filsa.net: News Center

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Monday, June 28, 1999

News Center

News Center for Frontier 4.2.3 ReadMe

[News Center]
This is out of date. If you are looking for newsCenter for Frontier 4.2.3, it may still be available here. (about 69k)
Background
The newsCenter suite is based on two bits of technology written by Dave Winer: newsPage and user.websites.home.
The newsPage suite allows you to easily keep a news-based home page for your organization. You can find out more at http://www.scripting.com/frontier/netScripting/newsPage.html
"user.websites.home" is a less known enhancement to the way news pages are rendered. At the end of April 1997 Dave changed the technology that rendered pages so that only the 10 most recent days of news would be rendered. Again, in late June, Dave updated this page with a more colorful rendition of the scripting.com page, but no major changes to the technology. You can read more about this on the associated fat page found at http://www.scripting.com/fatPages/ (Look for "user.websites.home").
Especially if this is your first experience with a news page, the above two pages are required reading. Go now! I'll be here when you come back.
What it does
NewsCenter allows you to:

Keep multiple news sites
Name your newspage file anything you want
Have a page with only recent news: No more long pages at the end of the month!
It's also possible to:

Create a news site within an already existing website table.
Convert an old NewsPage site to the NewsCenter format.
Downloads and version info.
This is version1.0b3 on Sunday, June 29, 1997
You can download this suite from the Downloads Page.
Change Notes are at the bottom of this page.
Terminology
This suite is called News Center.
NewsPage is a suite included with Frontier that creates and manages a high-traffic, constantly changing news site. The news site has four pages: news, mail, downloads, and links.
But in News Center terms, a news page refers, not to the site, but to the oft-changing news page. (Duh. Redundant, I know.)
I use the term news site to refer to the complete four-page site.
Understanding NewsCenter
The key to newsCenter is knowing which website is the current website. You can easily see by looking in the NewsCenter menu: Just below the 'About News Center' item, the name of the current website is displayed in the menu.

Picture of NewsCenter menu
In the example above, 'testSite' is current site, so it is displayed in the menu. So, all the menu commands in 'Setup', 'Add To', 'Open' and 'Build' work on the website named in this top menu item. (NewsPage users will note that the menu is very similiar to the NewsPage menu, with some additions.)
Each newsCenter website has data in a table at user.newsCenterSites. Based on this data, newsCenter processes electronic mail and web info into the proper website.

A data table is created for each news site.
This table is basically a preferences table. You can edit any of the objects there to modify the behavior of the suite on that site. For example, if I change newspagename to "current", the suite will look for a object named "current" whenever it tries to operate on a news page.
Changing the current news site
If you select the 'current site' menu item (in this case 'testSite'), you'll get this nifty dialog to help you out:

current site menu item dialog
You can change the current site by entering the name of the site exactly in the dialog. Or you can choose to open the table of the current website.
Another easier way to change the current news site is from the item at the bottom of the newsCenter menu: Select Current Site. Select the proper site in the submenu, and the menu will automatically update itself. This menu is based on the contents of user.newsCenterSites.
Getting started: Creating a new news site
From the NewsCenter:Utilities menu, choose: Create New Site. You'll be asked if you want to create a site from scratch, or try to integrate a news site into one of your other sites.

