Submit story

This plug-in will add an important social component to your website - user generated content.

Description

This plug-in will allow members to easily contribute to the website by submitting their own news and articles. You can allow them not only to read articles you publish, but also to become an important figure for your website by taking part in its creation.

Users has to be logged into the system and they submit stories via form on the following page: http://www.example.com/submit_story

The plug-in allows maximum control over preferences and submitted stories - you can allow or restrict almost everything.

For general install and uninstall instructions, please refer to Manage plug-ins section of user guide

Access

The path to the Submit Story plug-in:

Choose Plug-ins from the secondary administrative menu located at the top right side in your web browser right above the main administrative menu.

Choose Submit Story plug-in from the list of all installed plug-in (on the left side of the screen)

User level

This plug-in can be accessed only by users belonging to groups that are allowed to manage Submit Story plug-in. Members may submit stories from the front end.

Actions

Access this plug-in any time to change preferences and manage pending stories.

Preferences

• Default status - Choose if the submitted stories will be automatically active or they require moderation. In that case their status will be set to pending until administrator approves it.
• Category - You can choose between two options: you may allow your members to submit articles to a pre-defined category or you may allow them to publish to a category of their choice.
• Allow uploads - Decide if you want to allow members to upload abstract images.
• Allow HTML (WYSIWYG) - If you choose "Yes", members will have the advanced options for content formatting. If "No" is chosen, they will be allowed to submit only default formatted text.
• Show comments - Select if you will allow comments to be posted on the stories.
• Show ratings (rate the article) - Select if you will allow visitors to vote for the stories.
• Publish to feed - RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) is a web technology that allows people to subscribe to receive updates from your website. When you publish a new web page or update an existing one, you may select the page to also appear as an item in various RSS feeds. People using RSS readers or news aggregator software then receive an alert anytime the page content changes. RSS also allows people to easily add links to your content within their own web pages.
• E-mail notification - Choose if you want to receive notification via e-mail when someone posts a story.

Manage stories

Story management panel will load with a list of all pending stories that members have created on the right hand side of the screen.

From this administrative panel you are able to approve and edit existing stories, or create new articles by clicking on the Add new article link (you will be provided to Article section).

Approve a story

To have some story published as an article on your website you need to approve it by changing its status to Active. Select an article by checking the box next to it and select Active from 'Select action' drop-down menu. Approved story will be moved then to the articles section and you may access it from this point.

Edit a story

To edit a story before approving it click on the edit icon  on the right side of the story title.

This will take you to the page where you can change all parameters and content that member has entered during a story creation process.

Member actions

Follow a link from the front-end to be provided to a page where you will submit your content and have a list of previously added stories. You must be registered and logged-in in order to see the appropriate link and have access to submit a story page.

Submit a story

The following described options and screenshots may differ and some fields may not display depending on administrator preferences.

• Title - Enter the title (name) of your story (for example, 'This is my new story'). If you do not enter it you will get a 'Missing argument(s): Title' message.
• Abstract - Enter your Abstract (summary) in the text editor. Your text should be short two or three sentences long.
• Category - Select a desired category from the drop-down menu where you want your story to show up.
• Abstract image - To add an image to your story, click Browse button and in the dialog box select the current location of the image that you want to add.
• Image Caption - Image caption field has the same effect like Alt tag in HTML. When you point your cursor on some image on your website, this image description will appear.

Click on the 'Submit' button when you are done. You will get the message 'Story is waiting for approval'.

If allowed, the body content of the story can be managed by WYSIWYG Text Editor. The WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor allows you to edit and format text, pictures and other media files.

Full manual on using WUSIWYUG editor can be found here.

My pending stories

In this box on the right side of the screen you may see the list with the titles of your pending stories (stories that wait for approval).

My stories

This box, which appears below 'My pending stories' box contains links to your published stories. You may click on any title and you will be provided to a live article page where your story is published.

Placing a link to frontend

To place a link to a frontend for access to Submit story page, you need to insert the following code in your template:

<vte:if test="{CURRENT_USER}">
  <a href="{VIVVO_URL}submit_story/index.html">Submit story</a>
</vte:if>

We recommend you to place the previous code in your footer.tpl file which is located in VIVVO_ROOT/templates/CURRENT_TEMPLATE/box/ just below this code:

<vte:if test="{CURRENT_USER.can|'ACCESS_ADMIN'}">
  | <a href="{VIVVO_URL}{VIVVO_FS_ADMIN_DIR}index.php"><vte:value select="{LNG_SITE_ADMINISTRATION}" /></a>
</vte:if>

If you get the blank page when accessing www.example.com/submit_story/index.html, you should copy submit_story.tpl file from the VIVVO_ROOT/plugins/submit_story/templates to VIVVO_ROOT/templates/xhtml/plugins. This issue is related with PHP mkdir function that depends on Apache user privileges so the file cannot be copied automatically during installation.