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text shown thus indicates a feature which is
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Blogging is the buzzword of the minute and of course we've jumped on the bandwagon too. In truth Opus has long had the most fundamental element of the blog: the ability to easily add web pages which are dated and to display them in date order, only we called it "news", not a blog. We've always used simple, fixed URLs for articles too, so "permalinks", a hot new feature of blogs, are old hat for Opus users.
Subsequently we added the ability to generate an RSS feed based on your news section, so that you can syndicate your news. That's the second core element to a blog. You can find out how to set up an RSS feed here.
The third core element is the ability for visitors to add their comments to a posting and we now have that too. You don't have to use it for a blog. You might want to use it as it's being used in this documentation, so that visitors can add comments to web articles (rather than news), but the idea is exactly the same.
As you will see from what we've said above some elements of the blog are there already. You need a section in which to post your postings. That may be your original news section created by Opus for you at the beginning or it may be one you have created for this purpose.
There are two things you then need to do. First you need to have an article template which includes two fields "blog" and "blog_addcomment". You can see this in the default news template
./def/default.news.template.html where the relevant section looks like this:
<opusfield name="blog"/> <p align=right><opusfield name="blog_addcomment"/>
The first of these "blog" displays all comments previously made about this article. If there are no comments then it return a null string, so nothing is displayed. If there are any comments to display then it is constructed two templates. One, the blog comments template defines the overall look on the thing. The second, the blog comment template, is applied repeatedly for each comment using the "blog_comments" field to create the final result. By default Opus uses ./def/default.blog.comments.template.html which look like this:
<p> <hr size=1> <div style="float: left;"> Previous comments about this article: </div> <div style="float: right;"> <opusfield name="blog_edit"/> </div> <br style="clear: both;"> <opusfield name="blog_comments"/>
and ./def/default.blog.comment.template.html which looks like this:
<p> <table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 width=96% align=center class=opus_blog> <tr> <td class=opus_blog> On <opusfield name="blog_datewritten" /> at <opusfield name="blog_timewritten" /> <opusfield name="blog_author" anon="someone anonymously" /> wrote: <p class=opus_blog> <opusfield name="blog_comment" /> </td> </tr> </table>
In a future release it is likely that the second of these will be re-written to use CSS.
You can replace template with ones of your own devising. Place them in your paper's directory and then edit the section details to enter their names in the relevant fields.
Finally check the "Articles may ... be blogged" checkbox for the section and check "with quarantining" if you want comments to be quarantined until you've reviewed them and you are ready to go.
Now the excitement begins as you wait for someone to add a comment or, more likely, you add one yourself.
The first time a reader adds a comment they will be prompted for their forename and surname. This is remembered (using a datacard vp_reader) so on subsequent visits they don't have to re-enter it. They enter their comment, review it and submit it.
If "with quarantining" is unchecked then comments appear on the site immediately. At the same time the article's author (and the paper's editor if these are two different people) are emailed to say that a comment has been added. The email tells you what the reader wrote and also includes a link which, if you click it, will immediately hide the comment.
Similarly "with quarantining" is checked then comments the user is thanked. At the same time the article's author (and the paper's editor if these are two different people) are emailed to say that a comment has been added. The email tells you what the reader wrote and also includes a link which, if you click it, will immediately release the comment.
Assuming you have included a "blog_edit" merge field in your blog comments template then you can also review all comments against an article and choose whether to hide or display them individually.
Opus 2.30 Publisher's Manual
Product Overview
Creating Simple Forms