administration.rst

Running a richard site

Note

The information in this chapter is likely to change as we spend more time on the admin side of things.

• Changing the theme/style/look-n-feel
• Using the admin tool
• Adding videos
• Editing videos
• Removing videos
• Importing a batch of videos
• Updating the search index
• Adding static pages

Changing the theme/style/look-n-feel

Override the CSS, JS and templates.

.. todo:: flesh out how to override css, js and templates

Using the admin tool

1. Enter the admin are of your site. This is often the url for your site plus /admin/.

   e.g. For a richard installation at http://example.com/, the admin would be at http://example.com/admin/.

   Note

   If you want a link to the admin page from the fron page of your site, just modify your site templates.

2. If you haven't logged into the admin, you will need to do so now. Use the superuser account you created when installing richard.

Once in the admin tool, you have access to all the data on the site including site news, site-wide notifications, videos, categories, tags, and speakers.

Adding videos

1. Enter the admin tool.
2. Once logged in, click on Videos on the left side.
3. Click on Add Video in the upper right hand side.
4. Fill out the information to add the video.

Here are a couple of things to know that might help you:

1. Keep it in DRAFT mode until you're done with it. This keeps it from showing up in any of the video lists, but you can still see the video if you go directly to its page.

2. Make sure to save and continue editing from time to time. After doing that, you can click on View on site in the upper right hand corner and see what the video looks like on the site.

3. The summary and description fields are in HTML. Use structure and semantic tags like <p>, <ul>, <ol>, <li>, <a>, ...

   Don't use formatting tags. Otherwise when you decide to change the style of your site, you'll have to go through and change all the summaries and descriptions, too.

   Example:

   <p>
     This video covers how to use nose for unit testing. It follows
     this outline:
   </p>
   <ul>
     <li>test discovery
     <li>writing tests
     <li>nose helper tools
   </ul>
   ...
   

Editing videos

1. Enter the admin tool.

2. Once logged in, click on Videos on the left side.

3. Find the video you want to edit and then click on the video to edit it.

   Make sure to save and continue editing from time to time. After doing that, you can click on View on site in the upper right hand corner and see what the video looks like on the site.

Note

If you're already logged in as an admin, every video page on the site will have an edit link at the top of the metadata. If you click that, it'll bring you directly to the video edit page in the admin.

Removing videos

1. Enter the admin tool.
2. Once logged in, click on Videos on the left side.
3. Find the video you want to delete and then click on the video to go to the edit screen.
4. Click on the delete link in the top left.

Warning

Deleting videos is currently permanent! There's no way to undo this action.

Importing a batch of videos

There is currently no way to import a batch of videos all at once.

You could write a script that runs on your server that accesses the model objects directly. That's what I've been doing so far. That requires Python/Django chops.

Updating the search index

Updating the index is a manual process. It's possible we could update the index as data is changed, but richard is currently not set up that way.

Do this to update the index:

./manage.py rebuild_index

You probably want to either put this in a cron job or run it after making any data changes.

Warning

This deletes the index, then rebuilds it. Thus there will be a period of time during which search on your site will kind of suck.

Adding static pages

The "About" page is a static page. Our system lets you add pages as you so desire. To add a page:

1. Create the page as a Jinja2 template file in templates/pages/<page-name>.

   For example, if I wanted to create a page for contact information, I'd create templates/pages/contact.html which would have in it:

   {% extends "base.html" %}
   {% block title %}{{ page_title('About') }}{% endblock %}
   {% block content %}
   
   <div class="page-header">
     <h1>Contact information</h1>
   </div>
   
   <div class="row">
     <div class="span12">
       <p>
         If you have problems with this site, send email to
         joe@example.com.
       </p>
     </div>
   </div>
   {% endblock %}
   

2. Add that page to PAGES in your settings file.

   Using the above example, we'd change PAGES to:

   PAGEs = ['about', 'contact']
   

   Now our contact page is available at the url http://example.com/pages/contact.