current site menu item dialog
I'd suggest creating a test site and playing with things for a while.
If you start from scratch, NewsCenter will prompt you for the location of the site in your database. It can go anywhere, not just in user.websites (although that is the recommended place.) It will then prompt you for a site name. This should be a string beginning with alphabetic letters and no punctuation or spaces. It's used for the suite menu and suite data tables, but this name isn't used when building the site.
If you elect to add a news site to an existing website, newsCenter will try to copy all the important items into the website from NewsCenter.data.virgintable. However, it will not copy over items that are already present. It will show a list of the ones that were not copied. Copy these over manually, renaming as you go.
When the site is created, newsCenter opens up the appropriate tables so you can see what you've made.
Using News Center
Set the current table to the site you want to work on. Then use the various Add To, Open, and Build commands to create your html pages.
These pages can be built from the build menu or ordinarily from Frontier's web menu.
NewsCenter checks Eudora and Netscape/Internet Explorer for items to add mail, news, and download pages. The links page is designed to be relatively static.
To change sites, simply 'Select Current Site'.
Utilities
We've already considered Create New Site.
You can also convert a site from NewsPage. It's relatively easy, but just like creating a new news site, NewsCenter avoids writing over things that have the same name. So it generates a list of uncopied items and you will have to copy things out manually. If you change the names of the news, mail, downloads or links pages, you'll have to update the table in user.newsCenterSites as well. See the next section on preferences.
Also, you can edit the table or edit the menu bar items. I think these items are pretty much self-explanatory.
Preferences
For those of you who don't want the news page to be the default.html or index.html, you can set the name of the newspage object in user.NewsCenterSites. And not just the news page, either: you can make the links page into 'directory', for instance.
Also, you can set the number of days that get processed and placed into the news page. Just edit the numOfCurrentNewsDays.
Note: as of beta2, numOfCurrentNewsDays has been moved from user.newsCenterSites to the tools table of the news site. This is so that the site is not dependent on the presence of newsCenter to render. Older news sites are not affected, and will work just as they are. Only new news sites created with 1.0b2 or higher have this new scheme.
The odblocation is the odb address of the website.
sitename is not yet used. I designed it into the table but didn't wind up using it. Ahh, overdesign.
Change Notes
1.0b3 Sat, Jun 28, 1997 at 3:07:37 PM

Tweaked dialog box for add news item.
Fixed glitches in create new site:existing
Improved error trapping
Also updated the portion of code that copies items from virgin table to the existing website. No longer copies tools and images table at first; handles the contents of each separately.
1.0b2

Changed Menu Item "Read Me"
It is now "About NewCenter"
Give you version info, option to go to web for docs or open up readme.

numOfCurrentNewsDays moved from user.newsCenterSites to the tools table of the news website table. This removes dependency on News Center during rendering.
Fixes in newsCenter.data.virgintable.
Fixed the news script to prevent index out of range error if the number of days of news is fewer than the numOfCurrentNewsDays setting.
Added numOfCurrentNewsDays to the tools table. Also removed extraneous items.

convertOldNewsPage ()
minor bug fix that prevented conversion of old NewsPage sites.

Before, sites outside of user.websites caused errors, as well as sites more than one level deep in user.websites. This has been fixed.
Added samples table
Added this version history
NewsCenter and user.websites.home
In late June 1997, Dave updated user.websites.home. I've been asked if I'm going to include the latest update in NewCenter.
I took a look at the new code. It's mostly in a rewritten news script, ie. the script that creates the main news page for the site. As far as new technology goes, there's aren't any major changes. So I'll leave things as they are.
Once you get going with News Center, one of the first things you will want to do is tweak the news script to create a news page that is truly your own. If you end up modifying my code or Dave's, it doesn't really matter much.
The current script that is included in NewsCenter is easy to understand, and hopefully will be easy to customize.
But other examples are always helpful. I've included a samples table in 1.0b2, so you can take a look at Dave's code, and then look at scripting.com to see what it looks like. I've included the scripts I use for filsa.net as well.
There's other stuff in the samples table, such as the system subtable that is included with user.websites.home, if you want that bit of technology (see "user.websites.home" on Scripting.com)
Some related URLs:
New Technology for Scripting
Late June Home Page Changes
NOTE: as of June 29, 1997 it looks like user.websites.home is undergoing a major overhaul, out of which might come some new technology. I'm watching it closely, and will probably update News Center once the dust settles.
Credits
Again, most of the credit goes to Dave Winer for his newsPage suite and his sample code at user.websites.home, on which these scripts are heavily based. NewsCenter is really just a compilation of his work. I'd also like to thank Preston Holmes, who wrote the windowKeeper suite. I borrowed code from windowKeeper to create the self-updating menu.
Thanks to Tom Fitzpatrick and Brent Deverman for bug reports, and to Tony McDonald for encouragement.
About this software
This software is free. I wrote it because I wanted to work on several newsPages at once. Also, lots of people had been asking about it on Frontier-Beginners.
It's unsupported. I don't have time to add features for other people. I'll try to squash the bugs, but this suite is for you to dig into and explore; see how it works. Doubtless there will be some quirks and problems, particularly in the docs. Please send me feedback about the suite and the documentation. Anything you didn't understand very well? What works well, what doesn't? Please send feedback to phil@filsa.net
Enjoy!
Philip Suh

