Setting Up Your Weblog

We've made it very easy to set up a weblog in Conversant.

(Prerequesite: You must have at least a free site before following the instructions on this page.)

Essentially, all you need to do is create a new page in your site through the structure editor, tell Conversant that you want it to be a weblog, and then assign an owner, template and stylesheet (optional) to it.

First, visit the structure editor in the admin area of your site. Here's an example URL (replace "example" with your site's name, of course):

http://www.free-conversant.com/
   example/
      admin/
         conversations/
            example/
               structure

(The first example is your zone id. The second example is your conversation id. By default, Free-Conversant sites have the same zone ID and conversation ID: it's the "name" you gave your site when it was first set up. This rule does not apply to Conversant in general, but is how we've configured the software on the Free-Conversant server.)

On this page you see (and edit) the structure of your site. On the right, in the box labelled "Pages in example", you can see the pages and folders that you've already added to your site. A newly-created site will only have two lines there: one for the site, and one for the index page.

The part of this page that we're concerned with right now is at the bottom: "Add New Folder or File". In the field next to "Navigation Title," enter the name of your new weblog. Change the popup menu next to "File Type" to Weblog. Click on Add New File.

Now at the top of the page, in the box labelled "Folder Contents", you can see an entry for the new weblog page you've just created. Click on the link, so that you can edit the properties of your new weblog.

There are ten editable preferences for your weblog on this page, starting with the path. There's no need to change that right now, but you should remember it so that you can view your weblog when we're done here. (If you did change it, you'd have moved your weblog to a new location.)

1. The Page Title is just that: it's the title that will show up in the title bar of any browser that looks at your page. The Nav Title is usually a shorter title, which is used for navigation bars (where space is more limited).

2. The Day Template describes the layout of a single day in the weblog. The default works well enough for now, you can edit it later when you're more comfortable with how your weblog works. Then, see Weblog's Simple Macros.

3. The Item Template is the html that wraps each item within a day on your weblog. Again, the default is good enough until you're more comfortabe with how it works, you can edit it later. Then, see Weblog's Simple Macros.

4. No. of Days is how many days should be displayed on the "home page" of your weblog. The default is five, but you can change it any number (but the higher the number, the longer the page will take to load).

5. Owner is a very important field. In this field, enter the user id (email address) or group id (the name of any group in your free-conversant site). Only the owner of the weblog (or a member of the group that owns it) can edit the weblog. For beginners, just type the email address that you use to sign-on to your site.

   Later, if you want to allow more than one user to post to the weblog, create a group, and then change this value to the name of the new group. Anyone in the group can then post tot he weblog.

6. The Template popup menu lets you set the template for your weblog. We've provided a default Weblog template which we recommend for beginners. When you're ready, you can edit your template (or create a new one), through the template editor. Then again, see Weblog's Simple Macros.

7. Finally, the Stylesheet popup menu lets you set (you guessed it) the stylesheet for your weblog. All of the default stylesheets (autumn, pacific, spring, and winter) have built-in classes for displaying weblogs, so choose any of them.

8. Your weblog is now set up and ready to use!