Not quite ready for primetime....

[DragonFly]

Hello Judebert,

As you can see, I've finally jumped the stream.
I have a number of questions that linger from our last post, however, I'll hold off on addressing them for a little while longer.

What I'd like to accomplish next is to get the rest of the skeleton assembled on my site so that I can start running with it.
I will clean it up post-launch ... with your help of course.

Having said that,

1. I would like to know what I need to do in order to enable visitor posting. I would like that feature to appear right under the "Politics Is Personal" title.

2. You'll notice that the script for "Dirty Coal" is ignoring it's container. How do correct that badboy?

3. How can I center the verbiage for the links under 'Escapism'?

4. How can I accomplish a cell appearance (slightly different color than the background, and a border that surrounds the content) with each post.

5. Can I safely rewrite this 'cblog' site to be the 'index'?

5 1/2. Have you any caveats for backing up the present site?

By the way, I'm appreciating 'Serendipity' more and more as I learn what it has to offer... not to mention the stellar job you are doing in coaxing me through, what at one time, seemed like a journey through 'Mordor'.

[garvinhicking]

Howdy!

Even though you addressed this to judebert, I just step in for a few shouts. But I guess you should've posted this posting either appending your old thread or into a forum different than "Instalation".

1. I would like to know what I need to do in order to enable visitor posting. I would like that feature to appear right under the "Politics Is Personal" title.

You can install a sidebar plugin that is called "User Self-Registration". This plugin creates a login information in your sidebar. That plugin is available through Spartacus.

Spartacus is our "online repository" of additional plugins. You can easily access it by going to your plugin configuration, click on the link to install an Event plugin, then click on the button next to the spartacus button.

The next time you install a plugin, you'll see that spartacus fetches a list from our webserver and thus offers many more plugins.

5. Can I safely rewrite this 'cblog' site to be the 'index'?

The easiest way would be to setup a index.html document which does a HTML Meta refresh to point to the cblog directory.

If you rename or move the serendipity directory, you'll need to alkso adjust the configuration path names. You might want to look at our FAQ for more information on that.

5 1/2. Have you any caveats for backing up the present site?

The FAQ also covers this -- you'll definitely need to backup your database as well, with a tool like phpMyAdmin that providers often offer.

Best regards,
Garvin

[DragonFly]

I have yet to see this link - "Click here to fetch a plugin from the Remote Plugin Repository".

It seems that 'Spartacus' access is behind some sort of wall for me.
Then again, perhaps the "wall" is me.

Also, this is what I normally see at the top of the page where the 'event plugins' are located.

"Trying to open URL package_event_en.xml...
The URL http://netmirror.org/mirror/serendipity ... ent_en.xml could not be opened. Maybe the Serendipity or SourceForge.net Server is down - we are sorry, you need to try again later."

This does not make sense to me as I have gone directly afterward to these sites and they were immediately available.

I really need that 'user self-registration' plugin.

What precisely are the steps that I will need to follow in order to nab the little fella?

[garvinhicking]

Can it be that your server is behind a firewall and does not allow outgoing HTTP connections? Can you check back with your provider? Because in that case the "easy way" will not work, and you'll have to down- and upload the plugins manually.

You can fetch a bundle of ALL available plugins here: http://netmirror.org/mirror/serendipity ... lugins.tgz

That is a tar.zip archive that you can deflate. Then just copy the "serendipity_plugin_adduser" directory to your serendipty "plugins" directory. Then you shall be able to install the plugin without the aid of Spartacus.

Regards,
Garvin

[DragonFly]

I've checked with my server folks and it appears that it is NOT a firewall issue on their side.

I've gone into 'tools' (Firefox) and allowed 's9y.org', 'sourceforge.net' and 'netmirror.org' for 'popups', and 'software installations'.

When I follow the link provided in your post, 'winzip' replies that it cannot read the header after processing (0) entries.

So, there you have it, I'm temporarily stuck.

Could someone email me the file perhaps? Please.

[garvinhicking]

Hm, actually the netmirror.org URL seems to work fine, so the only reason why it does not work on your server is your server setup or firewalling. Maybe you can try this little script:

Code: Select all

<?php
include 'serendipity_config.inc.php';
require_once S9Y_PEAR_PATH . 'HTTP/Request.php';
$req = &new HTTP_Request('http://netmirror.org/mirror/serendipity//package_event_en.xml');
print_r($req);
$res = $req->sendRequest();
print_r($res);
print_r($req);

echo "Alternate:<br />\n";
echo strlen(file_get_contents('http://netmirror.org/mirror/serendipity//package_event_en.xml')) . ' Bytes fetched<br />';
?>

Save that as "test.php" within your serendipity directory and call it via HTTP and tell us the output.

Your Firefox options actually are totally independent of what your server is trying to download. So that does not matter at all.

You might want to try to topen the Link I gave you with a better tool than Winzip. Try 7-Zip, it is a very good extracting tool.

Best regards,
Garvin

[DragonFly]

Alrightie then, I've added the 'add_user' to my plugin directory.

I did a little test run by playing the part of a visitor on a seperate machine, and now I'm waiting to see when the supposed 'email' will arrive with further instructions.

So far I received nothing.
Have I left a step out?
Or could it just be lag time because of spam check over at my domain host, aplus.net?

