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Manila User's Guide

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Introduction

Table of Contents

Installation and Setup

Manila Basics

Site Administration

Server Administration

Advanced Features

Troubleshooting

Reference

Installation and Setup 

System Requirements 

Installing Frontier 

Pre-installation 

Windows 

Macintosh OS X 

MacOS Classic 

Setting up Frontier 

Login to the Frontier Admin Site 

Default Manila sites 

Home site 

Frontier Admin site 

Create a Manila Site 

Support 

Documentation 

Mail list and discussion group 

News pages 

Major versions 

Interim features/fixes 

How do I report a bug? 

---

Manila Basics 

Creating a new site 

Logging into your site 

Steps 

Notes 

Editing the home page 

Steps 

Posting a news item 

Steps 

Flipping the home page 

Steps 

Adding a picture 

Steps 

Adding a story 

Steps 

Posting to your discussion group 

Steps 

Using shortcuts 

Managing shortcuts 

Changing your password 

Steps 

Signing out 

---

Site Administration 

Organizing your home page 

Customizing a site 

Editorial roles 

Managing Editor 

Contributing Editor 

Content Editor 

Discussion group 

Customizing the appearance 

Restricting access to the discussion group 

Changing the site's appearance 

Steps 

Important Note 

Choosing language for your site 

Navigation links 

Click on the Edit button, and a page is displayed showing the names and URLs of the links, where you can edit them; or delete them, or move a link up or down.

To change the text or URLs of one or more links, make the changes, and then click on the Update button.

To delete one or more links, click in the checkbox to the right of the item, and then click on Update.

To move a link up, click on the upper arrow to the left of the item; to move it down click on the down arrow.

Navigation appearance

If you scroll further down the Advanced prefs page, you will find the Navigation Appearance section that gives you control over how the links created by the Navigation feature are formatted. There are two fields where you can set:

• Item Format HTML and the {item} macro to format each link
• Separator Format HTML to appear between each link

Example

• Item Format <font face="Geneva, Arial"><strong>{item}</strong></font>
• Separator Format <hr width="3">

Notes

In your templates the Navigation Links appear where the {navigatorLinks} macro is called. The Navigation Links editor supports links specified by shortcut name or message number. To specify a link by shortcut name, type the shortcut name into the URL field. To specify a link by message number, type the message number into the URL field.

Advanced: Navigation XML

The following is only of interest if you want to learn how to learn the XML inteface for editing Navigation Links.

Let's look a little closer at the XML you can use to create Navigation links. There is one XML element - navigator - that contains all of the link information. It begins with a <navigator> tag and ends with a </navigator> tag. If more than one navigator element appears in this XML, it's ignored. Inside the navigator element, you can have as many item elements as you need. Unlike the navigator element, the item element requires only one tag: <item/> (note the closing "/" before last angle bracket). Each item can describe a link with one of the following formats:

• <item name="abc" pagename="xyz"/>
• <item name="abc" shortcut="xyz"/>
• <item name="abc" msgnum="xyz"/>

• Page Name A relative or absolute address (URL). For example, "/discuss/", "/my/custom/page" or "http://weblogs.userland.com/manilaNewbies". Unless there's a location in the Manila database that matches the relative address (like "/discuss/"), you'll have to create one using the Site Structure feature.
• Shortcut The name of a Shortcut, which can point to a location on your site or to another site.
• Message Number (msgnum) The Message number for the destination Story. If you use the number of a DG Message that's not a Story, the link is created but won't work.

The following shows what you would see on the Navigation prefs page and the actual links on your pages.

<navigator>
<item name="Home" pagename="/siteName/"/>
<item name="FAQ" pagename="/siteName/faq"/>
<item name="Feedback" pagename="/siteName/feedback"/>
</navigator>

Home

FAQ

Feedback

Steps

1. Click the Prefs link in the Editors Only menu at the top of the page.

2. Click the Advanced link.

3. Scroll down to the Navigation section at the top of the page.

4. In between the <navigator> and </navigator> tags, you can add a new navigtation link.

5. Click the Submit button.

Pictures Instead Of Text

If you want to have Pictures instead of text for your Navigation links, use one of the following formats:

• <item name="abc" picture="def" pagename="xyz"/>
• <item name="abc" picture="def" shortcut="xyz"/>
• <item name="abc" picture="def" msgnum="xyz"/>

Picture Rollovers

To have the Picture change when a visitor moves their cursor over it, use one of the following formats:

• <item name="abc" picture="def" rollover="ghi" pagename="xyz"/>
• <item name="abc" picture="def" rollover="ghi" shortcut="xyz"/>
• <item name="abc" picture="def" rollover="ghi" msgnum="xyz"/>

• <item name="abc" picture="def" rollover="ghi" disabled="jkf" pagename="xyz"/>
• <item name="abc" picture="def" rollover="ghi" disabled="jkf" shortcut="xyz"/>
• <item name="abc" picture="def" rollover="ghi" disabled="jkf" msgnum="xyz"/>

XML Syntax Errors

If there's a syntax error in your XML, Manila returns the form with an error above the field. No changes are made to the Navigation links when this happens. The most common errors are forgetting to use "/>" at the end of an item element and leaving out the navigator element.

