put html tags in your text if you wish. Below
this box, are the same three buttons that you see above. These have the
same form action as the ones above, and are only there for convenience.
Below this is the extended copy text area. This is if you're doing an article
such as a book review, or a commentary. Below that is an "import image".
This is something that is being worked on. In other words, it doesn't really
work yet! You can see how this page works by changing any on of these values
for the story. If you select "preview" it will only display what the change
would look like, if you hit "update", it will update the story in the database
(and on the site), and display what the change looks like.
<p>Hit the "<a href="admin.pl">Stories</a>" link on the admin menu to get back to the story list.
<p>The second column just links you to the story as the story will be seen
(to article.pl).
<p>The third column is the author or the story, the fourth column is the
topic, the fifth column the section. The sixth column has two numbers -
the first is the total hits for the story, the second number is how many
replies there are. The final column is the timestamp of the story.
<a name="newstory"><p><b>Submitting a new story</b></a>
<p>To post a new story, you need to click on the "<a href="admin.pl?op=edit">New</a>" admin menu link.
This takes you to a story edit page. This page is described above, so if
you need any explanations, refer to "The story list" description. Fill
out this form with all the values for the story you want to run. To view
it before saving, click on the "preview" button. Once you feel that the
story is ready to be published, you can click on "save". This will save
the story to the database. You may post-date the story to run at another
time in the time stamp field, if you want. This is often handy when you
want some time to decide if you really want to run a particular story.
<a name="submissions"><p><b>Submitting user submissions</b></a>
<p>To submit user submissions as stories, click on the
"<a href="submit.pl?op=list">XX Submissions</a>"
link (XX being a number). This will take you to a page listing user submissions.
Above the submissions list are links that will reload this page according
to sections. For instance, if you click on the link for "articles" this
page will only display submissions that are in the "articles" section.
<p>Next is the submissions list. The first column is a notes block. This
is for the author to write a note pertaining to a particular submission,
so the author, or other authors, can have something to refer to in the
case where they may not want to publish a particular until a later time.
The second column is .... The third column is which topic the submission
is categorised under. The fourth column contains a box that if checked
will delete the submission. The fifth column is the timestamp of the submission.
The sixth column is the title of the submission, which is a url to edit
the submission. If this is clicked, it takes the author to a submission
editing page that works just like the story editing page, and in fact if
the author previews the submission, the submission then is pulled up in
the story editing page where the author can edit the submission further,
and decide if the story should be published or not.
<p>The seventh column is the name of the person who made the submission.
<a name="topics"><p><b>Topics</b></a>
<p>To edit, add, or delete a topic, click on
"<a href="topics.pl?op=listtopics">Topics</a>". This will take you
to a page showing all of the site's topics icons, which a topic name listed
below each icon, which is a URL to edit that topic. If this URL is
clicked, you're taken to a page that allows you to edit the topic, select
a new topic to edit, create a new topic, or delete the topic.
<p>First is a pulldown with all topics. You can change the topic you want
to edit by selecting whatever topic you want from the pulldown and clicking
"Select topic". If you want to create a new topic, you click on "Create
new topic".
<br>Below that, the icon for the topic is displayed (as it would be seen).
Next is the "Tid" text field. This is the topic ID. Next are the width
and height that the image is displayed as, the text that's displayed in
the "alt" tag. Next is a pulldown of all the images that are available
in the images/topics directory. If you want to have a new image to select
from, you''ll need to upload and/or copy it to that directory. Finally,
there's the "Save Topic" and "Delete Topic" button. They do what
they say they do.
<a name="blocks"><p><b>Blocks</b></a>
<p>Most important to how the site looks are the blocks, which are edited,
added, and deleted via the block editing form. This form essentially
manipulates the blocks and sectionblocks table. To get to the block editing
page, click on "<a href="admin.pl?op=blocked">Blocks</a>" from the admin menu.
<p>On this page, you start out with two pulldowns, with two buttons, one
for editing the block, and one for deleting the block, beside each pulldown.
