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Build Help
Links SQL generates HTML pages
so that visitors viewing your site can browse the directory quickly. Also
included is page.cgi which lets you generate your page dynamically. For very
large directories, this can actually be better, as page.cgi is very fast, and
works well under mod_perl.
To generate your HTML pages you
have three options:
- Build Changed: this
creates the main what's new, what's cool, home page and top rated pages.
It then only updates categories that have changed since you last built,
and detailed pages of links that have changed since you last built.
- Build All: simply
recreates all the html pages.
- Build
Staggered: is a feature to address some shortages of resources that some
users have run into. Because of the
considerable amount of time required to run a Build All in large databases, we’ve seen a lot of time-outs. By staggering the build, the work is split up into smaller chunks thereby
avoiding running into resource allocation problems.
All the pages in Links SQL are
controlled through the use of templates. You can manage your templates from
within the build menu.
- User Templates: After
clicking on User Templates, the Edit Templates section will be
displayed. Here, you
can choose to edit any of your available template sets. This allows you the flexibility to alternate between different sets of
templates to keep things fresh. Once
the template set is selected, you can choose to edit any one of the various
templates within the program from add.html to validate_success.html that
determine how the program displays its information in various functions.
- Also included is an
experimental WYSIWYG editor. If you are using internet explorer, you can
select "Switch to html editor" to open the template in a
wysiwyg mode. This is still experimental, so please let us know how it
works out for you.
- User Language: If you are
using Links SQL on a site that is not written in English, you can change the
user-viewable language here at the “User Language” option. This feature greatly simplifies the translation of a Links SQL
application in a foreign language by giving all Descriptions a code that is used
throughout the program. Change it
once and all the changes will be applied to all applications throughout the
program where the code is used.
- Template Globals: The Template
Globals section allows you to quickly edit Globals that can be used in
any template. If you are familiar with perl, you can also enter subroutines here
that will get run every time the template tag is called.
Working With Templates
Links SQL template system is very easy to work with. Basically, when a
user does something like views a category, the program gets the appropriate
template (category.html in this case) and parses it. It then displays the
output to the user. Links SQL will print out exactly what's in the template,
but replace anything found in between <% and %> tags. So if you see:
Your search returned <%link_count%>
results.
You can also include other
template files. This is very useful for keeping your common header and
footer in a separate file. Please see the GT::Template
documentation for more information on the syntax.
Using the File Manager
Bundled with Links SQL is a copy of FileMan. This allows you to edit and
upload files from your browser. You can set the root url and path that
FileMan manages in your Setup->Misc options. By default, it works off of
your admin root directory.
For more information on
FileMan, see:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/fileman/
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