This is a set of questions users may have about managing content and navigating this site.

How do I create a news item?

Anywhere in your personal folder, switch to Contents View and create a News Item object. Edit and save the contents of the object, and then visit the Properties screen for the object; set the Discussion setting to Enabled. Then, visit the State screen for the object, and click Submit to submit the news item for editorial review.

How do I see a list of all users on this site?

Visit the Members folder. Without filling out the search form, submit it to see a list of all users (with their portraits).

How do I edit my home page?

Click the my folder link in the upper-right area of the page. Once you're in your folder, click Switch to Contents view in the navigation area on the left side of the page. Use the Select drop-down to create new objects in your home directory (Folders, News Items, Events, etc) or "click on your home page document to view or edit it.

What is Structured Text, and how do I use it?

Structured Text is one of the optional formats you can use when creating comments and documents. It is a nice, alternative shorthand to HTML. Click here to read the zope corporation's documentation.

How do I post an event?

Create an Event object anywhere in your personal directory; then, submit it for editorial review. Once an editor has published the event, it will appear in the calendar on the right side of the page.

How do I change my portrait?

Chop up a good pic (100 px high, 75 px wide) and upload it on your preferences page.

How do I use an ExternalEditor?

In the content management screens you should see a small pencil icon next to editable content. If you click on this and you're using InternetExplorer then your chosen application should be launched and you can edit the content. This is done using WebDAV and by default the document will be locked (preventing others from editing it) until the application is closed down. If you're using something other than Internet Explorer then you may need to associate the helper application with a file type of "application/x-zope-edit" but you should only need to do this once.

When you have finished editing the content click the save button within your chosen editor and the document will be saved directly back to the web server without you having to update it via the Zope management screen.

See document http://www.zope.org/Members/Caseman/ExternalEditor/

You MUST have the ExternalEditor helper extentions installed on your computer for this feature to work.

Installing and Configuring ExternalEditor

1. Download and install the Windows Helper App from http://www.zope.org/Members/Caseman/ExternalEditor/
2. In the installation directory is a file called ZopeEdit.ini. You'll need to edit this and specify your favourite editor. For example:

      editor = C:\program files\Chami\HTML-Kit\Bin\HTMLKit.exe
   

You can also be a bit clever and associate different applications with different types of content. For example, at the bottom of my ZopeEdit.ini:

   [content-type:application/msword]
   extension=.doc
   editor = C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\WINWORD.EXE /w

This means that Word documents will get edited with Word rather than the default HTML editor.

The important thing is that the launched application doesn't detach itself from the controlling process. If an application does this by default you can override this behaviour by using command-line switches. For example word requires the /w switch above. Frontpage requires the following switch:

   editor = C:\program files\Microsoft Office\Office\frontpg.exe /n

Each editor will do this in a different way, so it's a matter of reading the documentation for your editor.

For more info about the this websites content management system, Plone, see

http://plone.org/documentation/howto/