Arch Linux

_Vector_

Member

Registered: 2009-11-01

Posts: 4

Publish articles, edit articles, help new Linux users

Firstly, i apologize if this is in the wrong forum category. I've been procrastinating on this for a while now, because i do not quite have my system complete; but this feature has been usable for a long time now, and i guess that i can start letting others use it...

Anyway, i have http://LinuxIntro.com which is (obviously) a Linux and open source software oriented website. I am too damned busy to keep up with creating new articles, and updating out of date articles, and exploring new areas of Linux and Open Source software to educate myself enough to make articles for others to learn it.

I have been running my unfinished Content Management System on this site (and on my political reform website, that is likewise falling into a state of neglect for the same reasons), and noticed that many others are trying to assist the open source movement by publishing their own articles on their own little home pages, or blogs.

So now it is a community content management system; a hybrid between a wiki, a blog, and a high-end commercial CMS. It allows users who have any at least Level 1 privileges (normal 'users' are level 0) to publish articles and edit articles (even if they did not create it, as sometimes another user may have more experience, and thus more useful information to add to an existing article), and for users with Level 2 privileges to move articles and upload images, and for users with Level 3 (highest you can be) privileges to delete articles and to delete images.

I don't have any publishing guidelines written yet, but for the most part it is common sense. All articles must be filed in the appropriate category (just try your best, and at worst i will just move it to the correct category), and limit only 1 video per article page (articles can have many pages).

When you log in, you can click on "Account" and then "My Website" to enter your own website address for others to see. When a user reads an article you've written, they can click on your name below the article, and see your profile, which will display anything you want to share (website, bio, interests, etc). If you publish an article, you are not limited to keeping it only on Linux Intro. You can publish it on your own site, or any other site; however you cannot delete it, as others may have made a contribution to your article, and that would not be fair to them. You can add YOUR VERY OWN you tube videos that you already have, or any new ones that you make; just remember 1 video per page. Also, if you DO post a video with your article, make sure that what you do and say in the video is typed out in the article's paragraphs. This is not a video site, and so textual content is mandatory for articles; also text is accessible and video is not, so i try to adhere to 801 standards as much as possible (or practicable).

For the record, in case anyone is wondering, this is NOT an attempt to 'steal users' from this website. It is only an attempt to create a more user-engaged, comprehensive, and in-depth informational material for new Linux and Open Source users to benefit from; and to make it MUCH easier to publish content.

Oh, almost forgot, if you have been a member of this forum for longer than 4 months, and have over 200 posts, PM me HERE with your Linux Intro user name, and i will raise your security clearance on Linux Intro so that you can publish articles (otherwise you're only a user). If you already have a moderator/maintainer/admin status here on this forum, then PM me HERE with your user name on Linux Intro and i will raise your security level on Linux Intro.

I know that the site may still look like crap, but i'm about to redesign it again to look much more clean (like i just did with http://Ionisis.com) and presentable. I am brainstorming for ideas atm, and should begin with a new design tomorrow.

Also, if you do not find an appropriate category for your article, then feel free to suggest one; but i believe that i have a fairly comprehensive --yet still generalized-- list to choose from. And please do let me know what you think about this system.

Try to remember that "articles" are not the same as "article pages". An article is an object that is independent from its pages, and has a parent-children --or one-to-many relationship with its pages. You publish the ARTICLE's details, like its title, keywords, and description, and THEN you publish any/all of the pages that belong to that article. You can completely ignore the "previous" and "next" options, as the system takes care of pagination automatically; those are for advanced use, namely, chainlinking disparate articles together (the end of one article leading to the beginning of another).

I have also made a test category for hackers to publish and attempt to hack/destroy/modify-without-permission articles in. If you want to try to hack the site, please do, but if you believe that your hack may result in data loss, then try to limit it to the hacking category so that it is not 'good data'. And, obviously, if you are able to hack this site in any way, please let me know how you did it.

Enjoy, and please do give feedback!

jac

Member

From: /home/jac

Registered: 2009-05-19

Posts: 431

Website

Re: Publish articles, edit articles, help new Linux users

I have not looked at it much yet, but the first thing I notice is that you say "Linux Operating System" If you're trying to educate new users, they should know that Linux is not an OS, and that they would be installing something based on Linux, most likely GNU/Linux.

