Introduction to Article Manager
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The ArticleManager module lets you create dynamic web articles that display your site's content the way -you- want it to be displayed!

FEATURES
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Custom articles - each section can look completely different
Define your own article and section templates
Admins can allow/deny ability to display external pages in an embedded frame
Users can add comments to your article
Users can view a list of the articles that they have created
Articles keep track of how many times they've been viewed
Articles can be set to start showing at a future date
Articles can expire on specified dates
Articles can be viewed in summary format with a link to the full article
MULTI-ARTICLE STORIES with automatic navigation controls!
Optimization: Images are stored in multiple directories for faster access
A library of approved images can be easily maintained
Images can be clickable links with alternate text and photo captions
Expired articles can be accessed from a list and re-activated
Module settings are easily changeable
User-submitted articles can require approval before activation
"Also on this site.." Block
"Previous n Articles" Block
"Most Popular Articles" Block
Articles can be set to not show up in the homepage summary listings
Articles can be assigned to topic categories
All of your old Announcements &amp; PageMaster Module content can be imported
Automatic rerouting of old mod.php, Announcements &amp; PageMaster links
Display a printable version
Nothing is saved to disk until you hit "Save Page"
"Edit Locking" - Only 1 user can edit a page at a time
A "News" page that displays all articles
An "Archives" page that lists all articles created or updated on a certain day, month or year.  Perfect for blogs!
Articles can generate customized webpage metatags
You can edit "keywords" and "robots" metatags.  
"Email A Friend"
Article revision tracking & management.
Support for auomatic posting via JustBlogIt! (http://blog.warmbrain.com/justblogit/)
NEW FEATURE! Support for offline blog editing tools via XML-RPC and the MetaWebLog and Movable Type APIs.


THE MAIN MENU
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The main menu is the nerve center of the entire module. It allows you to do four basic tasks -- list articles, create a new article, change Article Manager configuration settings and manage the Image Library.

LIST ARTICLES:
Here you can choose to view all approved articles on the site or just your articles ordered by Title or by the date of creation, publication, expiration, or the last update. This list can be viewed in ascending or descending order.

Each article in the listing is accompanied by buttons allowing you to set it as the homepage, edit it, delete it, or immediately publish or expire it. Of course buttons or options can only be seen if you are authorized to use them.

CREATE A NEW ARTICLE:
See the next section "CREATING & EDITING ARTICLES".

CHANGE CONFIGURATION SETTINGS:
We've made module customization easier for you by allowing you to change the following default settings:

    The default page template
    The default section template
    The # of summaries that show up on the Home Page
    The # of summaries that show up on article summary listings
    The # of article listings that show up under the main menu
    Whether articles need approval before publication
    Whether articles can expire on a predefined date
    Default expiration date offsets (years, months, days)
    How many years in advance publication dates can be set
    Uploaded image size limits (filesize, height, width)

Administrators can also decide whether users can:

    upload images
    include images in articles
    add comments to articles
    post comments without registering (Anonymous)
    create new articles
    edit/delete any, all, or just their own articles
    choose when their articles expire
    publish articles without admin approval
    change the module configuration
    Image Library Management
    Instead of taking the security risk of allowing users to upload images to the server, admin-approved images can be stored in and selected from the Image Library.

After an image is uploaded to the library using the "Image Library Management" interface, it will appear on the list underneath that also gives you the opportunity to delete existing pictures.



CREATING & EDITING ARTICLES
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Articles are basically made up of a title, article summary, and sections. Other information found on the article can include information on the author and the date created or edited.

TITLE:
All articles need titles! Enter one here.


SUMMARY:
Type in a SHORT description of the article here. When a list of articles is shown on the site, this will be displayed as a teaser to get the user to read more.


SECTIONS:
This is the meat of the article. A article can contain as few or as many sections as you like. When you create or start editing a article, all currently save sections are displayed as finished. After each section you will see buttons to edit that section or to move the section above or below its neighbors.  See "Editing Sections" below for more information.

Near the bottom of the article a new blank section is created for you with its own "Save" button. See "Editing Sections" for a description of how they work.

