Publishing on ANLoc

To publish a content item on ANLoc website, you need to choose which content type to use from the user navigation menu on the rightmost sidebar.

All content items must have a title/subject/name, the rest of the fields will differ from one type to another but most of them will have a body/description/notes where you put the content body. Events will have dates and location fields, Software will have version fields, etc.

News item, event, document and software content types can reference the related project(s), and therefore they will be listed in their corresponding project page.

Multilingual support:

Some content types will allow you to have your entry in multiple languages, i.e create an event in English then translate it to French, and vice versa. This support is available for the content types: News item, Event, Document, Software, Partner and Project. Multilingual support is not enabled for Forum topics, Images, Blog entries, Book pages and User profiles.

Classification and Tags:

Free Tagging

Is a method to make on the fly classification, add the keywords that describe the content your are posting separated with commas (for the
Blog entry, Book page, Document, Event, Forum topic, Image, News Item, Software types).
While writing the keyword/tag the system will try to suggest options for you from previous tags, ex: if you want to tag your event as conference, the field will let you know that a similar tag "conferences" has been used before.. it will be wise to use previously used tags if they suffice, so that an event that was going to be tagged as conference and an event tagged as conferences end up in the same place.

Old Classification methods:

Besides the free tagging method, we can always have a list of terms to classify our content, this list would be created separately, so that when you are adding new content you will able to select from a set of pre-defined terms.
Note that we can have different vocabularies (a vocabulary is a set of terms) for each content type.
Example: we can choose to classify our events into (conferences, meetings, workshops, online meetings, release dates, etc.), and classify our news items into (announcements, press releases, monthly updates, etc.)
Please add your suggestions on the Forum.

Syntax:

You can use HTML or MediaWiki syntax. Choose which option you want from the input format options below the text area of your content type.

Available content types:

• News item type is for news and announcement.
• Event type is obviously for events that has a start date and might have an end date. Could be used for conferences, meetings, workshops, release dates, deadlines, etc.
• Document type is used to add any documents you create for your project, reports, research analysis, specification document, howto, etc & you can attach these documents in any format.
• Software type is used for adding tools, plugins, fonts, etc.
• Project type is for adding ANLoc sub-project descriptions, and to be able to refer to it when creating news, events, documents or software.
• Partner type is for adding information about the partners involved in this network, will be referenced by quarterly reports submitted by each partner.
• Quarterly report type is for adding technical or financial reports, submitted at the end of each quarter, for the sake of documenting the different projects each partner is working on.
• Forum topic type is for opening new discussions. You can always have discussions on any posted item through comments, but this is the only space for the non-partner users to open new discussions.
• Image type is for adding photos, screenshots.. images can be inserted in other content types later on.
• Blog type is for personal off topic rants :-)
• Book page type is what we are going to use for our wiki. Book pages offer hierarchy and previous/next/up navigation, therefore it will be very useful for drafting Articles/Documents for policy makers. Once the article is stable, we can disable the permission for all users to edit it, and it can be transferred into a separate section.

Where will each content item appear

• Comments will appear below their corresponding subject/topic.
• Images in the gallery, classified under different galleries.
• Forum topics in the forums, classified under different forums.
• Blogposts in the Blogs section, and on each user have their own blog page were only there blogposts are shown, in both cases ordered by submission date.
• Projects and Partners under projects and partners menu links respectively, ordered by title.
• News items, Events, Documents and Software will appear under the project(s) they belong to, ordered by submission date. If they are general ex: ANLoc Kickoff workshop, they will appear in ANLoc project page.
• Book pages will appear in the wiki section, ordered by title.
• Any content item tagged with term x, will appear in term x page, ordered by submission date.
• Aggregated feeds can be found under the Aggregator link. If project members want some feeds to appear in their project page, please let me know.

Access and Permissions

• Anonymous users (non registered website visitors) will be able to view all content except the Quarterly Reports submitted by the different partners, and will only be able to add comments on the various content items.

• Authenticated/Registered users who are not one of the partners, will also be able to view all content except the Quarterly Reports, but they also be able to create new forum topics, and add/edit book pages on the wiki.

• Project members will view all content and create any type of content, except for the project and partner content types, since these are the building blocks of the website. Each project member will get access to update their project and partner pages.

• Editors are project members who will dedicate some of their time to the website, therefore they will have access to create, edit and delete any content item.

.. to be continued

Accounts

In the top user navigation menu on the rightmost sidebar, you will find My account link where you can change any of the following settings:

Email: where you will receive notifications, new password in case you forget your old one.

Password:

Signature: similar to email signature, will be automatically written below any comment you add.

Language: Your language preference, English or French interface.

Contact: whether you will allow other users to send you emails through the website or not.

Timezone: Please configure this, it will be extremely important to configure it properly so that events will be displayed in your local timezone.

Profile

This is where you can add a little info about yourself, and be listed in the Members page.

If you have any suggestions of new fields that should be added to the profile, please write them here: https://africanlocalisation.net/forum/17

Features pending feedback from Partners

Fields in content types:
- See suggested fields to be added to any of the content types.

Classification for:
- See suggested terms to classify news/events/documents/software

Localised text for the homepage menu:
- check this forum topic and add your comment there: https://africanlocalisation.net/node/18

Enable languages other then English and French:
- Will be enabled as requested.

ToDo

Block Configuration
- Configure where each block should appear and where it shouldn't
- Build needed blocks (recent documents, recent software, highlighted news, recent update wiki pages, etc.)

RTL design
- After enabling the Arabic language

Localization & Policy articles
- After we have few candidate articles
- Create a listing of chosen articles, or use a specific term to tag them, or create a separate book that consists of these articles and change it's access permissions so that it wont be editable anymore.

Finalise

• Multilingual support configuration
• Access and permission configuration
• Minor design enhancements