Browser-based editor 


Manila by default enables support for a WYSIWYG browser-based editing tool that is available to users using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or greater on Windows or using Mozilla 1.3b or later on all platforms.

You can also choose to use the HTML Tags editor which includes a formatting toolbar but displays the HTML tags in the text area or the plain text area if you are more comfortable writing your own HTML by hand.

Steps 

1. Click the Prefs link in the Editors Only menu at the top of the page.

2. Click the Editorial link.

3. Scroll down to "Editing Tool" and choose which editing tool you want to use in the drop down box.

4. Click the Submit button at the bottom of the page.

Notes 

The editing tool chosen on the Editorial preferences pages applies to all members of the site.

The WYSIWYG editor hides the HTML tags. The HTML Tags editor does not hide the HTML, but it provides a toolbar to make HTML easier to edit. If you choose None, then there is no formatting toolbar at all.

Anyone not using MSIE 5/6 for Windows or Mozilla 1.3 or greater gets a plain text area to write in.



News Items 


News Items are a new way of working on a Manila home page. Instead of working on individual days, you create, edit, and post individual News Items. If you enable this feature, instead of saying how many days are displayed on a home page, you say how many News Items are.

The News Items feature promotes collaboration -- you can choose who can create News Items and who can approve them for posting on the home page. For instance, you could run a very open site where members of the site can create News Items and post them to the home page. Further, News Items promote syndication as they are a perfect fit with RSS format.

Workflow

A News Item goes through a few stages before it gets posted to the home page. There are four main tasks involved when using News Items on your site: creating, releasing, posting and editing.

First a News Item is created: you type in a title and URL to link to, choose a department, and write a description.

Once created, you see a preview of what the News Item would look like on the home page. It can then be edited some more, and previewed again.

If you have the power to post the News Item to the home page, you get a Post to Home Page button. If you click it, the News Item will appear at the top of the home page.

If you don't have the power to post to the home page, instead you get a Release button. Clicking this button means you're releasing custody -- you're finished editing it, now you want someone else to post it to the home page. Then an editor can edit your News Item and approve it or not.

Manila gives the Managing Editor control over who can create News Items (Members, All Editors, Content Editors or Managing Editors) and post them (same choices). The other two activities, releasing and editing, are determined by role and how far along the News Item has gone in the workflow.

Enabling the News Items feature

Click the Prefs link in the Editors Only menu and then choose News Items. This is where you configure your News Items preferences.

If you click Yes, then your home page will display News Items rather than news days. Right at first, your home page will be blank, since you don't have any News Items posted yet. So it's a good idea to configure first and enable last.

If you turn on News Items, you don't lose your old home pages, they're still available through the calendar. And at any time you can switch back from News Items to editing your home pages directly, and your News Items will be available through the home page calendar.

Appearance

The Appearance section of the News Items prefs page asks how many items should appear on the home page. Recent items appear at the top.

The News Item Template allows you to specify the formatting of News Items. There are several special macros you can use here. You don't have to use all of them, of course, but the default template does contain all of them.

{title} is the title of the News Item.

{url} is the URL the News Item links to.

{description} is the News Item's description.

{link} is a link to the News Item, but just displays the title if the URL is empty.

{department} is the name of the department the News Item belongs to.

{itemPostTime} is the time the News Item was posted to the home page.

{author} is a link to the profile of the original author.

{discussLink} is a link to the discussion group for this News Item. (Each News Item starts another discussion group thread.)

{editLink} links to the editing form -- if you're a Managing Editor, you can edit News Items even after they've been posted to the home page. The edit link appears only if the person viewing the News Item can edit it.

{picture} displays the picture that's associated with the department the News Item belongs to. Clicking on a picture takes you to a page listing the most recent News Items in that department.

{commentLink} generates a comment link to to that particular News Item

{encodedPermalinkUrl} generates an encoded permalink URL to to that particular News Item. Makes it possible to create Technorati cosmos links, ala BoingBoing's cosmos links.

{enclosureLink} is a link to the enclosure by filename

{enclosureName} is the the filename of the enclosure

{enclosureUrl} is the URL of the enclosure

{enclosureSize} is the size of the enclosure (in bytes, K or MB depending on size)

{enclosureIcon} is the icon representing the enclosure, based on its type

You can find a full description and instructions on using thse macros at Macros.UserLand.Com.

Editorial Access

Here is where you specify who can do what.

