Once Installed go to your
site and login with your Xoops username and password, the administration
link will appear on the user menu, click this link to enter your site
administration.
To set up your general site
preferences go to System AdminIcon--then choose Preferences.
You will see the following options:
To set up your General
Settings defaults go to System AdminIcon--then choose
Preferences-->General Settings-->Edit. In this section you
set up your site name and other defaults like your default theme.
A number of choices are
available which are mostly intuitive, but I will focus on some settings
you will use frequently, or may need some explanation..
General settings screen
Screen split into 4
parts. Click the thumbnails for a larger
view
Site name
This is the general name of
your site. The title you choose here is the "Page Title" that
will appear in the users browser, This title will also appear in any
emails sent to users through the contact module etc.
Slogan for your site
This slogan will appear in
themes which have the "Xoops slogan" coding added. It will
also appear in descriptions in search engines like Google
Admin mail address
All admin emails and
notifications will be sent to the address you specify here.
Default Language.
English only unless you have
the Multi-Language version of Xoops.
Default Module for your
start page
Module for your
start page
If you have modules
installed you can set up an automatic re-direct to any installed module.
This will be the first module visitors are directed to when they visit
your website. For example, if you wish users to see your News articles
first, set "News" as your default start page module. If you
set up "None" as default, then no module will launch. Visitors
will only see the content of any Blocks you have set up to appear in the
"Top Page". For example, you can set up custom center blocks
containing HTML content or links, or use other blocks which are provided
with existing modules.
Default theme
Xoops defaults to initially
showing the "Default" theme. These theme files are stored in
the www.yoursite.com/themes
folder. Three themes come with Xoops, and you can change the default
theme by changing the choice here. If you are logged in to Xoops your
new default theme will not appear to change till you logout, or
alternatively you can activate the "Themes" block and change
your choice while logged in. For more about themes click Here
Update module template
.html files from themes/your theme/templates directory?
If this option is enabled,
module template .html files will be updated automatically if there are
newer files under the themes/your theme/templates directory for the
current theme. This should be turned off once the site goes public. Remember:
If you are editing the theme.html and style.css files in your
themes folder and nothing appears to change, you must set this option to
Yes
Selectable themes
Choose the themes that users can select as
their default theme. When the "Themes" block is activated in
System Admin--Blocks, the selection you choose here will appear in this
theme changing block. Hold down Ctrl on your keyboard for
multiple selection.
Default template
set
Templates control the look
and behaviors of individual modules. For example the News module has
templates which control the output when news topics are displayed. For
more about Templates see Here
General Settings (second
part of screen)
Username for anonymous users
The name chosen here will
appear in the Xoops Newbb forum and comments for unregistered users if
they are allowed to post while unregistered.
Use gzip compression?
Selecting Yes
compresses the output and should increase the speed of web site
performance.
Name for user cookies.
This cookie contains only a
user name and is saved in a user pc for a year (if the user wishes,
users can choose to activate this in their account profile.). If a user
chooses to have this cookie, the username will be automatically inserted
in the login box for each user.
Use custom session?
Use custom session
Select yes to customise session related values.
Yes
No
Select Yes to customise session
related values. This relates to the user login and whether Xoops
remembers the user for future sessions to assist with quicker logins.
The next two choices only apply when sessions are set to Yes
Session name
The name of session (Valid only when 'use
custom session' is enabled) Leave at default or choose another name.
Most users just use the default.
Session expiration
Maximum duration of session idle time in
minutes (Valid only when 'use custom session' is enabled. Works only
when you are using PHP4.2.0 or later.)
Debug mode
Several debug options. Xoops is setup to do
blank pages if an error is causing a functional fault. Choose phpdebug
if you are getting a blank page or other problem. Then go back to the
blank page and see the error results. This helps to trace the source of
problems. A running website should have this turned off.
This relates to any Banners
set up in System Admin-->Banners. Set this to Yes to activate
your banners
Turn your site off?
Select Yes to switch your site off, handy
for site maintenance. When this is activated site visitors are greeted
with a login box and a message stating that the site is closed. You can
edit the message in the next box called Reason for turning off the site
Select groups that are
allowed to access while the site is turned off.
Users in the default webmasters group are
always granted access.
Your IP address
The IP address inserted here will not
counted as impression for banners. You will need to find out your sites
numerical IP address and insert it here.
Default Comment Display
Mode
Default Comment
Display Mode
Default Comments
Display Order
If comments are activated
for individual modules like "News" this setting determines
whether the comment view defaults to flat, nested or threaded formats.
This setting also sets the default view for the NewBB forums. If
you wish the forums to default to "Flat" view then choose that
view here.
Note: Users can also
set their own default view in their account profile.
General Settings (fourth part of
screen)
Enable IP bans?
