Managing your BBS

This section explains how to manage an existing aGNeS BBS.

Accessing the Online Management

Identify your aGNeS url, for example: http://www.foo.com/cgi-bin/bar/agnes?FooAgnes+FooAgnesHTML . Several items can be identified in this url:

To access your management section, replace all the arguments after the ? by manage , for example http://www.foo.com/cgi-bin/bar/agnes?manage .

For example, the http://agnes.vestris.com/db-cgi/intensive/agnes?StiAgnes+StiAgnesHTML forum's management section is accessible at http://agnes.vestris.com/db-cgi/intensive/agnes?manage

aGNeS Administration

The aGNeS administration section (?manage+admin) lets you select your board's alias, enter the appropriate password and change values that are proper to your bbs.

Because you share your bbs with many other, make sure that you select your own BBS. If you have create a board with an alias Foo , select FooAgnes . You must enter the password you have chosen, while creating the bbs. If you are the administrator of the entire aGNeS script, you may enter the main administrative password that was entered during the first-time setup.

If you have forgotten your password, an option to email the password to the board's administrator will show up. If somebody else's email address is listed, then you have not selected the right bbs. If your email address has changed, you will have to email the administrator. He can then change the password for your bbs.

The administrative section allows you to:

In addition, it provides links to

Group Administration

The group administration section (?manage+general) is the first-time installation section. For more details, please refer to the section called First-time Configuration in Chapter 2 .

List All Equivalence Structures

The list all equivalence structures (?manage+list) command shows all the alias definitions derived from existing boards, which include the locations of the data on the server and the locations of the remote template pages.

aGNeS maintains aliases in the equiv/equiv.struct files, types aliases in equiv/admin.struct files and defines passwords in equiv/admin.struct files. This architecture is a legacy process from the older versions of the BBS, but allows a very powerful syntax for alias definitions, which was handy in the times, when the boards were created manually.

List All Obvious Associations

The list all obvious associates (?manage+obvious) command shows all existing boards, including the number of articles posted and the last date of an article, not including archives.

Because the aGNeS core allowed to create more than just bullentin boards, this command has such a strange name. The same equiv files were able to share configurations for guestbooks, simple forums and links launchers.