Edit: The other thing that I noticed quite a few instances of as I was flipping through articles is that you failed to capitalize "I" and "I'm." I'm just picky about the English language

Last edited by jac (2009-11-01 11:07:26)

_Vector_

Member

Registered: 2009-11-01

Posts: 4

Re: Publish articles, edit articles, help new Linux users

HA! And that is why users like you are valuable . That is true, i should make clear early on that it is GNU/Linux systems. As you've noticed i've always had a problem with capitalized the word "i", unless it is the beginning of a sentence. I just never feel that it deserves the capitalization. Would you believe that i am otherwise anal retentive about being grammatically correct?

jac

Member

From: /home/jac

Registered: 2009-05-19

Posts: 431

Website

Re: Publish articles, edit articles, help new Linux users

Well, I registered! One other thing that I noticed is that I have seen nowhere that you have stated what license the documents are under. You should make that really clear, probably in the TOS at least. It does seem that you have most everything else used properly, especially some rather rare punctuation

[Oh, and you say that Firefox is the most customizable? I say Uzbl is (actually, any open source browser is, but Uzbl lends itself more easily to customizability)]

Edit: Gah! You're account activation email is in HTML! I use the recommended mail service provider, but I use mutt to view all of my mail. Terminal mail clients usually don't mesh well with a lot of HTML

Last edited by jac (2009-11-01 11:33:19)

_Vector_

Member

Registered: 2009-11-01

Posts: 4

Re: Publish articles, edit articles, help new Linux users

Oh, i never thought of giving users the options of selecting plain text emails. I will have to put that in my to-do list over at eInformationOrgnizer.com (one of my other sites).... Anyway, i just made you a Level 1 (you're obviously not a spammer), so you can write about any Linux or Open Source software related topic you want. Just let me know if you get stuck on how to do it. I may be going to bed soon, so i may not reply after about 1 hour or so.

jac

Member

From: /home/jac

Registered: 2009-05-19

Posts: 431

Website

Re: Publish articles, edit articles, help new Linux users

Ah, thanks, it would have taken me a while to get up to the acceptable post count Hopefully I'll get some time soon to write an article or something, post on the forum something. The forums seem really all-encompassing you could run into problems with the eventually. I really hope it'll get big enough for it to be a problem. The things I'm thinking about though are the facts that most if not all distributions already have their own forums and wikis and such, so I'm guessing most people will prefer to contribute more directly to their community. It could help that you have video tutorials though, for new users as that is who you're targeting. That sounds like a really good idea for the majority of beginners.

Oh, I like the new design, by the way.

Edit: Wow, first off, I should look more before I speak. You have a wide range of topics, but maybe you don't go quite as deep as I was thinking. I mean, you don't even have Arch listed under distros! It's more of a community that would want to stay whole though, I think.

Last edited by jac (2009-11-02 23:28:27)

_Vector_

Member

Registered: 2009-11-01

Posts: 4

Re: Publish articles, edit articles, help new Linux users

Well the forums there are actually not meant to take the place of other forums like this. The forums there serve a slightly different, and less obvious purpose. You see, if someone joined the website, there would be no way to know what kind of person they are without having forums for them to show their character, so it would be insane to give them any kind of administrative access to public content. Also, the forums were originally meant to assist users who had questions about the tutorials on the site. I used to have it so that at the bottom of each tutorial was a link to the appropriate forum category for it; but because i modularized my WCMS and UFMS to accommodate clients who may want one and not the other, i broke that tie.

However, if someone wanted to write an article for Arch, or post a question about Arch, then they could send me a PM on the site (or any other means, i suppose), and i could add that category in a few seconds (it's all dynamic, almost nothing in my IMS systems are static).

Oh, and thanks about the design. It's a bit grunge, as this site caters to that crowd. Face it, even us IT Geeks don't like the 'suit-and-tie' attitude. I may change it a bit more later, one of my girlfriends said she hated the background (but i like it) . I was primarily concerned with getting rid of the "Tron" theme that i had, and make it more user friendly asap, and the fine tuning can (and will have to) wait.

Last edited by _Vector_ (2009-11-03 00:26:13)