By default, all editors -- Managing Editors, Content Editors and Contributing Editors -- can create News Items. You could limit it to just managing editors, or you could allow all members of your site to create News Items.

The second question specifies who can approve a News Item for posting to the home page. Creating a News Item doesn't mean it gets posted to the home page -- only certain people can approve a News Item for posting. By default, it's only Managing Editors, but you can extend this to, content editors, all editors, or even allow all members of your site to approve items for posting to the home page.

Posting your first News Item

After you've configured News Items, make sure you've enabled the feature. (Go back to the top of the News Items prefs page, click Yes to the first question, and click the Submit button at the bottom of the page.)

Your home page is now blank -- you need to post a News Item to give it some content.

From the Editors only menu, choose News.

There you'll see a list of pending News Items. There aren't any, since you're just getting started. At the bottom is a link: Create a News Item. Click that link.

Then type in a title and URL. Choose a department. Write a description. Click the Create News Item button.

Next page includes a preview of the News Item. Below the preview is the editing form, already filled out. You can edit it as much as you like.

Assuming you're the Managing Editor, you can post the News Item to the home page whenever you want, you don't have to release it first. When it's ready, click the Post to Home Page button.

The next page you'll see is your home page, with one News Item at the top.

Deleting a News Item

In the Editors Only menu at the top of the screen, click on Discuss.

Locate the discussion group message corresponding to the item you want to delete. Click on its title in the "Subject" column.

Now, scroll down to the bottom of the page to the Admin box. It should have an item asking if you want to "Delete this news item?" Select itand click on the Submit button.

A confirmation dialog appears and click Yes to delete the news item.

Enclosures

Manila's Enclosures feature allows you to specify a file to be used as an Enclosure in your site's RSS feed. Enclosures are the basis for Podcasting, where people who subscribe to your RSS feed can have enclosed files automatically downloaded to their computer, MP3 player or other media device.

When the Enclosures feature is enabled, you can upload a file or type the URL for an enclosure when editing or creating news items.

How to enable the Enclosures feature

1. Go to your site's News Items Prefs page.

2. Scroll down to the Enclosures section, and click Yes to Enable the Enclosures feature.

3. If you prefer to upload files as you create or edit news items, choose Upload a File next to the question, How do you want to add Enclosures. If you want to link to files on another site instead, choose Type a Shortcut name or URL instead.

4. Click the Submit button at the bottom of the page.

Add an Enclosure

Here's how to add an enclosure to a news item in your site:

1. Either create a new news item by clicking the News link and then clicking Create a News Item, or edit an existing news item by clicking its Edit link on your home page.

2. If you've chosen to upload files to create enclosures, click the Choose File button in the news item editing page, pick a file from your local disk.

If you've chosen to use a Shortcut name or URL, type the URL or the name of a shortcut into the Enclosure field.

3. Click the Post button.

That's it. When this news item appears in your site's RSS feed, it will have an enclosure which links to the file you uploaded, or to the URL you typed in the Enclosure field.

Enclosures and Department RSS feeds

Enclosures also appear in the RSS feed for the department which contains the news item. You might want to create a department specifically for publishing enclosures. (This could be considered to be a Podcast.)

Departments

Every News Item is part of a department. When you create a News Item, you choose the department. You can go back and change it later, of course.

To create a new department, type in the field next to the Add a Department prompt. Click the Submit button at the bottom of the page.

Then you need to associate a picture with that department. Most of the time you'll want something small, icon-sized. If you don't have a suitable picture already uploaded, go ahead and upload a new picture via the Pictures page. There's a link to the Pictures page from the News Items prefs page.

Then, to associate a picture with a department, choose a department from the pop-up menu next to the Associate a Picture prompt. In the space to the right of the pop-up menu, type the shortcut name of a picture. Do not include the quotes around the name, just type the name. Then click the Submit button.

Department list page

The department list page provides a list of all departments in your site, with links to each department's home page, RSS feed, and edit-department page, if you're logged in as a managing editor. (Screenshot.)

It's linked to from the News Items page -- Click the News link in the Editors Only menu, and then click the department list link at the bottom of the page.

When logged in as a managing editor, the globe icon next to each department links to the department's home page, and the department's name links to the department-editor page for the department. The rightmost column contains XML icons, which link to each department's RSS feed.

To edit a department's name or description, click its name. To create a new department, click the Create a New Department link at the bottom of the department list page.

To delete a department, check the box to the left of its name, and then click the Delete button at the bottom of the page.

Department editor

The department editor includes some previously unavailable preferences. (Screenshot.)

Departments can now have a description. This text is used for the tagline on the department's home page, and for the description in the department's RSS feed.

Departments may also specify a language for use in their RSS feeds. (You can also choose to not specify a language.)

Department RSS feeds

Department RSS feeds make it easy for people who use news readers like Radio UserLand to follow posts in a specific department, without having to manually filter through other posts on your site.

