Noticeboard & Weblog

A Weblog (sometimes called a web log or a blog) is an online diary where you can record thoughts, ideas and news, and communicate them to your users, who can comment on them if they wish. This provides an ongoing narrative of what you or your group are doing.

The most recent posts are shown on the front page of the weblog, and there are links to find older items in the archive.

You can configure the permissions to allow your members to be able to add posts to your blog too. For more details see Permissions below.

Note: the Noticeboard and Weblog applications are identical to one another. This allows you, for example, to configure your Weblog to allow all your members to share news and information, and configure your Noticeboard so that only the administrators can add messages. This document covers the use of both applications. For clarity this document always refers to Weblog, though the same instructions all apply to Noticeboard.

To enable the application, go to the Content Management tab of the administration pages, then go to the Applications page, and click the Enable button next to Weblog (or Noticeboard). Once enabled, you can get to the administration pages for the application in one of two ways:

  1. Click Manage Weblog on the public pages of the application on your website (you must be logged in as the administrator to see the button).
  2. From within the administration pages for the website, go to the Content Management tab, and click on Weblog in the Site Map.

Adding an Entry

  • Go to either the public or administration pages of the application.
  • Click Add Weblog Entry.
  • Enter a title for your entry.
  • If your entry is related to a web page, then you can add the address of that page to the Title URL. Include the http:// part.
  • Add the content of your weblog entry.
  • Set the date for the weblog entry using the correct format. Clicking Set to now resets the given date to today's date and time.
  • Decide whether you want to publish the entry or save it as a draft. Publishing the entry will add it to your website and it will visible to the public. Saving it as draft will store it so you can edit it further and publish it in future.
  • Click OK.

Administering Entries

If you are logged in as the administrator, you can administer any entries by finding the entry on the weblog page and using the buttons Edit and Delete. You will also be able to see unpublished items in the list (though normal visitors will not). You can click on Publish to make the entry visible to everyone. Clicking Unpublish will hide a post from normal visitors.

Anyone with Edit permission on the application can add new entries, and they can also edit, publish, and delete their own entries. They cannot edit, delete, or publish anyone else's entries.

Comments

Members of your site can comment on entries. To do this go to the entry by clicking on the title, and click the Add comment button.

Administrators can edit or delete comments if they are unsuitable.

The Archive

The most recent entries are shown on the front page of the weblog. Older entries disappear off the bottom, but can always be found again by using the calendar widget on the right of the screen. Simply select the month or day that you wish to view, and the relevant entries will be displayed.

Notifications

Registered users can sign up for an email notification whenever you publish an entry. To do this they click on the request email notification link in the Notifications section of the front page of the application.

Once registered, they can unsubscribe from notifications by clicking on unsubscribe in the Notifications section of the application.

RSS Feed

All published entries are available as an RSS Feed by clicking the icon on the application's front page. This allows users with RSS readers to subscribe to your weblog and be updated as soon as you publish a new entry. For more detail on feeds, try one of these sources:

Advanced Administration

The administration page for the application contains the following entries which are useful for more advanced administration:

Add weblog/noticeboard entry - This adds a new entry, and works as described above.

Bookmarklet - You can add the bookmarklet link to your bookmarks menu, or drag it to your browser's bookmarks bar if you have one.
Then whenever you are browsing any page on the web, you can select some text from the page and click the bookmark to automatically add an entry about it.

Related links - Use this to add links to the front page of your weblog. They will appear in the Related Links section of the page.

View draft entries - Shows a table listing all unpublished entries. From here you can choose to publish or delete the entries.

Show email subscriptions - Lists all users who have signed up for email notifications. See Notifications above.

Manage your ping URLs - Allows you to configure URLs which will automatically be informed ("pinged") when you add a new entry. Some sites use this information to maintain an index of recently updated weblogs.

Permissions

To configure the permissions, go to the administration pages for your website, select the Content Management tab, and then the Applications page. Click the Permissions button next to the application in the list. For further details of how to use Permissions, see the Permissions section of the manual.

  • Users with Edit permission can add entries , and can edit and delete the entries that they have added.
    They cannot edit entries that other people have added.
  • Users with Admin permission can manage all entries, and access the Advanced Administration features.
  • Members of your site can comment on entries, and administrators can edit and delete those comments.