[judebert]

Thanks for the help, Garvin. I've been gone for a day and half.

1) Install the User Self-Registration plugin.
In my installation, the link doesn't show up as "Click here to fetch a plugin from the Remote Plugin Repository". They only say "Click here to add a new <whatever> plugin." When I access one of those links, I see a message indicating that a remote site was accessed, and the links either look like a CD (indicating a local file) or like a floppy with an arrow (indicating a remote file that'll need to be downloaded).

If SourceForge is causing you trouble, you could change the Spartacus configuration to download from another server.

I see there are no configuration options for email in the plugin or in Serendipity, so there may be a server problem. My install notified me immediately, but your server may be set up differently.

In particular, as I examine the plugin code, I see it sets the "From:" address to "your blog title"<your blog email>. Many servers are configured to ignore emails that don't come from known users. PHP also requires sendmail to work properly. I'd call my server administrators and find out what's up.

2) I have to admit I'm confused about that. I'd recommend removing the extraneous <b><br/><b> sets in there. You shouldn't need anything but the <object> and <embed> tags. Also, I'd assign a height to the <object> tag; I think those two problems are what's causing it.

3) Edit your HTML nugget and add <center> </center> around the text. Note to developers: shouldn't HTML nuggets have unique IDs/classes, since they're stackable?

4) You'll have to edit your style.css. First look in your source and figure out what class the item in question is. Then change its "background-color" in the style.css. (You probably want serendipity_entry_body.)

5) Garvin's best on this, for sure. Check the FAQ.

[DragonFly]

Hello again, Judebert.

I've got the user 'self-registration' installed, and by the looks of it's functioning properly.

The server tech thought that perhaps the reason I wasn't receiving a confirmation email from my site after registration, was due to the fact that the address I was using was on 'mail forwarding'. So he converted it for me and then the sun came out.

The issue with the 'Global Warming' banner hogging the sidebar was cured by simply changing it's position from 'left' to 'center'.
I apologize for not spending a little more time on that one. I should have been able to correct that myself.

1. On the point regarding distinguishing the area around the entries, I did find <div class="serendipity_entry_body"> in the source code.
However, I was unable to find anything like that in 'CSS' where I could make changes to it's bkground color.
I also checked FAQ but was unable to locate a reference to that particular topic.
It's not crucial that I have this feature in place before launching, however, I think that 'now' is better than 'later'.

2. Once I have backed up my present directories, how can I go about converting my 'cblog' to 'index'. What specifically do I need to do?

3. What is the difference between 'save' and 'publish' for entries? 'Publish' is an obvious, but how does it differ from 'save'?

4. Are there any plans in the making for enabling post uploads from let's say ... 'Word'?

5. And what about a 'Draft' feature in 'New Entry'?

By the way, I've a rather large smile on my face this morning after having seen the 'user registration' up and working on my site.
Much of the credit for this happy moment goes to you.

[judebert]

Remember that, if your HTML says class="serendipity_entry_body", your CSS says .serendipity_entry_body { attributes; } -- so that's what you're looking for. You want to add/change background-color:<whatever>.

Check the FAQ: http://s9y.org/11.html#A20 to move your Serendipity around. Skip anything about the database, since you'll still be using the same one.

"Save" does whatever you've got listed in the drop-down in the top-right corner: Publish or Draft. It also changes the permalinks, adds or removes text... basically, it makes any changes you've specified in the entire form. The other button there is "Preview"; it gives you some idea of what your entry is going to look like before you release it to the world.

There's no plan for importing from Word. The format is proprietary, anyway. You could, of course, export HTML from Word, then copy-and-paste it into your entry. But clean it up, first: Word exports dirty HTML.

The top-right drop-down provides a Draft feature. Change it to Draft and click Save.

Keep smiling!

[DragonFly]

Regarding the conversion from 'cblog' to 'index'.

I decided, for the purpose of saving time and brain cells to give my domain host (aplus.net) a call and ask them what to do. They weren't terribly interested in explaining the process, but instead gave me a few options that they would impliment for me.

So after explaining to them that I wanted my Serendipity advanced blog to be my 'new and improved' index, and that I did not want the address bar to include /cblog, they motioned my attention toward some choices.

Tic-toc, tic-toc....
Times Up!:shock:

"I choose what's behind door number three.", I blurted.
The lights went up on a shiney new forward on the index to cblog.

So, cblog has now taken the parking space of index in the address bar.

Ready or not, PoliticallyOutspoken has launched.


In regard to the class="serendipity_entry_body" business, I finally got it. After skimming through some CSS data sites, a synapsis fired.
Ok, maybe two.

The thing that had me stumped before was not seeing 'serendipity_entry_body'.

I did, however, notice .serendipity_entry, so I decided to play with that instead. If you will take a peek at www.politicallyoutspoken.com, you'll see what I've done so far. I'm still experimenting with it.


I'm going to ask a couple of questions here, however, they probably should be in different forum. So I'll be repeating these questions over in 'General Discussions'.

1. How do I create tabs across the top of the body or perhaps the head above the banners? I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to include them for easy access to a site map, catagories, actions, etc.

2. Please explain to me just what the RSS feeds, that are included in cblog, will do for my site? I've tried to understand by reading what I could find on this topic, but I still don't get it.

You know ... admitting to being profoundly ignorant can be a freeing experience.