Creating blogs and changing blog properties

To create a blog in the current folder, you proceed as follows:

•      Select  File    New    Blog  in the top menu.

•      In the ‘Add Blog’ form that is displayed next, enter name and optional description of the new blog.

•      Specify who may read and write blog entries by clicking the respective radio buttons.

Note: If you allow registered users of your BSCW server or the general public to take part in the new blog, do not forget to announce the blog along with its URL to the par­ti­ci­pants you have in mind.

•      Select the number of entries that are to be displayed in a blog page.

•      Specify the number of characters that are to represent an entry in a blog page. The char­acters are taken from the beginning of the entry text. If you enter 0, the whole en­try text is shown.

•      Decide whether the entry comments are to be integrated into the representation of the blog as RSS news feed by checking the respective check box.

•      Select among the three possibilities of blog display: blog page only, blog page embed­ded in a BSCW page including the navigation bar, blog page embedded in an external Web page, e.g., to add some background information about the purpose of the blog or some motivation to contribute to the blog. In the latter case, enter the URL of this ex­ternal Web page.

Important: The external Web page must include the insertion point for the blog as the pat­tern #blog#.

•      You may optionally specify the URL of a style sheet to override the default BSCW styles for your blog. By inventing your own styles you may change the appearance of the blog presentation, e.g. colours or fonts used. You will find the default BSCW styles at http://your-bscw-server/bscw_resources/styles/blog.css

•      Confirm with [OK] to create the blog, which is initially empty, i.e. contains no entries.

All the properties of the new blog which you have specified during creation may be changed any time. To this end, select action menu  Change    Properties  in the action menu of the blog. The ‘Change Blog Properties’ form that is presented to you has exactly the same appearance as the ‘Add Blog’ form from above.

The access rights for the new blog, which you have specified above, determine who may read blog entries and who may add new blog entries. These access rights are supplemented by de­fault access rights determining who may add comments to a blog entry, who may edit and delete blog entries and who may change blog properties.

•      Everyone who can read blog entries may also add comments to an entry.

•      The manager of a blog can delete entries as can the creator of an entry.

•      The author of an entry may edit the entry, the author of a comment may edit the com­ment.

•      Only the creator of a blog may change the properties of the blog.

If you want to change these default access rights, e.g., to allow the manager of a blog to change the blog properties or to forbid anonymous readers of an entry to add a comment, you have to edit the respective roles by selecting action menu  Access    Edit Role  in the action menu of the blog. In our example you would enable the action ‘Change Blog Properties’ for the role Man­ager and you would disable the action ‘Add Blog Comment’ for the role Anonymous member (see 4.5.4 Defining and re-defining roles on editing roles).

If you have changed the access rights of a blog, none of the radio buttons governing the read and write rights in the ‘Change Blog Properties’ action form will be pre-selected, so that you do not inadvertently overwrite your custom access rights. If you, however, want to return to one of the default access rights schemes, select the respective radio buttons before hitting [OK].