For any given department, its RSS feed will have a URL like the following:

http://www.example.com/newsItems/departments/myDepartment.xml

You can find the RSS URL for any department in your site using the department list page -- see below.

Email Notification

Stories and pictures are simpler than News Items: you create them and edit them.

But with News Items you have four events: creating, editing, releasing, and posting to the home page.

You can turn on and off email notification for each event. The notification list -- the list of people who get email notification -- is configured on the Editorial site prefs page.

RSS

If you're using News Items, and you syndicate your site, you'll find that the generated RSS matches the News Items structure. News Items and RSS are structured the same way: for each item there's a title, link, and description. You can still use the scriptingNews2.xml format if you prefer, both are available and both work.

Notes

If your site's template includes the rssLink macro for creating a link to your site's RSS feed, then the news items department page will link to the department's RSS feed, rather than the site's RSS feed.

If a department has no description, then the site's tagline (edited on the Appearance Prefs page) is used for the description in the department's RSS feed.



Comments 


The comments feature adds a link next to each news item on your home page which, when clicked, opens a new window with a form for posting comments and reading comments posted by others.

An optional counter displays the number of comments that have been posted in response to each news item.

Comments are stored as responses to the discussion group message that contains the news item, so they're visible both in the comments popup window, and in the discussion group.

Steps

1. Enable the Radio Hosting feature: Go to the Radio Hosting preferences page and click Yes next to the question, do you want Radio Hosting enabled, and then click the Submit button.

2. Go to the News Items prefs page, add a {commentLink} macro to the News Item Template where you want the comment link to appear, and click Submit.

3. Go to your site's home page. You'll see a comment link for each news item.

Post your first comment

Click on one of the comment links on your home page. A new browser window will open with a form you can use to post a comment.

Fill in the fields and click the Submit button. When the browser refreshes, you'll see your comment, along with a link to the news item that the comment is in response to.

As more comments are created, they'll appear below existing comments, in chronological order.

Changing the comment link's appearance

The text of the comment links is customizable using the comment link template on the News Items prefs page. The {commentCount} macro is replaced with a count of the number of comments.

You can also use a shortcut to a picture in the comment link template.

Deleting a comment

To delete a comment, check the box below it in the comment pop-up window, and then click the Delete Checked Comments button at the bottom of the window.

Comment notification via email

If the feature is enabled, whenever a new comment is posted to your Manila site, an email will be sent to to your notification list, notifying you that a new comment was posted.

Steps

Here's how to enable comment notification in your Manila site:

1. Go to your site's Editorial Prefs page: Click Prefs in the Editors Only menu, and then click the Editorial link.

2. Scroll down to the Email Notification section, and click Yes next to the question, Do you want notification sent when a new comment is posted.

3. Click the Submit button at the bottom of the page.

Comment notification is now enabled for your site. When new comments are posted, you will receive email notification.

Notes

The notification feature is for sites which have news items enabled, and which have the comments feature enabled.

For non-news-items sites, use the new discussion group message notification preference, which is also on the Editorial Prefs page.



TrackBack 


TrackBack is a set of specifications published by SixApart, the company that develops Movable Type. It's used notify another site that a post points to a post on the other site. The notification is called a ping.

Often TrackBack pings will be displayed in a pop-up window linked next to the post that received the ping.

Manila's TrackBack implementation is part of the News Items feature. Here's a news item in a Manila site which has a pop-up window that displays incoming TrackBack pings.

Manila supports both outgoing and incoming pings. Outgoing pings can be made automatically, or manually.

Steps

1. Go to your site's News Items Prefs page -- click Prefs in the Editors Only menu, and then click the News Items link.

2. Add the following macro to your News Item Template, where you want the TrackBack pop-up window link and counter to appear:

{trackbackLink}

3. Also on the News Items Prefs page, scroll down to the TrackBack section, and click Yes to enable TrackBack. If you want Manila to send outgoing TrackBack pings automatically, click Yes to send outgoing pings automatically. (screenshot)

4. Click the Submit button at the bottom of the page.

TrackBack is now enabled, and news items will appear with a TrackBack link, which opens a pop-up window displaying incoming pings.

Deleting a TrackBack ping

To delete a ping, check the box below it in the TrackBack pop-up window, and then click the Delete Checked Trackbacks button at the bottom of the window.

How to ping

If you have set the preference to send outgoing pings automatically, then you don't have to do anything. Manila will look for links in news items you post, and send pings to sites you've linked to if they support TrackBack.

If automatic pings are turned off, you can still send pings when you create or edit a news item. Just paste the permalink URL for the post you want to ping into the URLs to Ping field at the bottom of the news item editing page, and post the news item. (screenshot)

You can also use the URLs to Ping field to send pings to sites which are not linked to directly by your news item.

