| How can I change my forum's layout? |
| |
To change forum layout, simply change the demo template pages you have downloaded as you
have created a new aGNeS News Forum BBS (that is header.html, article.html, etc...).
If you are unfamiliar with HTML (that's the language web pages
are written with), maybe it's time to learn this. A good site for HTML learning can be found
here. A
short reference for HTML is what I
usually use to make my sites.
Once you have changed your template pages on your site, you must update the cache on the Vestris
Inc. server. To learn how to do that, please read this paragraph.
Once you've updated the cache, all changes are immediately visible on your forum!
|
| Do I have to keep publicity banners and can I remove them? |
| |
We do no longer offer the possibility to remove the publicity banners, which pay
for the free service.
Please read this document about advertizing banners on your forums.
|
| How can I delete articles? |
| |
Please refer to this section of the full
aGNeS manual.
Basically you have to add +delete to your forum's URL (command line) and follow the instructions. Only
the forum administrator can delete, artchive or modify articles (a password is required).
|
| How can I make a framed forum? |
| |
To make a framed forum (like the one at Vestris)
do follow the following steps:
- Create an html document on your server, called for example split.html. It does
not have to be cached on the server side, nor does it require any intervention from the
aGNeS server admin - you're on your own:)
This document should have a frameset defined like this (check your local HTML ref for more
information on frames):
<html>
<head>
<title>aGNeS News Forum</title>
</head>
<frameset COLS="50%,*">
<frame src="your forum url"
SCROLLING="none" WIDTH="0" FRAMESPACING="0" NAME="_left" BORDER="0">
<frame src="any page you want to appear on the right side"
MARGINWIDTH="0" MARGINHEIGHT="0" SCROLLING="none" WIDTH="0" FRAMESPACING="0" NAME="_right" BORDER="0" >
</frameset>
</html>
- You should then add the following lines
<!--SET SOURCE--_left-->
<!--SET TARGET--_right-->
to all pages of your aGNeS News Forum
- Finally, you should update the MV4 CGI Cache as usual and call the url of the split.html page instead
of your usual forum url on the aGNeS server.
- For a good framed forum example, check out the
Infomaniak PuGiLaT (
split.html
header.html
article.html
postnew.html
follow.html
preview.html
search.html )
- For a more weird example, the Nomades forum has six frames!
It's also totally reversed, the articles list is on the right side and articles show up on the left. (
split.html
header.html
article.html
postnew.html
follow.html
preview.html
search.html )
|
| I have moved the template pages (my site has moved), what should I do? |
| |
When you move your pages, your aGNeS News Forum BBS URL does not change. Still, configuration
shall change on server side, because the aGNeS CGI server stores links to your pages.
Please use the MV4 scripting host (the /?manage section)
to modify the location of your template pages.
|
| My forum is in the US and the Vestris server is GMT+1 - all articles are GMT+1,
how do I change the timezone? |
| |
Use the <!--SET TIMESHIFT--X--> option. X must be the value of the timeshift in hours and can be a negative
value. This option must be placed on all aGNeS templates.
|
| I forgot my password for forum maintaince, what should I do? |
| |
Go to the management system, select your forum and enter
no password, tr to login - a password reminder will be offered to you.
|
| How do I change my forum's password? |
| |
The easiest way is to go to the management system. To access the management system, simply use
your forum's URL with ?manage instead of the forum aliases. For example, a forum at
http://www.vestris.com/db-cgi/
intensive/agnes?StiAgnesBBS+StiAgnesBBSHTML
has it's management console at
http://www.vestris.com/db-cgi/
intensive/agnes?manage .
Login with your alias and your password, choose the appropriate action
(that is, change a forum's password) from the list
of actions available and follow the instructions.
|
| How can I moderate my forum? |
| | You can moderate your forum with the <!--SET MODERATED--1--> option placed on all template pages.
Moderated article have to be released by editing them with +edit appended at the command line,
selecting an article and unchecking the moderation field checkbox.
A password is of course required to release a moderated article. A set of other options is available to
play with the look and feel of the moderated forums, please check the full doc for the list. |
| Cache? Group? What is my cache group and how do I update my template pages? |
| |
Briefly, cache is a copy of your template pages (that is header.html, article.html, etc...) on
the Vestris server. Why? Because it's faster to retreive pages from a local server rather than
asking your machine each time a forum is called. That's why you have to update the cache each time
you modify your template pages.
First, you have to identify your group. It's easy. Your group is the last word before /agnes? in
your forum URL. For example, the Vestris Inc. forum at
http://www.vestris.com/db-cgi/intensive
/agnes?StiAgnesBBS+StiAgnesBBSHTML
is in the intensive group.
To update the cache, you can either use an obsolete cache updater or the MV4 scripting host.
To call the MV4 scripting host, add manage to your forun URL like this:
http://www.vestris.com/db-cgi/intensive/agnes?manage . Of course, you will have
to use your url to access the right section of the MV4 scripting host. Then you can login by
choosing your forum alias (mine is StiAgnesBBS) and putting your administrative password. You will
see a section for updating the cache.
|
| How many forums can I host at Vestris? Are there any limitations? |
| |
You may host as many forums as you like for free as long as they are not commercial and under terms of
the commercial agreement with Vestris Inc. if that is not the case.