This is Phil's Frontier Scripting Site. San Francisco, CA
Copyright © 1996-98, Phil Suh. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.filsa.net/frontier/software/newsCenter/newsCenter4.html
This page last built on 6/28/99; 11:13:48 PM

filsa.net: Frontier Scripting [ Script Archive | Ideas & Issues | Polyglot | Software | Projects ]


	Monday, June 28, 1999 News Center News Center for Frontier 4.2.3 ReadMe
	[News Center] This is out of date. If you are looking for newsCenter for Frontier 4.2.3, it may still be available here. (about 69k) Background The newsCenter suite is based on two bits of technology written by Dave Winer: newsPage and user.websites.home. The newsPage suite allows you to easily keep a news-based home page for your organization. You can find out more at http://www.scripting.com/frontier/netScripting/newsPage.html "user.websites.home" is a less known enhancement to the way news pages are rendered. At the end of April 1997 Dave changed the technology that rendered pages so that only the 10 most recent days of news would be rendered. Again, in late June, Dave updated this page with a more colorful rendition of the scripting.com page, but no major changes to the technology. You can read more about this on the associated fat page found at http://www.scripting.com/fatPages/ (Look for "user.websites.home"). Especially if this is your first experience with a news page, the above two pages are required reading. Go now! I'll be here when you come back. What it does NewsCenter allows you to: Keep multiple news sites Name your newspage file anything you want Have a page with only recent news: No more long pages at the end of the month! It's also possible to: Create a news site within an already existing website table. Convert an old NewsPage site to the NewsCenter format. Downloads and version info. This is version1.0b3 on Sunday, June 29, 1997 You can download this suite from the Downloads Page. Change Notes are at the bottom of this page. Terminology This suite is called News Center. NewsPage is a suite included with Frontier that creates and manages a high-traffic, constantly changing news site. The news site has four pages: news, mail, downloads, and links. But in News Center terms, a news page refers, not to the site, but to the oft-changing news page. (Duh. Redundant, I know.) I use the term news site to refer to the complete four-page site. Understanding NewsCenter The key to newsCenter is knowing which website is the current website. You can easily see by looking in the NewsCenter menu: Just below the 'About News Center' item, the name of the current website is displayed in the menu. In the example above, 'testSite' is current site, so it is displayed in the menu. So, all the menu commands in 'Setup', 'Add To', 'Open' and 'Build' work on the website named in this top menu item. (NewsPage users will note that the menu is very similiar to the NewsPage menu, with some additions.) Each newsCenter website has data in a table at user.newsCenterSites. Based on this data, newsCenter processes electronic mail and web info into the proper website. This table is basically a preferences table. You can edit any of the objects there to modify the behavior of the suite on that site. For example, if I change newspagename to "current", the suite will look for a object named "current" whenever it tries to operate on a news page. Changing the current news site If you select the 'current site' menu item (in this case 'testSite'), you'll get this nifty dialog to help you out: You can change the current site by entering the name of the site exactly in the dialog. Or you can choose to open the table of the current website. Another easier way to change the current news site is from the item at the bottom of the newsCenter menu: Select Current Site. Select the proper site in the submenu, and the menu will automatically update itself. This menu is based on the contents of user.newsCenterSites. Getting started: Creating a new news site From the NewsCenter:Utilities menu, choose: Create New Site. You'll be asked if you want to create a site from scratch, or try to integrate a news site into one of your other sites. I'd suggest creating a test site and playing with things for a while. If you start from scratch, NewsCenter will prompt you for the location of the site in your database. It can go anywhere, not just in user.websites (although that is the recommended place.) It will then prompt you for a site name. This should be a string beginning with alphabetic letters and no punctuation or spaces. It's used for the suite menu and suite data tables, but this name isn't used when building the site. If you elect to add a news site to an existing website, newsCenter will try to copy all the important items into the website from NewsCenter.data.virgintable. However, it will not copy over items that are already present. It will show a list of the ones that were not copied. Copy these over manually, renaming as you go. When the site is created, newsCenter opens up the appropriate tables so you can see what you've made. Using News Center Set the current table to the site you want to work on. Then use the various Add To, Open, and Build commands to create your html pages. These pages can be built from the build menu or ordinarily from Frontier's web menu. NewsCenter checks Eudora and Netscape/Internet Explorer for items to add mail, news, and download pages. The