The first pulldown selects all non-portald blocks, meaning, blocks that
aren't populated by portald. They are static blocks, their content (what's
contained in the column "block" in the blocks table) doesn't change
unless you change it, whereas the portald blocks are updated by portald.
Below these two pulldowns is a "Create a new block" button, if you
want to create a new block. Upon selecting a block and clicking "Edit Block"
(or creating a new block) the block is pulled up in a the block editing
form. This form has these elements:
</p>
<p>
<table border="0">
<tr>
<td>Block ID</td>
<td>the block ID</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Title</td>
<td>a title for the block</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Seclev</td>
<td>the integer value that an author must be in order to edit this block</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Type</td>
<td>the type of block that it is. This is a new concept for blocks
and is still being developed, but the current type of blocks are color,
static, and portald. If you end up setting a blocks type as "portald",
it will then be seen in the portald pulldown, otherwise, it will appear
in the static blocks pulldown.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Section</td>
<td>if a block is set with a specific section, the block will
only appear in that section if its "portal" value is one (meaning it's
a user selectable slashbox).
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Ordernum</td>
<td>this is the order number of the blocks that appear on the
right side of the page. These are the default blocks for all users. If
the ordernumber is -1, it's a user selectable slashbox, if the ordernum
is 0, it doesn't appear at all. If the number is 1 or greater, this is
the order that it appears on the right side of the page for Anonymous
Cowards and users that have not specified their own preferences for
slashboxes.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Portal</td>
<td>if this is checked, then this block shows up on the slashboxes
selection in users.pl</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Retrieve</td>
<td>if this is a portald type block, and this is checked, portald
will retrieve the content for this block from the URL listed in the
next box, RDF/URL.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>RDF/URL</td>
<td>the URL of where portald has to get content from for
the particular bid.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Description</td>
<td>a text description of the block.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Block</td>
<td>the actual block itself. You can only change non-portald blocks
(well you can change portald blocks, but portald will overwrite your changes)
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Revert to default</td>
<td>if you make a mistake while editing the block,
or want to revert to what it was originally.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Save as default</td>
<td>if you are confident that you want this to be the
saved default, in case you later edit the block and want something to revert
back to.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Save Block</td>
<td>saves the block</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Create a new block</td>
<td>open a new form to create a new block.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Preview</td>
<td>this previews slashboxes. Don't try it with blocks that are code
blocks, or partial blocks, it won't work correctly</td>
</tr>
</table>
</p>
<a name="colors"><p><b>Site Colors</b></a>
<p>This is where you can change the colors of the site. Click on the
"<a href="admin.pl?op=colored">Site Colors</a>"
link from the admin menu. This will take you to a form that has a pulldown to select
which colorblock you want to edit (you can have a colorblock for each section, which
you would create in the block editor, and it must be named "section"_colors).
Click on the "Edit Colors" button to edit the color block you select (the default is
the main color block "colors"). You will then see a list of eight colors, with four columns:</p>
<p>
<table border="0">
<tr>
<td>The color name</td>
<td>The name of the color, and the variable it gets assigned to</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>color value</td>
<td>The actual value of the color, hex or canonical. Make sure this is a valid color,
or it might not display properly.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>The color name</td>
<td>displayed in the font color selected</td>
<tr>
<td>The color</td>
<td>A table cell with the selected color</td>
</tr>
</table>
</p>
<p>
Next, are the buttons. If you click on "Preview" you'll see the color you are selecting,
as well as providing a link at the top of the page that's a URL to index.pl which will
display using the color you want to preview. Clicking on "Save Colors" will save the colors
you've selected, "Revert to saved" will reload the form with the last saved values of colors,
"Revert to default" will reload the page with the default colors, and "Save as default" saves
the colors as the default. Again, as with the blocks, you want to make sure this is what you
want saved as the default for your site.