See also

Manila Newbies: News Items

Benjamin and Mena Trott: TrackBack Specification



Macros 


Macros provide a way for you to include calculated elements in your Manila web pages and templates.

Example

If you include {10 * 10} in a page on your Manila site, you see 100

Macros don't just do math

They can do lots of other kinds of calculations too, like manipulating pieces of text, counting the number of words in a sentence, or displaying a greeting message.

Let's say you wanted to display a customized greeting message for any user who is currently logged in to your site. You could use a macro to do this. Here's how:

Copy and paste the following text into your homepage:

{if whoAmI != "" {return ("Hi there, " + string.nthField (whoAmI, ' ', 1) + "!")} else {return ("")}}

This will display the text "Hi there, Jake!" in the page, whenever a user whose first name is "Jake" is logged in.

How does this work?

Manila sites already included the macro, {whoAmI}. It returns some text that looks like this: "Jake Savin is logged in." When the user is not logged in, {whoAmI} returns nothing (the empty string).

But we only wanted to get the user's first name, and include that in our own customized message. We didn't want the whole sentence. So we used the string.nthField (whoAmI, ' ', 1) to extract the first word of the sentence -- the user's first name.

string.nthField is one of the newly legal Frontier verbs. If you're already familiar with Frontier, the syntax should be familiar to you.

What's a verb?

Like verbs in a spoken language, a verb in macro performs an action.

You give (pass) it some information, it does something with it, and it returns the result to you.

In the example above, we passed three things to the string.nthField verb: the string of text, "Jake Savin is logged in." from the whoAmI macro; a space character represented as ' ', which is used to determine how to break the string into words; and the number 1 representing which word -- which field -- we wanted to extract from the string.

string.nthField returned the first word, "Jake".

How if ... else ... and curly braces work

The first curly brace, {, signals the begining of your macro. The last one, }, signals the end. The ones inside your macro delimit blocks of code that if and else apply to.

When you use an "if" statement, you specify what happens if the condition is true, and optionally what happens if it's not true. The first pair of braces after the if statement encloses the part of your macro which will be evaluated if the condition is true, and the second pair after the "else" encloses the part which will be evaluated if the condition is not true.

In this example, we test to see if whoAmI contains some text -- that it does not equal (!=) the empty string (""). If the test is true, the first code block which returns the welcome message gets evaulated. If the test is false, the second block gets evaluated, returning the empty string.

How quotes characters work

The quote characters (") inside macros are different from the quote characters used for shortcuts.

They represent the begining and ending of a string of text. In the example above, we used quote characters to represent the start and end of the string, "Hi there, ". (Note the trailing space in the example.) We also used quotes to delimit the exclamation point, and the empty string that's returned if noone is logged in.

If you want to use a quote character inside a string, you escape the quote character using a backslash like this: \"

Say for example, that you don't want a greeting like "Hi there, Jake!", but you want a message like this:

"Jake" is the current user.

(Note the quotation marks around the user's name.)

Your macro would look like this:

{if whoAmI != "" {return ("\"" + string.nthField (whoAmI, ' ', 1) + "\" is the current user.")} else {return ("")}}

Single characters are enclosed in single quote marks (the key next to the enter or return key on most keyboards). In this example, the space character is represented by ' '. A comma character would be represented represented by ','.

Text strings of more than one character are always enclosed in double-quotes, for instance: "a string of text".

A second example: dynamic copyright messages

Say you've got a site that was started in the year 2000, and you want to place a copyright message at the bottom of every page. You want the copyright message to say "© 2000" until the year changes to 2001, after which you want the message to say "© 2000-2001".

It's easy to write a macro which does this.

Copy and paste the following text into your template:

{if year == 2000 {return ("&copy; 2000")} else {return ("&copy; 2000-" + year)}

This macro takes advantage of the fact that like whoAmI, year is a legal macro. It returns the current year.

The macro in this example tests to see if the year is still 2000. If it is, the macro returns the string, "© 2000", and otherwise it returns a string like this: "© 2000-2001".

Looking closely, you can see that when the year changes from 2001 to 2002, what you'll see on your pages is "© 2000-2002", because after the year 2000, the macro includes the current year after the '-'.

Can I use Frontier or Radio UserLand to edit macros?

Yes you can. You can create a script in Frontier or Radio, and paste it into your site.

The pasted text of the script will automatically be formatted correctly, including curly braces that define code blocks.

Keep in mind that you will need to put curly braces around the whole script after you paste it in, or else it won't be evaluated as a macro. If you don't do this, you may see strange results -- statements outside code blocks will end up as text in your page, and statements inside code blocks will be evaluated as macros since they're inside curly braces. If we'd forgotten the braces around the copyright example, here's what we'd see in the page during the year 2000:

if year == 2000 © 2000 else © 2000-2000

Remember that macros are powerful. When you write one, you're writing a little program, and as with writing any program, it has to be just right, or you'll get unexpected results.

