7.2. The Preferences Page

Here are the parameters needed for the configuration of the config.php file (Section 3.7) through the admin/preferences area:

• General Site Info (Figure 7-33):

  • Site name: It corresponds to the title tag, it is what appears up in the right bar of the browser. It is very important for the search engines.

  • Site URL: It is the internet address of your site.

  • Logo: It is the logo of your site. In standard themes and themes not modified much it is the Logo that appears up on the left.

  • Slogan: It is equivalent to the description tag, it's also very important for the search engines.

  • Beginning date of the site: It's the date that appears in the statistics module.

  • Administrator e-mail : it is the e-mail which will receive the notifications for article insertions by third parties and the mails from the "contact us" module.

  • Articles in Top Page: Specifies the number of news articles that can be displayed in the main page of the news module.

  • Articles in Home: Specifies the number of news articles that can be displayed in the home page of the site (if the news module is the main one).

  • Stories in old articles box: Specifies the number of news articles that can be displayed in the old articles box. Note, however, that articles never get moved anywhere. An archived article, is any article except for the first 10 articles (or whatever number you have in Preferences for "number of stories in Home"). The Old Articles block starts with the 11th newest article, and goes back from there (again, it depends on "stories in Home").

  • Activate ultramode: specifies if other sites can take news titles from our site.

  • Allow anonymous to post : Specifies whether anonymous users can write comments.

  • Default theme: defines the default theme of the site.

  • Select language: defines the default language of the site.

  • local time format: defines the format of the local time (depends on the server, if it is running linux, this is controlled in /usr/share/locale). See also Section 27.13.

  Figure 7-33. General site info in the Preferences page.

  

  General site info in the Preferences page.

  
  
  

• Multilingual options:

  • activate the multilanguage characteristics: choose whether the site should support a multilingual functionality or not

  • display the small flags in place of the list: if the multilingual option is activated then this decides whether the block should display the small state flags in place of a list of language names (see Figure 6-13).

• Banners options:

  • activate banners : sets up the option to use banner rotation on the site. The banners will be positioned in the header. See Section 14.3.6 on how to change the banner's position in the header. If you are interested in other ways of ad placement in PHP-Nuke, see Section 20.7 on how to display ad banners in PHP-Nuke blocks and Section 21.11 on how to display advertisements in PHP-Nuke modules.

• Footer messages:

  • For the footer of the page, imagine we have to insert 3 texts in a table that is 100% wide and positioned centrally:

    • Page Footer Line 1: first text to insert

    • Page Footer Line 2: second text to insert

    • Page Footer Line 3: third text to insert

    Example: Suppose you have some "powered by" icons in the images/powered directory, like powered_by_linux.png, powered_by_apache.png, powered_by_mysql.png etc. Then you can insert the following HTML code in one of the above footer lines and the icons will appear in the aproppriate footer line (Figure 7-34):

    <p align=center> <a href='http://www.linux.org' target='blank'> <img src='images/powered/powered_by_linux.png' border='0' Alt='Linux Operating System' hspace='10'></a> <a href='http://www.apache.org' target='blank'> <img src='images/powered/powered_by_apache.png' border='0' Alt='Apache Web Server' hspace='10'></a> <a href='http://www.mysql.org' target='blank'> <img src='images/powered/powered_by_mysql.png' border='0' Alt='mySQL Database' hspace='10'></a> <a href='http://www.php.net' target='blank'> <img src='images/powered/powered_by_php.png' border='0' Alt='PHP Homepage Preprocessor' hspace='10'></a> <a href='http://phpnuke.org' target='blank'> <img src='images/powered/powered_by_nuke.png' border='0' Alt='PHP-Nuke Content Management System' hspace='10'></a> </p>

    Figure 7-34. Icons in the footer.

    

    Icons in the footer.

    
    
    

• Backend configuration:

  • Backend title: The title that will appear in the file from which other sites get our newsfeed.

  • Backend language: language for the newsfeed file.

• Mail New Stories to Admin:

  • Notify new submissions by e-mail: It defines whether the administrator gets an e-mail when a user inserts a news article.

  • E-mail to send the message: e-mail to which the notification message will be sent.

  • E-mail subject: the text that will be inserted in the subject line of the message (e.g. "NEWS for my site")

  • E-mail message: notification text (e.g. "Hey! You got a new submission for your site.").

  • E-mail account (From): who has sent the message (typically something like "Webmaster").

• Comments moderation:

  • Type of Moderation: chooses whether a moderation should be set up for the comments or not. The options available are:

    • No moderation

    • Moderation by Admin

    • Moderation by Users

• Comments option:

  • Comment limit in Bytes: sets up the maximum size for the comments.

  • Anonymous default name: assigns a name to the persons who chose to remain unregistered.

• Graphics options:

  • Graphical administration menu: sets up whether to have icons or text in the administration area.

• Miscelaneous options:

  • Activate HTTP referers: whether statistics regarding the origin of the visits should be gathered.

  • How many referrers you want as maximum: the maximum number of statistics pertaining to the origin of the visits (max 2000).

  • Activate comments in polls: Whether comments are allowed in the surveys or not.

  • Activate comments in articles: Whether comments are allowed in the articles or not.

• Users options:

  • Minimum users password length: for security reasons it is advisable to set up a rather long password.

• Censure options:

  • Here you can choose to censor some words and also set up the criteria for word matching. The words to be censored have to be included in the $CensorList array in config.php (Section 3.7).

• WebMail service ptions (Figure 7-35): Here you can

  • set up a message to appear in the footer of every e-mail sent by any user of the site,

  • set up the permissions for the e-mail and its attachments. In case you allow attachments, you can specify the directory that will temporarily hold them (however, this is not a good idea from the security point of view, see Section 23.4.2),

  • allow for direct viewing of the attachments' content via web,

  • specify the directory that will hold the attachments of the received e-mails,

  • specify the maximum number of e-mail accounts that your users will be allowed to set up with WebMail,

  • specify the default POP3 server (i.e. server that will be used for querying for incoming e-mails),

  • specify if the header of the e-mail is going to be visible (recommended).

  Figure 7-35. WebMail service options in the Preferences page.

  

  WebMail service options in the Preferences page.