Author malw
Date 25 Oct 08, 11:41
Views 6685 Keywords Description How to use the extended portal system to create a website for your Club/Area/Division etc Article scope easy-Speak information |
The IM Portal |
For the sake of simplicity I shall say 'Club' throughout this article but the same features are available for Areas and Divisions and for events such as Conferences. A single page containing information about each club is available to all clubs, but you may request that you be given the IM portal system which will allow you to create several pages of information and present it in the way that you choose. Explanation of the single 'Welcome' page is given in this article: http://d71.org/kb.php?mode=article&k=94 This article explains how to set up and use the IM portal. Introduction
Each of your blocks may use one of the pre-prepared programs that present information or you may just type your content.
To ease the work of creating your pages the leftmost column (referred to as the page header) may be set to be common across several of your pages.
Access to the portal configuration is provided by two screens within the Club Control Panel.
Page Management - You may use this screen to create additional pages or to change the layout of existing pages. Note that you may change the page selected as default page (which will be shown first to a user that is not logged in)
For each page in your set:
Portal_321 - As portal_body but with header, left AND center columns (60%, 40%). Use with global and page_set headers. Portal_WideR - As portal_body but 250px wide right column 1+2_column - Independant left side header and two equal columns. Set 'Forum wide blocks' to no for this layout. 2_column - Two equal columns. Use with global and page_set headers. 3_column - As Portal body but with an independant left side header. Set 'Forum wide blocks' to no for this layout. 3_columnWideR - As 3_column but with the right column 250px wide instead of 150px. Set 'Forum wide blocks' to no for this layout. Layout1 - One wide column. Use with global and page_set headers. Quad_layout - A wide 'toprow', two equal columns and a wide 'bottomrow'. Use with global and page_set headers. A second choice is to define the header blocks as common across your pageset. Page Set - You cannot change this. Menu Item - Enter a number here to create an item on the menu when your pageset is shown. Menu Line - Enter a number here to create a menu sub-item (in the pull-down) Menu Name - Enter here the words that you want displayed for this page on the menu Meta Description - Enter the description that you would like to see when the Google robot indexes your page Meta Keywords - Enter the keywords to be used by robots indexing your page Blocks Management - This screen defines the individual blocks that will be shown on each page.
For each block you have the following options:
Block Position - Use the pull-down to select one of the positions that are available in the layout for this page. Active - You may set this to 'No' to disable the block but retain it for future use. Content - Content may be created in on of two ways. You may either enter it here (using BB code) or you may select a 'blockfile' - a small program which will collect the content automatically. Some blockfiles require that you make a configuration setting or enter information on this screen. If you select a blockfile any text that you enter here is ignored. A list of blockfiles is included in the next section of this article. Show Border - Show a border around the block Show Titlebar - Show a title bar and display the block title that you entered. If you select 'Bare text' the text from postings will be displayed without ANY titles, borders or background. Show BG - Set this to yes in most cases The following block files are available:
Club News - Fetch a hiererarchy of news begining with the organisational unit that the user is logged in to and working up to District news and finally site-wide news.
Club Welcome - Fetch a hiererarchy of information begining with the organisational unit that the user is logged in to and working up to District and finally site-wide.
Committee
Conference - This blockfile presents Conference News with a link to see the full conference information or post to the Conference Q&A discussion
District - This blockfile is best enabled for the site as a whole and will present all the training or contest events that are planned in the calendar on a single summary page.
E_WOTD - This blockfile presents a javascript Word of The Day with special print options - prepared by Toastmasters at easy-Speak.org. Forum - This blockfile presents recent postings from a forum nominated by the webmaster. FreeRice - This blockfile links to FreeRice.org which offers a vocabulary game and contributes rice to the UN world food program. Help Wanted - This blockfile presents the title and author of recent postings from a forum nominated by the webmaster.
KB Article - This blockfile will import the text for a Knowledgebase article.
Maps2 - This blockfile calculates the positions and presents a Google Earth map showing all the clubs.
Maps - This blockfile calculates the positions and presents a clickable map showing all the clubs in a Division.
Nav_kb - This blockfile displays a list of the top level Knowledgebase categories. Nav_tm - This blockfile displays the TM navigation box.
Newest_pic - This blockfile looks for the most recent picture. If it doesn't find anything specific in the last four months it looks site-wide.
Next_meeting - This blockfile is only meaningful for clubs using easy-Speak data management - it displays details of the next meeting using the javascript demonstrated on the club data page. Next_meetings - This blockfile looks for the next club meetings in the calendar and displays them
Page_welcome - This is a copy of Club Welcome but has a larger font for the titles Online_users - This blockfile displays a list of users that are on-line On This Day - This blockfile presents a link to reference.com for events that happened on the current day. OneLook - This blockfile will search for the entered word in the dictionaries at onelook.com. Pageset - This blockfile displays a navigation box including links to all the pages in a set.
Poll - (Not currently configured) QOTD - This blockfile presents a javascript Quote of The Day from Said-what?. Quote_search - This blockfile presents a searchbox to find quotes on quotationspage.com. Quote - This blockfile presents a quote selected at random from the site quotes file. Recent KB - This blockfile presents the category, title and author of recent updates to the Knowledgebase. Recent Topics - This blockfile presents the forum, title and author of recent postings in the forums.
Search - This blockfile presents a simple forum-search option. Statistics - This blockfile presents a list of site stats. User counts, newest user etc. User - This blockfile presents information for the logged on user.
Web Ring - This blockfile presents the Webring navigation box. Word Search - This blockfile will search for the entered word on dictionary.com, thesaurus.com and reference.com. WOTD - This blockfile presents a javascript Word of The Day from dictionary.com. Yahoo - This blockfile present an HTML page with links to a Yahoo! discussion group. Getting Started Contact the webmaster and ask that your club be set up for the extended portal system. If you have a banner to run across the top of the page you will need to provide it at this stage (1680 x 90 pixels but remember that the right side will not show on low resolution screens and the TI logo will always display on the right) The first step will allow you to create your pages but not make them public.
When you are ready to go live contact the webmaster again. |