An independent media centre content management system
Oscailt 3.x User Guide
User Guide Version 1.3
Updated for use with Oscailt 3.9
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1 How To Read This Document
1.2 Oscailt System Requirements
1.3 Brief History of Oscailt
2. Oscailt Overview
2.1 The Main Sections of Oscailt
2.2 Management of the Public Site
2.3 General Administration Section
2.3.1 Hardcoded General Configuration
2.4 Configuration of Site Layout
2.5 Installation of Oscailt
2.6 Overview for Creating an Oscailt Site
2.6.1 Building a New Site From Scratch
3. Display Overview
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Basic Layout
3.2.1 Use of (CSS) Style Sheets
4. Management of the Public Site
4.1 Editorial Actions for Stories and Comments
4.1.1 Notification Screen
4.1.2 Display of Hidden Stories and Comment
4.2 Editorial Actions for Attachments
4.2.1 Display of Attachments
4.2.2 The OSCAILTMACRO for Controlling Image Display
4.2.3 Controlling Display Mode of Embedded Videos
4.2.4 Embedded Video Cover Images
4.3 The Publish Form
4.3.1 Overview
4.3.2 Publish Processing
4.3.3 Editorial Edits and Locking
4.3.4 Publish Form Specifics
4.4 Editorial Actions from the Newswire
4.5 Events and Events Display
4.5.1 Overview
4.5.2 Displaying Events
4.5.3 Events Newswire Modes
4.5.4 Promoting Events
5. Instructions for Oscailt Administration
5.1 Administration Overview
5.1.1 Dashboard View
5.2 Edit Configuration of Site Settings
5.2.1 Installation Info
5.3 Edit Friendly URLs
5.4 Edit Style Sheets
5.4.1 Generate New Style Sheets
5.5 Edit Topics, Regions, Types and Languages
5.5.1 Edit (Story) Topics
5.5.2 Edit (Story) Types
5.5.3 Edit (Story) Regions
5.5.4 Edit Languages
5.6 Edit Editors
5.7 Edit Roles
5.7.1 Edit Administration Role
5.7.2 Edit Editorial Role
5.7.3 Edit Site Layout Role
5.8 View Site Logs
5.8.1 sitelog.txt
5.8.2 actionlog.txt
5.8.3 securitylog.txt
5.8.4 spamlog.txt
5.8.5 reported_post.txt
5.8.6 spamlog_contact.txt
5.8.7 healthlog.txt
5.8.8 RSS Errors
5.9 View Statistics
5.10 Bulk Deletes
5.11 Clear Cache
5.12 Object Usage
5.12.1 Template Listing
5.12.2 Object Table Size Listing
5.12.3 HTML Templates
5.12.4 Website Theme Image Listing
5.13 The Image Manager
5.13.1 Browse Mode
5.13.2 Detail Mode
5.13.3 Orphaned Images Mode
5.14 The IP Monitor
5.15 IP Banning
5.15.1 Block IPs Screen
5.16 Editor Status and Messaging Screen
5.16.1 Messaging and Status
5.16.2 Reminders
5.16.3 Last Login
5.16.4 Editorial Locks
5.16.5 Public Edits
5.16.6 Scratch Pad
5.17 Imported (RSS) Feeds Status and Management Screen
5.17.1 Imported Feeds Repair Rules
5.18 Edit Spam
5.18.1 Story and Comment Spam Word Detection
5.18.2 Story Text Analysis
5.19 Export Data
5.20 Import Data
6. Instructions for Configuration of Site Layout
6.1 The Site Building Blocks
6.2 Layout Overview
6.3 Creating Objects
6.3.1 Master Objects
6.3.2 Templates
6.3.3 Previewing and Saving An Object
6.4 How to Put Objects Together - Layout
6.4.1 Layout of a Simple Page
6.4.2 Layout of a Horizontal Menu Object
6.4.3 Layout of a Vertical Menu Object
6.4.4 Selection of Modes of Display
6.4.5 Layout of a Newswire Page
6.5 Element, Module and Layout Object Reference
6.5.1 Document Element
6.5.2 CodeBox Element
6.5.3 PictureBox Element
6.5.4 IMC CityList Element
6.5.5 Link Element
6.5.6 Headlines Element
6.5.7 User Preferences Element
6.5.8 Inset Box Layout Element
6.5.9 Listing Layout Element
6.5.10 Page Layout Element
6.5.11 Feedimport Module
6.5.12 Feedexport Module
6.5.12.1 Exported JavaScript Feeds
6.5.13 Newswire Module
6.5.14 Featurewire Module
6.5.15 Article Module
6.5.16 Comments Module
6.5.17 Gallery Module
6.5.18 Archive Module
6.5.19 Event Module
6.5.20 Publish Module
6.5.21 Contact Module
6.6 Defining a Site: A Collection of Objects
6.6.1 Oscailt Site Settings
7. Language Translation
7.1 Definiting Languages in Oscailt
7.2 Master Pages, Language Specific Pages: How to Translate Oscailt Public Pages
