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Help and information If you're unsure of anything or feel something wasn't explained properly feel free to contact me or visit Network-13 and ask in the forum. Displaying & Integrating News There are numerous ways of integrating the news system into your own design. The prefered method is to use the PHP include function which will allow you to easily display the news in your current design. To use the PHP include function use the following code <?php include 'path/to/news/index.php'; #example 'news/index.php'; ?> You can also add some other variables to the above code to further control how your news is displayed. If the following variables are set before the include function has been declared then the news script will display only the news articles which follow the specifications you set. <?php $author[] = 'Chris'; $author[] = 'Admin'; #if specified then only articles belonging to the above authors will be shown. #if no authors are specified then all will be shown. $template = 'Template1'; #if specified this template will be used, if not the default will be used $cat[] = 'category1'; $cat[] = 'category2'; #if specified any posts assigned to those categories will be displayed. #if no cats are specified then all posts will be displayed. include 'path/to/news/index.php'; #example 'news/index.php'; ?> Note that when displaying news. Only posts which have been approved will be shown. You can approve posts (or change the Access level setting to automatically approve) by selecting that post and choosing 'Change approval' from the dropdown box. To control the design/layout of your news articles use the Options>Templates section. To use a specific template click on the Select link for that template. Further information about Templates is in the Help > System Options > Templates An alternative to using the PHP include function is to use an iframe. An iframe can be useful if you have a layout which you don't want to break or you would like to have your news restricted to a certain height/width within your design. <iframe src="path/to/news/index.php">anything put here is only visible if for whatever reason the user can't see iframes however unlikely this is</iframe> Short Story - When displaying your news if you want to have a short story/description of it to be displayed, so that a user can then click a link and read the full article, use this option. When adding/editing news use the Toggle short story checkbox. Also note that to display a link to read the full posts you need to do so by editing the Template you're currently using and add [readmore] & [/readmore] tags. Managing Accounts & Access Levels Accounts & Access levels are the most important sections within the system. The Access level controls all the privileges for a user. An Account is simply a way of logging into the system. By default when you install the system you're givin 3 Access levels (Gods, Mods, Member). Each of these levels has different privileges that determine which sections of the system an Account using that Access level can access.
Access Levels
Which posts can this level edit? Admins - Can edit all posts no matter who they belong to. Mods - Can edit their own posts and Members posts. Members - Can only edit their own posts. Which sections can this level access? - If you unselect one of the sections and a user tries to access that section, they'll be prompted with an error message Options - System - Other - No access error message Are posts made by this access level automatically approved? - If set to yes a user who has been set this access level will have their posts automatically approved. Can this access level approve posts? - If set to yes a user who has been set this access level will be able to approve other posts. Users can only approve posts that they are able to edit, so be sure to set the appropriate edit permissions. Can this access level use HTML? - If set to yes a user who has heen set this access level will be able to use HTML in their posts. Be careful who you give this permission to as a user can easily screw things up. Which categories can this access level post in? - This determines which categories a user can post in. The No/blank category is to prevent users from posting without a category selected, if you untick all the category options a user will be unable to add/edit a new as it will prompt them with an error saying please select a cateogry. If the No/blank category option is selected then a user is able to add/edit posts without selecting a cateogry. Also note when displaying news if no category has been selected then any posts that haven't been assigned a category are displayed. Accounts Accounts are relatively simple compared to the Access levels. All you need to do is create an account, speicfy an email addres and password, then assign an access level to it. System Options
Templates
When editing a template there are 8 sections, News, Comments, Comments Form, News Pagintation, Comments Pagintation, News Structure, Comments Structure. Each section has information telling you how which tags do what. Note when editing the Comment Form section be sure to keep all the field names and IDs the same otherwise its likely to not work. Ajax Comments - You have the option to allow users to submit comments using Ajax, this means comments will be added without the page refreshing. To use Ajax comments edit the Comments Form section and change useajax='yes' in the <form> tag. System Config
Friendly URLs - Friendly URLs are dependant on the .htaccess file and where you put it.
To start move the .htaccess file to the directory where you are displaying your news. For example if you have the script installed here http://yourdomain.com/news/ and you are displaying your news here http://yourdomain.com/ copy the .htaccess file to http://yourdomain.com/ If you are having problems with Friendly URLs try editing the .htaccess file. The path will be /news/index.php if you have installed the script to any other location than news change it here. |