CONFIGURATION OPTIONS:
Allow Comments:
Whether users can add discussion or comments to this article

Allow Anonymous Comments:
Whether unregistered user can add comments (NOT RECOMMENDED!)

Publication Date:
A story can only be viewable on the site after it is published. You don't need to change this value. It is automatically set to the date this story was created. If you want this story to be invisible until a future date, then you can set it here.

Expiration Date:
A story can only remain on the site until it expires. You don't need to change this value. The site administrator has set a default period before stories expire. If you want this story to be deleted before or after this date, then you can set it here.

Category:
The topic categories that this article falls under.  If this article is assigned to a category, ArticleManager can then work with other phpWebsite modules to group related articles together and give interested users suggestions on other articles to surf.

Keywords for this article:
Enter keywords for this article, separated by commas. When this article is shown, these keywords will automatically be added to the site-wide keyword metatag to aid Search Engines in indexing this page.
  example: "help,keywords,metatags,search engine,optimization"

Search Engine instructions (for Administrators only):
Select the instructions that you want search engine spiders to follow when they see this page.  Select "Default Settings" if you're not sure which to pick.  This option will use the site-wide setting selected in "Layout"


ARTICLE INFORMATION:
NOTE -- These items are not editable.
Created By: Who created the article
Updated By: the last person to edit the article
Created On: When the article was created
Updated On: When the article was last edited

Save Article:
Click this button when you're finished editing. If all information was entered in correctly, you'll be taken back to the main menu.
Creating & Editing Sections
Each section consists of a title and text (and sometimes an image). You can think of the title of a section as a subtitle of the article. Whenever you start editing a article or save a section, a new one is created for you.

START ON NEW PAGE:
This option enables multi-article stories. When enabled, this section will be the first of a new page.



EDITING SECTIONS
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TITLE:
Not necessary, but recommended. Enter the section title here.

TEXT:
Type in the section's text here. I'm not sure if there is a limit to how much text you can put here, but if you hit it, you'll know. Above this entry box is a text formatting bar that you can use to add html formatting to your text. You'll at least need to use the "new line" button to create line breaks.

IMAGE:
If you already added an image to this section, it's displayed here. If you are authorized, you will be given the options of uploading an image or selecting an existing image to display.

UPLOAD A NEW IMAGE:
This lets you upload an image that will be associated with this section. If you choose to use an image, you must also add a Short Image Description.

SELECT AN IMAGE FROM THE LIBRARY:
This site maintains a library of pre-approved images to use as an alternative to making, optimizing and uploading custom images. Just select the image you want to be associated with this section. If you choose to use an image, you must also add a Short Image Description.

ALTERNATE TEXT (Short Image Description):
REQUIRED! Enter a short description of the image that will display if a browser can't or won't show the image.

LINK:
Putting a link URL in here will turn the image into a clickable link.

LINK (PHOTO) CAPTION:
Sometimes you might want some text to appear above or below the image (eq: Photo Credits). Enter that text here.

CONFIGURATION OPTIONS:
Start on New Article: Whether this section starts a new article. See "MAKING MULTIPLE-ARTICLE STORIES".
Template : Choose a display format for this section.

SAVE SECTION:
Click this button when you're finished editing. If all information was entered in correctly, the article will re-display with the section in its proper place.
Note: If you are creating a new article with just one section, you will instead see a button marked "Add a new Section".  You don't have to click it.  Just select "Save Page", and the sections will be automatically saved.


WHAT ARE TEMPLATES?
Each section can be displayed in a different way -- with an image on the left, right, above the text, with a different-colored title, or even with all the text centered on the article! This is all controlled by templates that the administrator creates. All you have to do is select which display format you want to use for this section. If you want to read about creating or changing templates, see TEMPLATES.TXT.


MAKING MULTIPLE-ARTICLE STORIES
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Although webarticle content should always be as short and concise as possible, sometimes your article needs to be spread across more that one article. Usually when this happens we create several similarly-titled articles with links to related content:

        How to Plan a Party: Getting Started
        How to Plan a Party: Choosing the Place
        How to Plan a Party: Picking the Music
        How to Plan a Party: Get the Word Out
        How to Plan a Party: Collect the Cash!
        Lease Negotiation Tactics
        How to get a DJ
        Advertisement Media Effectiveness Statistics

Problem is, for each one of the "Planning the Party" articles, we have to create links to 4 other articles! What happens if we add a article? We have to add & change links in 6 articles!

