Developer/User's Guide For Package Enhanced News
by
Lin Chen
This is a document for how to use package Enhanced News. It includes
the following topics:
I. What's new
The Enhanced News package is an ACS 3.4 package, and it replaces the ACS3.4
News module. This package is for managing news items at a newsgroup level.
Compared to the previous News module, this package provides more control for admin and regular users. For example, enhanced features include:
setting approval policy at newsgroup level, enabling/disabling newsgroups, etc.
- Newsgroup
A newsgroup can just be a group of users. There are three special newsgroups:
public, all users and registered users. Each new item belongs to a newsgroup.
It can be viewed by members of the newsgroup. The news items belong to public
newsgroup can be viewed by everyone; the news items belong to registered users
newsgroup can be viewed by registered users only. "all users" newsgroup is
there because of historical value, but will not be used. If a newsgroup is an ACS
user group, then the news items are viewable to all members of that user
group.
- Approval Policy
Each newsgroup has it's own approval policy, which can be open, wait or
closed. Open means members of the newsgroup can post anything. Wait means
members of the newsgroup can suggest news items, which will be subject to approval from
newsgroup admins.
- Enable/disable a Newsgroup
If a newsgroup is disabled, then the news items are not displayed in the user
page. Nobody can post or suggest any item under this condition. Admins can enable or
disable newsgroups.
- Notify Admin on New Items?
This setting only makes sense when approval policy is wait. When a user
suggests a news item, if this setting is true, then an e-mail is sent to
admin member.
- Admin Group for Newsgroups
Each newsgroup may have an admin group. All members of the admin group are
the admins for the newsgroup. If no admin group is specified, then the group
admins (members of the newsgroup with administor role) become the admins
for the newsgroup. If there is no group admin, then the newsgroup
doesn't have any admins. In this case, the approval policy can only be open.
The site-wide administrators can change the settings for any newsgroups. But
the news administrators can only changed the settings of the newsgroups they
administer. For details on how to administer, please refer to the
corresponding sections.
Top
II. Administer as a Site-wide Admin
URL: /admin/news
On this page, all enabled newsgroups are listed.
- To see all newsgroups including disabled ones
Click on "all" link under Newsgroups in the middle at top part of the
page.
- To change the approval policy or other settings of a newsgroups
Click on the toggle link for that newsgroup. Or click on the "Edit" link of
that newsgroup to see the edit page.
- To view/edit admins for a newsgroup
Click on the "add" or "edit" link under "Admin Group" column.
- To add a newsgroup
Click on the "Add a Newsgroup" link at top right corner or at the bottom of
the page.
- To approve/reject/add news items
Go to the sub-site news admin page by clicking on "Administer Newsgroups"
link at the top right corner or type in the url directly "/news/admin".
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III. Administer as a Newsgroup Admin
URL: /news/admin.
This page is also linked from user's
index page /news if the logged in user is an admin as well.
- To approve pending items
All items waiting for approval are display in a list near the top
part of the page. To approve an item, simply click on the "approve" link.
- To reject/approve any items
Click on the link following the item.
- To change the dates or contents of an item
Click on the edit link following the item.
- To change the settings of a newsgroups
At the very top, there is an ad_table listing all newsgroups this
amdin administers. To change the settings, just click on the toggle link.
- To post an item
In the ad_table at top, there is an "add an item" link for each newsgroup.
Clicking on this link will take the user to the post-new page, with
newsgroup pre-selected.
- To delete an item
There is no delete link. But expire an item can make it disappear from /news
page. Click on edit link by the item and change the expiration date to a
past date. Or simply disapprove the item by clicking on revoke link.
- To re-activate an expired item
First go to "expired news" page by clicking on the link at top right corner.
Then find the item you want to re-ativate and click on the edit link to
change the expiration date to a future date. Make sure it's in approved
state so it will not show on page /news/index.
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IV. User's Guide
URL: /news
All current and active items the user is entitled to see are listed.
- To view the details of an news item
Click on the title will take you to the details page.
- To view an older item
Try "expired news" page by clicking on the link at top right corner or at the
bottom.
- To post/suggest an item
If you are authorized to post or suggest to any newsgroups, then you will see
a link at top right corner. Clicking on it will take you to the page. All
newsgroups you can post/suggest are listed in the select box.
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V. Revision History
lin@arsdigita.com