7.2.1 Default Language
7.3 How to Translate Oscailt Administration Pages
7.3.1 Language Versions of Administration Layout Pages
7.4 Translation of Topics, Regions and Story Types
7.5 Translation of Calendar Days of Week and Month Text String and Numbers
7.6 General Language Support Background
7.7 Unicode Support
7.8 Text Not Easily Translated
7.9 Linking Translated Stories Together
8. Editor Roles and Permissions
9. Contact and Publish Module Specifics
9.1 Contact Form including Reported Posts
9.1.1 Reported Posts
9.2 The Publish Module
9.2.1 Overview
9.2.2 Publish Form Custom Tags
9.2.3 Language Related Aspects
9.2.4 Publish Processing
10. General How To Section
10.1 Overview
10.2 How to Create Razorwires / Announcement Boxes
10.2.1 How To Make Razorwires Time/Date Dependent
10.3 How to Create Promoted Newswires
10.4 How to Create Menus
10.5 How to Create Help Pages
10.6 How to Create Fundraising Bargraphs
10.7 How to Use Templates and What Are They For
10.8 How to Turn On or Off Numeric Captchas
10.9 How to Control Publishing of Images, Audio and or Video for Stories and Comments
10.10 How to Generate Nice URLs
10.11 How to Schedule Reminders
10.12 How to Show List of Hidden Posts
10.13 How to Create a Video Gallery
10.14 How to Use the Oscailt Image Macro - OSCAILTIMAGE
10.15 How to Select an Image for the Front Page Header
10.16 How to Featurize Audio
10.17 How to Create a Video, Audio and File Gallery
10.18 How to See Which Layout Objects Have Been Translated
10.19 How to Turn On or Off Editorial Notifications
10.20 How to Setup RSS Feeds by Category
10.20.1 Specifying Character Set for Exported RSS and Atom Feeds
10.21 How to Import Blogs as RSS Feeds
10.22 How to Setup Exported JavaScript Feeds and Import Them
10.23 How to Secure Logins
10.24 How to Filter Out Dead IMCs from IMC City Listing
10.25 How to Make a Feature Story
10.25.1 How to Schedule a Feature for Automatic Unhide
10.26 How to Install the Embedded Audio Player
10.27 How to Install the TinyMCE HTML Editor
10.27.1 Oscailt TinyMCE Files
10.28 How to Install the OpenWYSISYG HTML Editor
10.28.1 Oscailt OpenWYSIWYG Files
10.29 How to Configure Public Editing for Stories and Comments
10.30 How to Setup Imported Image FeedsEditor
10.31 How to Determine Oscailt, MySql and Apache Versions
10.32 How to Configure Events Automatic Emailings
10.33 How to Configure Feature Stories As A Slide Panel
10.34 How to Show or Hide HTML Entities When Editing With Publish Form
10.35 How to Turn off Open Publishing for Stories and Comments
10.36 How to Make A Story Sticky
10.37 How to Create a Photo Essay
10.38 How to Create a Multi Column Newswire
10.39 How to Find All the Grapics Banners Used by the Site
10.40 How to Publish or Edit with Foreign Letters and HTML Entities
10.41 How to Control HTML Tags Used in Publising and Editing
10.42 How to Make Web Links / URLs Active
10.43 How to Align Site Banner to Left Corner
10.44 How to Change Editor settings for Dashboard mode and Notifications
10.45 How to Upload Embedded Video Cover Images
10.46 How to Setup A Panel of Embedded Video as Inset On Front Page
10.47 How to Configure Jabber for Publish Notifications
11. Use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in Oscailt
11.1 Overview
11.2 Determining Style Class Mappings
11.3 Setting Style Class Names for Oscailt Objects
11.4 Setting Style Class Names for Admin Pages
12. Performance Considerations and Tuning
12.1 Overview
12.2 Apache Configuration
12.3 Oscailt Configuration
12.4 Measurements of Performance
13. Appendix A
13.1 Oscailt Support
13.2 License
13.3 Install Issues
13.3.1 Install Instructions
13.3.2 Database Character Set
13.3.3 Back-slash Issues
13.3.4 Install on Sites Using myPhpAdmin
13.3.5 Switching on Shared Memory
13.4 Security Issues
13.4.1 General
13.4.2 Setting Up HTTPS for Login
13.4.3 LetsEncrypt Certificates
13.5 Other Issues
13.5.1 Receiving Email
Last updated: Nov 2020
