Getting started with Manila
Welcome to Manila
This document is for people who are just getting started working on a Manila site. It doesn't matter if the site is on one of your servers (your sysop is running Frontier 6.1 or greater) or on a UserLand.Com server. These instructions and tips are for all first-time Manila users.
Checklist #1
Join the Manila-Newbies mail list. When you have a question or a problem to solve and haven't found it in the docs here on the site, please post a message to this list. It's possible that someone else has figured out what to do. It's a friendly community, everyone's a newbie, so don't be bashful!
Post a message here on the Manila-Newbies discussion group. This is a good place to post because the discussion group here works just like the discussion group on your Manila site. So when you learn how to participate here, you'll pick up ideas on how to manage discussions on your own site.
Look at other Manila sites. This will give you an idea of how other people are using Manila, and may give you ideas. This is often the best way to learn a piece of software, by examining a working example document. In a sense a Manila site is just a document. The only difference is that you communicate with the app over the Internet. That's why Manila feels both strange and familiar at the same time.
What is Manila?
Manila is an Internet application that allows groups of writers, designers and graphics people to manage a full-featured high performance website thru an easy-to-use web browser interface.
Manila is licensed on a subscription basis for $1099 per year.
(It's actually a little more complicated, updates are $1099 per year, so you can keep using a licensed copy indefinitely, but only active subscribers receive updates.)
Getting started
The first thing to do is to log on to your website. Use the account name and password provided by your system administrator. After logging on you should see the Editors Only menu at the top of the screen. Here's a picture of the menu:
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This menu is visible to you and the Contributing Editors you designate. Most of Manila's functionality is accessible thru these commands. People who browse your site, whether they are members of your site or not, will not see this menu.
Stories
When you think of a story, think of a story on a newspaper website, a fact sheet for a product, a course description in a university, or an essay.
The story is the basic unit of a Manila website. In a sense, the purpose of a Manila site is to produce a flow of stories with pictures written by writers. Creating a story is like creating a page.
When you click on the Stories link in the Editors Only menu you'll see a list of stories that have been published on the site. At the bottom of the list is a link that allows you to create a new story:
To create the story, give it a title, and enter the initial text.
Pictures
Pictures are another essential element of an informative, attractive and professional website.
Stories can contain pictures. For example, newspaper stories often have pictures, product fact sheets certainly do, and a course description might have a picture of the instructor.
Digital photography is a hot market. That's why we made Pictures a central feature in Manila.
When you click on the Pictures link in the Editors Only menu, you'll see a list of pictures and a link at the bottom of the list that allows you to upload a picture.
Shortcuts
We did lots of user testing while we were developing Manila, and we learned early-on that links are one of the most confusing things to people who aren't web developers and designers. So we invested in this area, allowing people to create Shortcuts to web pages, that work much like shortcuts in the Windows operating system or aliases in the Macintosh OS.
When you're on a page that you want to link to from another page, click on the Shortcuts link in the Editors Only menu. A form appears, with the name of the page and its URL pre-entered. If you click on the Add New Shortcut button, you'll then be able to link to the page from any text on your website by enclosing its name in "double quotes".
For example, I've defined a shortcut to this page, so when I enter its name in "double quotes" I get a link, like this: Getting started with Manila.
Discuss
Behind the scenes your editorial team has its own discussion group.
Every story and picture also appears in the discussion group, where members of the team can comment, add notes, link in pictures, and assign tasks.
Having a discussion group for project management is one of the strongest features of Manila. The fact that every story and picture is also a discussion group message means that all tools that are developed that work with UserLand DGs will also work for Manila sites.
Prefs
This is where you go to setup your Manila site, to add new editors and to choose editorial features, membership features, it's basically your control panel into your Manila site. There are lots of docs to write here. Stay tuned.
Admin
This page has commands that allow you to delete pictures, stories, and discussion group messages, promote a discussion group message to a story, add a new member, block or unblock a member.
Bulletins
The Bulletins command in the Editors Only menu allows you to send an email bulletin to all members of your site who have chosen to receive bulletins. They can be formatted in HTML or plain text. You can preview the bulletin in your web browser before sending it to your members.
Logoff
Logs you off your site. It's important to do this when you are using a public terminal, otherwise anyone using that system will be able to edit your site. Be careful!
Help
Links you to the Manila-Newbies site. Eventually this command will become context-sensitive and will link to a page on the site that's specific to the page you came from.
How your home page works
Manila doesn't enforce a rigid set of constraints on how your home page works, instead it provides a set of features that accomodate several different styles of home pages.
For the purposes of discussion, let's identify three of the styles as Weblog, Essay Site and Fixed Home Page. Each of the sections explains one of the three styles, with pointers to examples, and setup and editing tips.
Style #1: Weblog
Have a look at News.UserLand.Com. Each day the home page of this site is flipped, starting with a fresh slate to provide links to on-site and off-site stories.
When the home page flips, the previous home page is archived in the calendar. It's not a problem if we miss a day, on those days we just don't flip the home page. When we resume logging, there will be a not-hot day in the calendar.
If you want to manage your site this way, visit Prefs/Appearance and choose Yes for "Do you want a calendar on your home page?".
To start a fresh home page, log on to your site, visit the home page, and click on the Flip Home Page button.
A page will display confirming this decision. If you flip the page, you will then be taken back to your home page. Click on Edit this Page to edit the contents of the home page. You can enter HTML into the page, that's how you link to stories.
Style #2: Essay site
In this design, the home page of the site contains the current story, usually an essay or column. The original prototype for this type of site is Suck.Com, whose basic design we borrowed for the DaveNet site, which is now a Manila site. The same model would apply for any columnist's website.
The key event in this kind of site is the publication of a new current story. Here's the process I use when I'm preparing a new DaveNet piece for publication. First, I write the initial draft of the essay in a text editor on my desktop computer. When I'm ready to see how it works on the web, I visit the DaveNet site, create a new discussion group message, and paste the text into the message. I then iterate over the copy -- seeing the story thru a web browser gives a fresh perspective that often demands a rewrite. (Aside: If I had a team of researchers for DaveNet I'd ask them questions and assign tasks in the discussion group, as sub-messages of the essay in progress. When results came back, I'd edit the piece to incorporate the new information.)
When the piece is ready for publication, I scroll to the end of the discussion group page, and work with the Admin dialog:
First, I promote the DG message to being a story by choosing the second radio button and clicking on Submit. After confirming that it worked by reading the story, I then choose the third option -- and make this story the home page. The previous DaveNet piece is archived in the calendar, and the new current piece is displayed on the home page.
Style #3: Fixed home page
The third style Manila website is called Fixed Home Page.
This is the simplest kind of home page, for a site whose purpose is to completely inform a reader on a subject with a page that doesn't change or grow very often. You might create such a site for a product or a college course.
Our example for this style of home page is XML-RPC.COM, which is also a Manila site. The purpose of the this site is to create an always-current readout of development in the XML-RPC community. The site includes a discussion group which is open to the public. XML-RPC developers can post new specifications for other developers to read. The home page of this site also points off-site to pages maintained by developers of XML-RPC interfaces for other network scripting environments.
In this site, the calendar is turned off, and the home page never flips. As editor of the site, I simply use the Edit this Page button to add or change text. It's a very easy site to work on.