links page is designed to be relatively static. To change sites, simply 'Select Current Site'. Utilities We've already considered Create New Site. You can also convert a site from NewsPage. It's relatively easy, but just like creating a new news site, NewsCenter avoids writing over things that have the same name. So it generates a list of uncopied items and you will have to copy things out manually. If you change the names of the news, mail, downloads or links pages, you'll have to update the table in user.newsCenterSites as well. See the next section on preferences. Also, you can edit the table or edit the menu bar items. I think these items are pretty much self-explanatory. Preferences For those of you who don't want the news page to be the default.html or index.html, you can set the name of the newspage object in user.NewsCenterSites. And not just the news page, either: you can make the links page into 'directory', for instance. Also, you can set the number of days that get processed and placed into the news page. Just edit the numOfCurrentNewsDays. Note: as of beta2, numOfCurrentNewsDays has been moved from user.newsCenterSites to the tools table of the news site. This is so that the site is not dependent on the presence of newsCenter to render. Older news sites are not affected, and will work just as they are. Only new news sites created with 1.0b2 or higher have this new scheme. The odblocation is the odb address of the website. sitename is not yet used. I designed it into the table but didn't wind up using it. Ahh, overdesign. Change Notes 1.0b3 Sat, Jun 28, 1997 at 3:07:37 PM Tweaked dialog box for add news item. Fixed glitches in create new site:existing Improved error trapping Also updated the portion of code that copies items from virgin table to the existing website. No longer copies tools and images table at first; handles the contents of each separately. 1.0b2 Changed Menu Item "Read Me" It is now "About NewCenter" Give you version info, option to go to web for docs or open up readme. numOfCurrentNewsDays moved from user.newsCenterSites to the tools table of the news website table. This removes dependency on News Center during rendering. Fixes in newsCenter.data.virgintable. Fixed the news script to prevent index out of range error if the number of days of news is fewer than the numOfCurrentNewsDays setting. Added numOfCurrentNewsDays to the tools table. Also removed extraneous items. convertOldNewsPage () minor bug fix that prevented conversion of old NewsPage sites. Before, sites outside of user.websites caused errors, as well as sites more than one level deep in user.websites. This has been fixed. Added samples table Added this version history NewsCenter and user.websites.home In late June 1997, Dave updated user.websites.home. I've been asked if I'm going to include the latest update in NewCenter. I took a look at the new code. It's mostly in a rewritten news script, ie. the script that creates the main news page for the site. As far as new technology goes, there's aren't any major changes. So I'll leave things as they are. Once you get going with News Center, one of the first things you will want to do is tweak the news script to create a news page that is truly your own. If you end up modifying my code or Dave's, it doesn't really matter much. The current script that is included in NewsCenter is easy to understand, and hopefully will be easy to customize. But other examples are always helpful. I've included a samples table in 1.0b2, so you can take a look at Dave's code, and then look at scripting.com to see what it looks like. I've included the scripts I use for filsa.net as well. There's other stuff in the samples table, such as the system subtable that is included with user.websites.home, if you want that bit of technology (see "user.websites.home" on Scripting.com) Some related URLs: New Technology for Scripting Late June Home Page Changes NOTE: as of June 29, 1997 it looks like user.websites.home is undergoing a major overhaul, out of which might come some new technology. I'm watching it closely, and will probably update News Center once the dust settles. Credits Again, most of the credit goes to Dave Winer for his newsPage suite and his sample code at user.websites.home, on which these scripts are heavily based. NewsCenter is really just a compilation of his work. I'd also like to thank Preston Holmes, who wrote the windowKeeper suite. I borrowed code from windowKeeper to create the self-updating menu. Thanks to Tom Fitzpatrick and Brent Deverman for bug reports, and to Tony McDonald for encouragement. About this software This software is free. I wrote it because I wanted to work on several newsPages at once. Also, lots of people had been asking about it on Frontier-Beginners. It's unsupported. I don't have time to add features for other people. I'll try to squash the bugs, but this suite is for you to dig into and explore; see how it works. Doubtless there will be some quirks and problems, particularly in the docs. Please send me feedback about the suite and the documentation. Anything you didn't understand very well? What works well, what doesn't? Please send feedback to phil@filsa.net Enjoy! Philip Suh

	This is Phil's Frontier Scripting Site. San Francisco, CA Copyright © 1996-98, Phil Suh. All Rights Reserved. http://www.filsa.net/frontier/software/newsCenter/newsCenter4.html This page last built on 6/28/99; 11:13:48 PM