ENTER ARTICLEMANAGER!
Whenever you want a section to start on a new page, just check the "Start on new page" box. ArticleManager will automagically divide your story into pages when it's displayed on your site. Each page's title will be the title of the first section on that page. So now your list of pages looks like this:

        How to Plan a Party
        Lease Negotiation Tactics
        How to get a DJ
        Advertisement Media Effectiveness Statistics

and when you click on "How to Plan a Party", the bottom of the pages will look like this:


                Previous Page                            Next Page

                                Page 1: Getting Started
                                Page 2: Choosing the Place
                                Page 3: Picking the Music
                                Page 4: Get the Word Out
                                Page 5: Collect the Cash!

Since this is all basically one article, they will all have the same link (example:www.yoursite.com/index.php ?module=articlemanager &ART[view:article:2]). However, if you want to link directly to page 4 just add"&page_num=4" to the end of the url so it looks like this: www.yoursite.com/index.php ?module=articlemanager &ART[view:article:2]&page_num=4

If you click the Print Icon, the ENTIRE story will print out. Not just the current page.

COOL TIP!
If you want to see the entire article on one webpage, change the url to &page_num=all


MOST-USED URL EXTENSIONS
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Listing of all articles:
  index.php?module=article&view=news

Listing of all articles except those summarized on the homepage (like an "additional articles" page):
  index.php?module=article&view=news&show=more

Create (Submit) a new article:
  index.php?module=article&edit=create

Access Image Library:
  index.php?module=article&config=image_library

Main Menu:
  index.php?module=article&disp=main_menu
  
To control the type and order of articles that show up, use:
  index.php?module=article&LIST_group=All&LIST_sort=created_date&LIST_order=DESC

  where LIST_group may be "All" or "MY"
  
  LIST_sort may be "title", "publication_date", "expiration_date", "created_date", or "updated_date"
  
  and LIST_order may be "ASC" or "DESC"

To see all articles for a specific day, enter
  http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?module=article&view=archives&year=2003&month=8&day=27

To see all articles for a specific month, enter
  http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?module=article&view=archives&year=2003&month=8

To see all articles for a specific year, enter
  http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?module=article&view=archives&year=2003
  
NOTE: The above links will show currently viewable articles published on these dates.  
If you want to see the articles created or updated on these dates, add "&datetype=created_date" or "&datetype=updated_date" to the link.
If you want to see ALL (expired and unexpired) articles,  add "&all=1" to the link.


CREATING & EDITING ARTICLES USING BLOG TOOLS
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JUSTBLOGIT!

Articles can be automatically created via JustBlogIt! (http://blog.warmbrain.com/justblogit/).

JustBlogIt! is a Mozilla / Firefox extension to allow easy right-click posting to a weblog. From any website your new article is only a right-click away.  A new window pops up with an article editing screen all ready for you.  Whatever text you've selected on the webpage you were on is automatically pasted into the summary, as well as a link to that page.  The title of the webpage is also pasted into the article's title.

You set up JustBlogIt! to access your site by selecting the "Custom" weblog type on the Options Screen, and then entering the following line in the the "Full custom blog post URL" textbox:
http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?module=article&edit=create&title=%TITLE%&summary=%TEXT%&url=%URL%

For security purposes, JustBlogIt! will not log in for you.  You must log in to your site before you start using JustBlogIt!.


OTHER BLOGGING TOOLS

Article Manager uses the XML-RPC API specification to communicate with a broad array of offline blog editing tools.  Blog entries may now be created via either the MetaWeblog API or Movable Type API.

Because of the limitations of the editing tools currently on the market, only 1-section articles can be created, retrieved or edited.

When setting up your offline blog editor to access your site, use the following string in the "page" field:
/sandbox/index.php?module=article&xmlrpc=1