Users from specified IP addresses will not
be able to view your site. This IP address is extracted from the users
computer and ISP they are using. For example users who visit you site
and post in the Forums have their users IP addresses revealed to the
site admin, if you enter this IP address here this will forbid them from
visiting viewing your site from the same IP address.
Module-wide Cache
Caches module contents
for a specified amount of time to enhance performance. Setting
module-wide cache will override module item level cache if any.
News Forum
The Cache is a buffer that
stores a snapshot on the server for quicker retrieval. These cache files
are stored in the "cache" folder on your server. To manually
delete the stored snapshot files in your cache folder reset this to
"No Cache".
Note: While
the cache for "News" is activated for example, you will not be
able to see any new news articles until the cache time activation
expires, or until you reset this to "No Cache".
Setting the cache for
individual modules here will override any local cache settings set-up
for individual modules.
To set up your User
preferences goto System AdminIcon--then choose Preferences.
Then choose the following option and click Edit
User Info Settings [Edit]
1st part of user info
screen
Much of this section is
intuitive and relates to default settings for users that visit your
site. I will focus on a few settings that may need further explanation.
Allow new user
registration?
Select yes to accept new user
registration
YesNo
This setting allows users to
register an account on your website. If for some reason you wish to
suspend user registration just set this to No
User passwords settings
Minimum length of
password required
Minimum length of
username required
Maximum length of
username
When users attempt to
register the above restrictions set here will be implemented
Allow users to
change email address?
Yes
No
This allows registered users
to change their email address if they wish without any contact with
admin.
Select group to
which new user notification mail will be sent
Choose Webmasters for all
webmasters to be notified when a new user registers. Choose registered
users for all users to be notified.
Select activation
type of newly registered users
If the above default
is chosen then users will receive an activation email, and then
the user will click a link provided in the email to activate their
account.
Activate
Automatically means the users will be able to register without
having their email addresses confirmed
Select group to
which activation mail will be sent
Valid only when 'Activation by administrators' is selected
If the site admin
chooses Activation by
administrators', then the registration process will not be
automatic, but the site admin will need to activate the users
account through System Admin-->Users. In this instance
webmasters will be notified when the new user's account is
activated.
2nd part of user info
screen
Allow custom avatar
upload?
Yes
No
Choose Yes to allow
users to upload their own avatar through their user profile
settings
Minimum posts required
Enter the minimum number of posts required to upload a custom
avatar
Choose 0 if you wish
users to be able to upload avatars without any post count. This
count includes posts in the Newbb forum and the Xoops comments
system.
Avatar image max width
(pixel)
Avatar image max
height (pixel)
Avatar image max
filesize (byte)
The above three
settings are for image size restrictions
Allow users to delete
own account?
Yes
No
This defaults to Yes,
if set to No, registered users will be unable to delete their
accounts.
Enter names that
should not be selected as username
Separate each with a |, case insensitive, regex enabled.
Enter emails that
should not be used in user profile
Separate each with a |, case insensitive, regex enabled.
Display disclaimer?
Select yes to display disclaimer in registration page
Yes
No
The disclaimer is the
agreement users need to agree to when registering. This disclaimer
can be edited to site admin preferences in the box below
Registration
disclaimer
Enter text to be displayed as registration disclaimer
The keywords meta tag is a series of keywords that represents the
content of your site. Type in keywords with each separated by a
comma or a space in between. (Ex. XOOPS, PHP, mySQL, portal
system)
Change the above
key words to suit your preferences
Meta Description
The description meta tag is a general description of what is
contained in your web page
Meta Robots
The Robots Tag declares to search engines what content to index
and spider
The Robots META tag is
a simple mechanism to indicate to visiting Web Robots if a page
should be indexed, or links on the page should be followed
The INDEX directive
specifies if an indexing robot should index the page. The FOLLOW
directive specifies if a robot is to follow links on the page. The
defaults are INDEX and FOLLOW. The values ALL and NONE set all
directives on or off: ALL=INDEX,FOLLOW and NONE=NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW.
Meta Rating
The rating meta tag defines your site age and content rating
This is a method of
"restricting" access to a WWW page. It is supposed to
rate a web page as to its suitability for children.
The "name="
attribute sets up the "rating" condition and
"content=" sets the specific rating for that page.
There are four
ratings: "general", "mature",
"restricted" and "14 years" that are all
arguments for the "content=" attribute.
<meta
name="rating" content="general">
Meta Author
The author meta tag defines the name of the author of the document
being read. Supported data formats include the name, email address
of the webmaster, company name or URL.
Meta Copyright
The copyright meta tag defines any copyright statements you wish
to disclose about your web page documents.
Enter your copyright
details here. This will not appear in the front end of your
website, this is used for search engines
Footer
Be sure to type links in full path starting from http://,
otherwise the links will not work correctly in modules pages.
The footer details entered here
will appear in all Xoops pages. This assumes the Xoops footer tag
is included in the theme.html file for the theme concerned.