Can I use carriage returns, spaces and tab characters to format my macro so that it's easier to read?

Yes you can. In fact, if you paste a Frontier or Radio UserLand script into your site, it will contain the carriage returns and tab characters that correspond to the formatting in the outline-based script editor.

You also get the curly braces which define code blocks.

See also

Macros.UserLand.Com



Viewing site stats 


Along with the option of logging of all HTTP traffic on your server, Manila logs stats for each site on your server: Hourly Hits, Members, Most Read Messages and Referers.

Steps 

1. You can view a list of all the stats page for your site by adding "/stats" to the URL of your Manila site:

eg. http://yourdomain.com/mysite/stats

Hourly Hits 

Shows the hits per hour for the last 24 hours.

Members 

A list of all members of the site. You can make the members list private, viewable only by managing editors, on the Membership prefs page.

If you are logged in as a managing editor you can also easily block, un-block or delete a member by checking the box to the left of the member and clicking the appropriate button at the bottom of the page.

If the members list is public, visitors will only see the members column with a link to the member's profile.

Most Read Messages 

Shows the top fifty most read messages on your site.

Referers 

Shows referers to your site for the last 24 hours. A referer is the URL of a page that links to a page on your site. When someone follows a link to visit your site, that person's browser sends the URL of the page they were on to your site.

See also 

ManilaNewbies: Referer stats

ManilaNewbies: Hits by Hours stats



Site Administration 


Along with the Editors Only menu, the Managing Editor of a site can administer their site from the Admin page and admin boxes.

Admin page



Choosing Admin from the Editors Only menu, the editor has access to the following functions:

Deleting an entry from the stories list

Deleting an entry from the pictures list

Deleting a discussion group message

Adding a discussion group message to the stories list

Adding a member

Adding multiple members

Blocking a member (from accessing the site)

Unblocking a member

Deleting a member

Forcing a check-in of a message being edited by another member

Rendering the entire site or render a set of archived home pages, if static rendering is enabled

Admin box

The Admin box shows up in a page so the Managing Editor can do some administrative task with that page. You will see a different Admin box depending if you are viewing a story, picture or discussion group message.

Stories

Delete this story?

Remove this story from the stories list?

Make this the home page?

Turn off the byline for this story?

Set a relative path for this message?

Picture

Delete this picture?

Remove this picture from the pictures list?

Discussion group message

Delete this message?

Make this message a story?

Make this the home page?

Set a relative path for this message?



Managing members 


From the Admin page of your Manila site you can add and block members from your site. Click the Admin link in the Editors Only menu to open the Admin page.

Or if you don't know the email address of the member, you can also do the same functions from the members list page.

Add a new member 

To add a single member, enter the name, email address and password for the member. Then choose if they should receive email bullets (including the format) and their member privileges.

If you want the member to be notified of their new membership, check the box to send the welcome email. Then click the Add Member button.

Add multiple members 

You can signup mulitple new members to your site by entering a list of email addresses into the text area, choosing their member privileges and then clicking the Add Members button.

Email addresses can be separated with spaces, carriage returns, tabs or commas.

Each member will automatically be assigned a random password that they will receive in a welcome message sent to each email address that is signed up.

To block or unblock a member 

Blocking a Member denies them access to any part of your site. When they try to view any page, they see a message telling them they have been blocked. They will have access to any areas of your site available to the public if they log out.

Enter the email address of the member you want to block and then click the Block Member button.

To unblock a member, enter their email address and click the Unblock Member button.

To delete a member 

To delete a member from your site, enter their email address and click the Delete Member button.

Members profile 

The member profiles can be called up at the following address:

http://www.mysite.com/profiles/

You will only see an email address displayed on the profiles page if you are logged in as a managing editor. Other members and visitors can click the envelope icon on the page to send an email using a form on the site.

Members list 

You can view a list of all members of your Manila site using the members list stats page at the following address:

http://www.mysite.com/stats/members/

To block or un-block a member 

1. Make sure you're logged on as the managing editor of your site.

2. Go to your site's member list page. Its URL is your site's URL plus stats/members. For example if your site is at http://www.mysite.com/ then your member list page is at http://www.mysite.com/stats/members

3. Check the box next to the name of the member you want to block or unblock, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the Block Member or Un-block Member button.

Blocked members are listed with the word "blocked" in the member list.

You can block or un-block multiple members at the same time by checking the box next to each member, and then clicking the appropriate button at the bottom of the page.

To delete a member 

1. Make sure you're logged on as the managing editor of your site.

2. Go to your site's member list page.

3. Check the box next to the name of the member you want to delete, and click the Delete Member button at the bottom of the page.

4. In the confirmation page that loads, make sure that the correct member is listed, and click the Delete button to confirm, or the Cancel button to return to the member list.



