Overview

The home page is generally a portal, offering a brief glimpse of the content available from the various modules you may have installed. The layout and positioning of the content on the home page is admin-configurable, but a general overview of the default settings is provided here.

When initially installed, the home page uses a 3-column layout. Spanning all three columns at the top is the main navigation bar. The left-hand sidebar contains links, information documents, account login, and a list of other IMCs. The wide center column displays Features, and the right-hand sidebar contains module boxes for the Media Gallery, Newswire, and OtherPress modules. The content of each of these blocks is created in one of two ways, depending on whether or not the public is permitted to add content.

User-supplied content

The newswire module is the heart of the IMC website. Users may upload their own content by clicking the "Post an article" link in the navigation bar. A form is displayed prompting the user for all the necessary elements of an article, and, once submitted, the article is instantly published to the website, and its headline is added to the module box on the home page. By default, no editorial approval is necessary for new articles to be published. Should you decide that all articles need to be reviewed and approved before posting them to the site, see the section on "Ratings and Approval" later in this chapter.

The Media Gallery and OtherPress modules work in a similar manner, allowing instant display of file uploads or links to interesting stories on other web sites.

Editor-supplied content

Only Editors and Admins are allowed to provide certain content, such as Information documents or Features. For these, it is necessary to login to the Editorial interface, found at http://[your.domain.name]/editor/index.php. This is where most editorial duties are performed, and where new content may be added.

The menu on the left-hand of the Editorial interface displays the currently-installed content modules. Clicking on the menu item will take you to a page listing all current content, and providing a link to add new content. By default, upon entering the Editorial interface, you are taken to a listing of the current Newswire articles, since this is where you are most likely to need to work. Each module, however, works on basically the same principle:

• You are presented with a table listing the most recent selection of content objects.
• Click on the title or heading of the object to view the content
• Click on the Edit icon (a hand with a pencil) to edit the content.
• For appropriate content, there is also an Options icon. Click on it to view operations to perform on the content, such as hiding it, adding new ownership privileges, or creating a Feature based on the content object.
• Below the listing, there is a link to add new content which presents you with the appropriate form.