Static Announcement at top

[Athena]

Greetings,
We've got Serendipity set up for our school. Now, I'm trying to use it with my class...
I would like them to have 62 individual blogs that feed into one big blog. I see how I can create the 62 accounts. Here's what I'm having trouble with:
1. Can they, in essence, have their own blog that then feeds into the big one? That they update and so forth individually? If so...how?

2. How can I as the teacher have a static posting at the top of the main blog?

[garvinhicking]

First off, you should think about if you really need 62 individual blogs. In most cases it suffices to create 62 users, which all post to a single blog.

Thanks to category permissions, you could setup 62 categories for each of your authors. Serendipity offers a view "by author" so you can see all postings of an author by clicking on his name, which should then no longer require 62 individual blogs. You can even use the plugin "Extended options for categories" to allow using a different template for each specific category.

If you do want to have 62 individual blogs, you'd need 62 individual serendipity installations with 62 individual databases. Serendipity only offers "sub-blogs" either via the multi-authors or via multiple-categories.

You could use a Shared Installation (documented on www.s9y.org), which is a bit harder to setup, but then only has a single codebase for 62 blogs. However, you'd still have 62 databases, which is a considerable overhead.

If you go my above recommended way, you'd have one "big blog" automatically, without needing to read any feeds.

"Static postings" are called "Sticky postings" in our context. You can set a sticky posting with the "Extended Properties for Entries" plugin. However, if you have your own author account, there's no need to feed your entries "on top" of the large blog.

But you could installa sidebar plugin that displays the RSS feed of your author account (we have RSS-Feeds per author), so that it's always visible in each blog.

Regards,
Garvin

[Guest]

Wow. Thanks! Going to try what you've recommended.