Bulletins 


Bulletins provide an easy method for a Managing Editor to send email to Members. When people sign up as Members of a Manila site, they choose whether to receive Bulletins and whether they want the plain text or HTML version. Manila has a simple Web interface to create, preview and send a Bulletin, and a way to check the recipients.

Steps 

1. Click the Bulletins link in the Editors Only menu at the top of the page.

2. Enter the Subject and Text information.

3. Click the Preview button to see what the plain text and HTML Bulletins will look like.

4. Click the Edit button to change the Bulletin content, or click the Send button to send it.

Advanced 

You can pre-populate the subject and text fields with the Title and Description of a news item, or the Subject and Body/Text of any discussion group message (stories and pictures included) by adding the message number to the URL for the bulletins page.

For example if your site is at http://www.mysite.com/ and you want to send the contents of News Item 23 as a bulletin, go to:

http://www.mysite.com/bulletins/?msgnum=23

Then Preview or Send just like you would with any other bulletin created from scratch.



Site Structure 


The Site Structure area is where you can create a kind of map between virtual folders or files and actual Messages. This feature can be used to complement Manila's built-in system for assigning URLs to Stories, Message and Pictures.

Standard Manila URLs look like these:

• http://yourdomain.com/discuss/msgReader$123
• http://yourdomain.com/stories/storyReader$123
• http://yourdomain.com/pictures/viewer$123

Redirects 

A Simple Example 

<hierarchy>
<story pathname="faq" msgNum="3"/>
<story pathname="feedback" msgNum="2"/>
</hierarchy>

• If a browser asks for "/faq", show Message number 3
• If a browser asks for "/feedback", show Message number 2

• http://192.168.0.1/faq (display Message number 3 as a Story)
• http://192.168.0.1/feedback (display Message number 2 as a Story)

Site Structure XML 

• <story>
• <category>
• <description>

<story name="abc" pathname="def" msgnum="xyz"/>

• name Optional text describing the Story (with or without spaces)
• pathname The virtual name of the Story (no spaces, with or without an extension such as ".html")
• msgnum The number of the Message to display (Story or Picture)

<category name="abc" pathname="def" msgnum="xyz">
...
</category>

• name Optional text describing the Category (with or without spaces)
• pathname The virtual name of the Category (no spaces)
• msgnum The optional number of the Message (Story or Picture) to display as a default page for the folder

<story name="abc" pathname="def" msgnum="xyz">
<description>
This is a great story!
</description>
</story>

Reserved Names 

• 2002 (and any other past calendar year the site was in use)
• accessControl
• admin
• aggregator
• bulletins
• comments
• default
• directory
• discuss
• downloadDiscussTheme
• downloadMySite
• downloadTheme
• editHomePage
• faq
• feedback
• gems
• mail
• member
• newsItems
• picture
• pictures
• prefs
• profiles
• random
• search
• slides
• stats
• stories
• wap
• xml

XML Syntax Errors 

Syndicating your home page 

Syndicating your discussion group 

Site News Aggregator 

Robots.txt 

Site access restrictions 

How to 

Notes 

Searching a site 

Steps 

searchThisSite macro 

How to call it 

Static rendering of your site 

Why static rendering? 

What gets rendered 

Static rendering preferences 

Rendering an entire site 

Workflow 

Render this Page 

More about automatic rendering 

Posting a Gem 

How to post a gem 

How to link to a gem 

Notes 

Mail-to-Weblog 

Print-Friendly versions of Manila pages 

Using Radio with your Manila site 

Editors Only site 

Custody 

Checked Out Items 

Downloading a copy of your Manila site 

local (f = "Macintosh HD:Desktop Folder:MySite.root")


	file.setType (f, 'TABL')


	file.setCreator (f, 'LAND')

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Server Administration 

Frontier Admin website 

Site-level administrative pages 

Getting updates to Frontier and Manila 

Reviewing new updates 

Major versions 

Backups 

Server maintenance 

Compacting root files 

Tip 

Log and backup files 

Backups 

Flipping the Manila Sites Database 

Membership 

Sharing a membership group 

Steps 

Existing sites 

How it works 

See also 

Hosting 

Who can create new sites 

Top-level sites and sub-sites 

Shared membership 

Create new site in a database named 

New site defaults 

News Items sites 

Setting up additional hosting sites 

Static rendering 

Static pictures 

Enabling Static Pictures 

Try it out 

Gems 

Configuring the Gems feature 

Three options 

Serving Gems from a sub-folder of your website. 