</p>
<a name="sections"><p><b>Sections</b></p></a>
<p>Click on "<a href="sections.pl?op=list">Sections</a>" from the admin menu. This will take
you to a page with a URL list of the site's sections. If you click on a particular section,
this will then take you to a form for editing the section. This form contains:</p>
<table border="0">
<tr>
<td>Section name</td><td>contains the section id</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Article Count</td><td>the value for how many articles to display on section index</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Title</td><td>the canonical name for the section</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Polls for this section</td><td>selects which poll to display for the section</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Isolate mode</td><td>determines whether the section is part of the site or standalone</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Issue mode</td><td>whether the section is issue oriented, article based, both, or neither </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Edit section</td><td>a URL to the block editor for blocks that are specific to the section</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>save section</td><td>save changes that you've made to the section</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>add section</td><td>opens up a new form to create a new section</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>delete section</td><td>delete the section</td>
</tr>
</table>
<a name="filters"><p><b>Comment filters</b></p></a>
<p>Comment filters are regular expressions that are ran against content, the comment subject or comment body
in this case. If a particular filter is encountered, a message is displayed informing the user, both on submit
and preview of the comment. This gives you the ability to prevent certain things from being posted on your site
which is totally dependent on what you want to filter, or not filter.
Click on
"<a href="admin.pl?op=listfilters">Comment Filters</a>" from the admin menu. This will take you to listing of all the
comment filters. This list shows various columns for each filter:</p>
<table border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top">Filter id</td>
<td valign="top">the ID for the filter. This is a URL that brings up the filter in a filter editing
page. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Regex</td><td valign="top">this is the core regex of the filter</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Modifier</td>
<td valign="top">the modifier that would go on the end of the regex, ie. if the modifier is "gi" the
regex would be evaluated as /xxx/gi</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Field</td>
<td valign="top">The form field that the filter is run against. Currently, only postersubj (the comment subject)
and postercomment (the comment body) are supported.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Ratio</td>
<td valign="top">The percentage that the match will check for. For example, if "Regex" is "(flame)", "Ratio" is 0.1000,
the text being checked is 100 characters in size, the regex is put together as /(flame){50,}/. If you have
the field "Minimum match" set greater than zero, this won't be used. This won't be used if set to zero.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Minimum match</td>
<td valign="top">This is a hard coded minimum match for the regex. If "Regex" is "(flame)" and Minimum match is 4,
the regex constructed will be /(flame){4,}/. Ratio will not be used if this is set greater than zero.
This won't be used if set to zero.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Minimum length</td>
<td valign="top">The minimum length the field must be for the filter to apply</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Maximum length</td>
<td valign="top">The maximum length the field must be for the filter to apply</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Error Message</td>
<td valign="top">The message that's displayed after the "Lameness filter encountered". </td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>You can also create a new filter with the "Create a new filter" button.</p>
<a name="authors"><p><b>Authors</b></p></a>
<p>This is for editing an author's settings, including being able to change an author's
password, creating or deleting an author as well. Click on
"<a href="admin.pl?op=authors">Authors</a>" from the admin
menu. This will take you to a form, with the settings for the author you are currently
logged in as. You can also select other authors and edit their values. This
is a good time to change the default passwords for the default authors, if you haven't
done so yet. The fields on this form:</p>
<table border="0">
<tr>
<td valign="top">Aid</td>
<td valign="top">The author's ID</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Name</td>
<td valign="top">canonical name</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">URL</td>
<td valign="top">website for the author</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Email</td>
<td valign="top">email address</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Quote</td>
<td valign="top">the author's personal quote</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Copy</td>
<td valign="top">a line of text that is displayed for an author on authors.pl (a public listing of authors)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Passwd</td>
<td valign="top">password</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Seclev</td>
<td valign="top">security level of the author. This determines which admin activities the
author can perform, including which blocks they can edit, and which admin menu items appear for the author.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Restrict to section</td>
<td valign="top">used to limit an author to a particular section</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Save author</td>
<td valign="top">save changes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Create author</td>
<td valign="top">opens this page for creating a new author</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">Delete author</td>
<td valign="top">delete the selected author</td>
</tr>
</table>
<a name="variables"><p><b>Variables</b></p></a>
<p>This is for editing site variables. This hasn't been fully implemented yet, but soon will be.
This section will soon allow the author to change site parameters that are now stored in slashdotrc.pl.
<!--#include virtual="/slashfoot.inc"-->