Questions by newbie on whats available in serendipity

[ant01]

I am using Serendipity for my diving club website. I am still new to bogs and how they work and need advice on a few issues;
1. Can I link my registration for the club site to seendipity
2. Can I set email notification on the blogs to specific user groups, ie without them having to respond to a topic and then subscribing to that topic
3. How do I set up ImageMagic on my host and what exactly does it do?
4. Is there a plugin or way I we can add pictures to comments and blogs and how do I control the size of the pictures being uploaded

Can someone also clarify whats the difference and what each of the following do;

XML RSS 0.91 feed
XML RSS 1.0 feed
XML RSS 2.0 feed
ATOM/XML ATOM 0.3 feed
ATOM/XML ATOM 1.0 feed
XML RSS 2.0 Comments

[yellowled]

1. Can I link my registration for the club site to seendipity

Probably depends on what you mean by "link my registration". Please elaborate

2. Can I set email notification on the blogs to specific user groups, ie without them having to respond to a topic and then subscribing to that topic

To sort of notify them when new entries are posted? Yes.

3. How do I set up ImageMagic on my host and what exactly does it do?

Basically, imagemagick is a command line tool to manipulate images, i.e. resize them etc. It needs to be installed on the webserver that's hosting the blog. If it is a hosted server/webspace, ask your provider about it. If it's your own server, you should know how to do this

4. Is there a plugin or way I we can add pictures to comments and blogs and how do I control the size of the pictures being uploaded

Something like user pictures? You could use the Gravatar/Favatar plugin for that, but I have never used it myself, so someone else will have to answer that

Can someone also clarify whats the difference and what each of the following do;

XML RSS 0.91 feed
XML RSS 1.0 feed
XML RSS 2.0 feed
ATOM/XML ATOM 0.3 feed
ATOM/XML ATOM 1.0 feed
XML RSS 2.0 Comments

The first 5 ones are RSS or Atom feeds for your blog entries in various formats, the last one is the RSS 2.0 feed for comments made in your blog. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS (search for Atom there to find a link to it's wikipedia page). Basically, those are techniques used to "subscribe" to your blog.

YL

[ant01]

ant01 wrote:
1. Can I link my registration for the club site to seendipity

Probably depends on what you mean by "link my registration". Please elaborate Smile

I would like to have one regisration form for the members, which then grants them access to the blog site.


ant01 wrote:
2. Can I set email notification on the blogs to specific user groups, ie without them having to respond to a topic and then subscribing to that topic

To sort of notify them when new entries are posted? Yes.

How do I do that?



I notice by visiting my webblog http://www.muskat.co.za/serendipity/ you gain access to the blog without having to login, so outside users can make comments etc. I am worried about spammers and also want to control who can comment on the blogs. How do I do this?

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

(Please try to use proper quoting here, your postings are unreadable this way, if you simply paste the text here. Check out the phpBB FAQ to see how to use BBCode-Tags for quoting)

I would like to have one regisration form for the members, which then grants them access to the blog site.

You can install the sidebarplugin "User Self-Registration" (available through spartacus plugin or http://spartacus.s9y.org/). With that, people can add their accounts to your blog. However, be aware that spammers could also add themselves to your blog. So it's usually better if you create accounts for the people you trust.

You can configure "self added" users and indicate in which usergroup they are added to. You can give minimal permissions to that usergroup.

How do I do that?

Install the event plugin "Mail entries" (ships with serendipity), there you can configure the email adress to which postings are sent. Either you add individual, commaseparated adresses there, or you enter the address of a mailinglist you must create at yahoo, google or mailman. The users who would like to receive emails must then subscribe to your mailing list at the external site like yahoo, google or mailman.

I notice by visiting my webblog http://www.muskat.co.za/serendipity/ you gain access to the blog without having to login, so outside users can make comments etc. I am worried about spammers and also want to control who can comment on the blogs. How do I do this?

That's the "frontend" - people always see that. Google for "htaccess password protection" if you want to protect your blog to be only seen by people who know a passwort.

You can control comment moderation with the s9y "Anti-Spam" plugin, and also when you create a blog entry you can indiciate if comments are allowed or not.

Regards,
Garvin

[ant01]

Thanks for the help, is there a way I can synchronise my site locally on my pc with my site on my host. I want to play around and experiment but don't want to do it live...

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

That's not so easy. You must synchronize all the files on the other host, synchronize the database (by using SQL dump export/import) and make sure that all path references in the DB configuration is changed for your live site. That's some overhead and requires some SQL skills. If you have those, it should be no problem.

Else, you should instead install a "new live site" in a subdirectory, and later only move that subdirectory on your server (the s9y.org FAQ can help you on how to move an installation).

Regards,
Garvin

[ant01]

I installed the mail entry plugins but it only works for new entries in notifying the members, how do I notify members when comments are posted on the blogs

[Don Chambers]

I installed the mail entry plugins but it only works for new entries in notifying the members, how do I notify members when comments are posted on the blogs

I personally think being notified by every comment, to every entry, would be incredibly annoying. Users can subscribe to any entry they wish - and ONLY the entries they wish. They will then receive emails for newly posted comments. This works for both registered users, as well as anyone who posts on a comment.

[azel]

Ant01, if you want to play with it locally, you can install xampplite on your computer. It's really useful for testing out plugins and templates.

You can use the tutorial here: http://board.s9y.org/viewtopic.php?t=10 ... =xampplite

And if you need help, I will be happy to assist you!

[ant01]

Don I agree but I am not sure how to subscribe to a comment without making a comment yourself. Members of my blog may want to notified of comments to blogs ithout making comments themselves.

thanks azel, I have already set up my localhost and a virtual host on my pc

but I am having problems as mentioned previously with the css layout in my webblog, I think it has something to do with htaccess but not sure how to correct it, the frontend of webllog shows up as
Index of /serendipity

* Parent Directory
* archives/
* bundled-libs/
* comment.php
* deployment/
* docs/
* exit.php
* htmlarea/
* include/
* index.php
* lang/
* plugins/
* rss.php
* serendipity.css.php
* serendipity_admin.php
* serendipity_admin_image_selector.php
* serendipity_config.inc.php
* serendipity_config_local.inc.php
* serendipity_define.js.php
* serendipity_editor.js
* serendipity_xmlrpc.php
* sql/
* templates/
* templates_c/
* uploads/
* wfwcomment.php

[ant01]

i'm trying to insert a picture in a comment using tml code
<img src="http://www.muskat.co.za/serendipity/upl ... yThumb.jpg" /><br />

it doesn't reflect in comment, any reasons why?

[Don Chambers]

Don I agree but I am not sure how to subscribe to a comment without making a comment yourself. Members of my blog may want to notified of comments to blogs ithout making comments themselves.

I am not familiar with any other way to receive comments, but there are many plugins I have never tried so perhaps someone else has a suggestion.

[ant01]

I want to install a image converter on my hosted server how do I go about t, as I want the pictures that we upload to automatically be reduced. I notice in the configuration under image conversion settings it asks if I use ImageMagick.

How do I ceate seperate directories for the pictures uploaded, when I look under media libraries it automically displays all directories, if I want members to upload pictures to one directory which is viewable for all members and other directories only for admin, is this possible.

Can someone also assist if they know how to insert pics into comments on blogs. I notice in this blog there is a tag for img, can I display an image here?

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