Serving Gems using a virtual domain 

Serving gems using a server other than Frontier 

Per-site gems settings 

Notes 

Domains 

Adding a domain 

See also 

Security 

Admin security level 

Directory and Script Listings 

Blocking HTTP requests 

Membership 

Themes 

About theme files 

config.manila.themes 

Disabling a theme 

The Default theme 

manilaData.themes 

Creating a theme 

HTTP logging 

Steps 

Logging to a text file 

Customization 

Managing plug-ins 

Legal Macros 

See also 

Database Subscriptions 

Home page updates and most-read sites 

MIME Types 

How to add, edit or delete MIME type entries 

keepFrontierRunning 

You can find the flaunch.exe and keepFrontierRunning.sit files in the \Extras\keepFrontierRunning\ sub-folder of the Frontier folder.

To create a script in the user.scheduler.everyMinute table, choose Main->Jump.

Enter user.scheduler.everyMinute and click OK.

Choose Table->New Script. Enter "keepFrontierRunning" for the script name and click OK.

Paste the code for the script and then click the Compile button.

On Windows, you know the script is running properly after one minute by checking that a flaunch.exe is running in Task Manager and Frontier should automatically relaunch if you quit out of Frontier. If you need to temporarily disable Frontier fron automatically relaunching, you should end the flaunch.exe task from Task manager. flaunch.exe on Windows

In the keepFrontierRunning sub-folder is a Windows application, flaunch.exe. It's a faceless app that checks periodically to see if Frontier is running, if it's not, it launches it. With this app running, you can safely call fileMenu.quit, from a scheduled script, to cause Frontier to restart periodically.

Here's a script that runs from the user.scheduler.everyMinute table. It quits after 10,000 hits, and only when the server isn't busy executing hourly tasks or serving users. The basic design is to get Frontier to quit when it's not especially busy. No doubt more sophisticated algorithms are possible.

if system.environment.isWindows //make sure the flaunch app is running
	if not sys.appisrunning ("flaunch.exe") 
		local (frontierPath = Frontier.getProgramPath ())
		local (frontierFolder = file.folderFromPath (frontierPath))
		local (flaunchPath = frontierFolder + "Extras\\keepFrontierRunning\\Windows\\flaunch.exe")
		launch.appWithDocument (flaunchPath, frontierPath)

		
if user.webserver.stats.hits > 10000
	if Frontier.countThreads () < 10
		local (day, month, year, hour, minute, second)
		date.get (clock.now (), @day, @month, @year, @hour, @minute, @second)
		if minute != 0 //don't quit while hourly tasks are running
			filemenu.save ()
			filemenu.quit ()

It's a very simple AppleScript that, once every 10 seconds, checks to see if Frontier is running. If not, it launches it.

Here's a script that runs from the user.scheduler.everyMinute table. It quits after 10,000 hits, and only when the server isn't busy executing hourly tasks or serving users. The basic design is to get Frontier to quit when it's not especially busy. No doubt more sophisticated algorithms are possible.

if user.webserver.stats.hits > 10000
	if Frontier.countThreads () < 10
		local (day, month, year, hour, minute, second)
		date.get (clock.now (), @day, @month, @year, @hour, @minute, @second)
		if minute != 0 //don't quit while hourly tasks are running
			filemenu.save ()
			filemenu.quit ()

Using Frontier alongside other web servers 

Use separate computers 

Use separate ports 

Serve static sites with Manila 

Windows and IIS 

Mac OS X and Apache 

Flipping the Manila Sites Database 

Create a new database 

Edit your Manila hosting prefs 

Test 

Moving a Manila website 

Manage site page 

Manual method 

Find your website's table 

Un-install the website 

Copy the website to its new location 

Re-install the website 

Deleting a Manila website 

Notes 

Customizing Manila 

Frontier and IIS, 2 IP Addresses (Windows) 

cscript adsutil.vbs set w3svc/disablesocketpooling true

disablesocketpooling : (BOOLEAN) True

Frontier and Apache, 2 IP Addresses (MacOS X) 

Steps to setup 

Revision 

New method 

Steps 

Notes 

Troubleshooting 

Migrating Frontier from Mac Classic to MacOS X 

Note 

Instructions 

Notes 

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Advanced Features 

Search Engine 

Turning on the server 

ServerMonitor 

How to add a server 

Radio Community Server 

WebEdit 

Managing the WebEdit server 

Using WebEdit 

How to make the WebEdit menu permanent 

The #webEditServer attribute 

Getting an object from the server 

Checking out an object 

Checking in an object 

Send To Server 

Other commands 

Guest databases 

Change note dialog 

WebEdit callbacks 

on testCallback (adrObject, username, time, extraCallbackInfo)
		local (pta)
		pta = parentOf (code)
		temp.params = pta^
		return (true)

Client verbs 

Notes 

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Troubleshooting 

Referer error 

Can't login to a site 

Restore default template 

Reset webmaster password for Frontier Admin site 

Buttons not appearing in the WYSIWYG editor 

Troubleshooting server performance 

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Reference 

Programming pointers 

Known Issues 

Text-editing cheat sheet