If you have or plan to have over a dozen forums, Vestris Inc. offers a free opportunity to manage your own
group of forums with your own cache updater. Thus, all your forums will be in your group and you will have a special
administrator password for forum maintaince. For more information and group requests, please e-mail
alla@vestris.com.
|
| Is it possible to make different forum layouts with same data? (eg. for a multilingual forum) |
| |
Yes it is. Create multiple template pages (for example, place all six template pages in two directories:
english and french). Then inform the CGI administrator about the
location of all template pages (two or more directories) and the current forum URL. You'll get separate
aliases for each forum. For example,
http://www.vestris.com/db-cgi/agnes?FFEnglishAgnes+FFEnglishAgnesHTML,
http://www.vestris.com/db-cgi/agnes?FFFrenchAgnes+FFFrenchAgnesHTML
- both forums having the same articles but a totally different layout.
|
| I do update the cache, I see changes on the forum, but my options seem to be ignored, why? |
| |
The most common error comes from editors like Microsoft Word (you must be mad to make HTML documents with
Microsoft Word) - options like <!--SET NAME--value--> are taken in consideration only with
a blank space between SET and NAME; you might have a line break or some other character in between. The
best solution is to use a decent editor (like UltraEdit
for example) and to check that there's nothing left between SET and NAME than a blank space with a
hex editor.
|
| How do I disable/enable the preview button? |
| |
Add <!--SET PREVIEW----> to the follow.html and postnew.html pages.
|
| When I try to
archive a forum, I get the following message: "archiving full structure has
been disabled, please select a node", why? |
| |
Article numbers must be consistent, so you cannot archive
the whole forum (otherwise the numbering would restart at article 1) - thus
you must select at least an article and it cannot be the last article
neither in order to perform an archive operation.
|
| How can I put the search form on a different (separate) page? |
| |
The <!--AGNES-SEARCH--> tag is used to show the search form. You should place it on the
search.html template and link your search page manually. For example, the
Infomaniak Pugilat
implements this feature. It's alias is InfoAgnes and it is called using ../agnes?InfoAgnes+InfoAgnesHTML.
- added the <!--AGNES-SEARCH--> tag to the
search.html page.
- added a link to the search page to the
right frame
of the forum (if you do not have a framed forum, the links should be simply added to the
header.html template). For the Infomaniak Pugilat, the search link is
../agnes?InfoAgnes+InfoAgnesHTMLSearch (simply append Search to the link to your forum)
|
| The forum URL is really long, how can I hide it? How do I make a redirect page? |
| |
This can be done with frames or with a redirection JavaScript.
Copy the source of this page
and replace the URL to the Vestris Inc. forum by your forum URL.
JavaScript redirection: (still to come).
|
| The table width for the list of articles is set to 1000%, why? How do I change that? How do I setup a NOWRAP option? |
| |
The table width is set to 1000% in order to avoir
wrapping and to show articles completely even with long titles (there's no
real limit in length of those).
This behaviour can be changed with <!--SET
TWIDTH-- --> option. First it allows to set the table width to 100% by
adding <!--SET TWIDTH--100%-->. Secondly it can allow to add more
options, such as NOWRAP for example with a little trick: <!--SET
TWIDTH--1000%" NOWRAP align="left-->. Notice the balance of quotes: this
is done on purpose since aGNeS inserts the text of this option inside quotes
of the table width default 1000% option.
|
| Is there any way to change the look of the private login the user is prompted with when accessing a private forum? |
| | You can simply write your own page by copying the code from the login screen.
The users will get redirected to the default login window if they enter a wrong password
and there's no way to change that (yet). |
| Is it possible to display sender's IP near each posted article? If yes, is it possible to hide IPs from an unauthorized user? |
| |
From the aGNeS manual:
To check IPs which were used to post articles:
add +ip to the command line, IPs will be shown near each article title.
For example if your forum is at ../agnes?ForumAgnes+ForumAgnesHTML,
the link will be ../agnes?ForumAgnes+ForumAgnesHTML+ip.
If HIDE-IP is set, you need to append the board's password, so only the administrator can
see the IPs, eg: +iptoto when then password is "toto".
|
| Is it possible to rename an archive? |
| |
Yes.
The way to do it is to merge the archive with itself under a different name. If your forum is at
../agnes?ForumAgnes+ForumAgnesHTML, browse to ../agnes?ForumAgnes+ForumAgnesHTML+merge,
select the archive you wish to rename, input a new name, your administrative password
and hit the submit button.
|
| The little images near an article post are cool. How can I change them? |
| |
The little images are called EXTFACES. You can change them by using the SET EXTFACES option. It's value points
to a simple text file described in this section of the aGNeS manual.
You can create such a file that points to your pictures which you can randomly change whenever you like.
Two image sets are available from Vestris,
http://www.vestris.com/agnes.sti/faces/balls/balls.faces
and http://www.vestris.com/agnes.sti/faces/casus/casus.faces.
You can find some more cool pictures at
http://www.docmartine.com/icones/icones.html.
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