Working With Mambo
Adding And Approving User-Submitted Content
If you have registered users and you approve them to submit articles to your site,
then they can just log in, and add the article in the built-in WYSIWYG HTML editor.
We'll look at managing user registrations a bit later in this series. Once the
user submits an article, you will be notified and thus can take action to approve
the article's submission, allowing it to be published. This is the best way to
run your site, as it insures that you see all content prior to any visitor and
thus may save you from having illegal or other unwanted content published without
your knowledge. Remember, you are responsible for all content that is published
on your domain, whether or not you put it there yourself. Mambo let's you have
full control over all content on your site.
Setting Up User Submission Menu Items
The process starts when a registered user adds content to your site. To do so,
registered users would be given another menu when the log in which one of the
items would be to submit content. By default, the only item that Mambo has in
the user menu is Submit News. However, you can unpublish this menu item
and create a new menu. Here's how:
First we'll create a special section for the Submit menu item itself. Go
to Content -> Section Manager. Click the New
icon at the top of the page.
For both the Title and Section Name, type in something like Article Submissions
or anything that is different from any other section you have. Leave everything
else as-is except change the Access Level to Registered. Click the
Save icon at the top of the page. Take note of the Section ID
column and write down the ID # for the new section. If you do not see the new
section in the list, use the navigation links at the bottom of the list to find
the page the new section is listed on. You will need this number later when
creating your menu item.
Go to Menu -> usermenu. Click on the red icon
in the Published column for Submit News. This disables this menu.
Click on the New icon at the top of the page. In the Content area, select
Table - Content Section and click the Next button at the top of
the page.
Fill in the following:
| Name: | Submit |
| Section: | Article Submissions (Or whatever you chose to name the section.) |
| Parent Item: | Top |
| Access Level: | Registered |
| Parameters: | (Leave everything as-is.) |
Click the Save icon at the top of the page when done.
Create a Category as well using the Same Name as the section you created
above. Do this from the Content -> Category Manager
menu. Be sure the Section is set to the one you created above.
Now you can create sub-menus. Note that you can also add just one submit
menu item and allow users to submit an article, and you choose the area
and category. To do this, simply create also a Category of the same name
as your Submit Section name. Then skip the menu creation steps above and follow
the ones below, except for Parent Item choose Top. When a user
submits an article, you can choose the section and category when reviewing it
prior to publishing the article.
To create the menu item for each section you would like your users to submit items
to:
Go to Content -> Section Manager and take note
of the section numbers of the Sections you want to allow your users to add
content to. Write these down somewhere for reference as you'll need these to
create the menu items.
Go to Menu -> usermenu and click on the New
icon at the top of the page.
From the Links area, select Link - URL. Click on the Next
button at the top of the page.
Type the section name in the Name box (or if you're just making one menu
item for submitting all articles, type in the word Submit).
For the Link, type in the following, replacing the highlighted number with
the section number that you took note of earlier:
index.php?option=com_content&task=new§ionid=1&Itemid=0
For the Parent Item, find the Submit item in the drop down box.
(If making just one item as mentioned above, select Top instead.)
Access Level should read Registered.
Click on the Save icon at the top of the page when done. You'll see that
your new menu item appears under Submit and indented.
Sumitting An Article As A User
When the user clicks on the Submit, more choices (your sub menus for each
section) will be shown. They then can decide which area to submit articles into.
Then they fill in the title of the article, select a category (this must
be done) and then fill in the intro and main text. The user also has the option
to add Images (note that images available will be a list of those in the
/images/stories/ directory but not it's sub-directories), Determine the
access level of users who may view the article, change the name of the author
printed with the article, and other options. Of course, you as administrator
can also change these items before anyone else sees it when you review the article
before publication.
Approving And Publishing An Article
When you log into your site's administration page, or if there, click the Home
menu option, you'll notice a couple small icons on the upper right next to the
logout link. The one on the left is how many messages you have and the one on
the right is how many users are logged into your site. If you see a red number
next to the icon on the left, click on that icon. This is where you get notices
about any new content that has been submitted, and any messages that registered
users will send you. Any new article submission will show up as New Item
in your inbox. Click on each of these, taking note of the item(s) that were
submitted. You can also delete your messages by clicking on the Delete
icon on the upper right of the page.
Another easier way is to go to the Content -> All Content Items
and take note of the items near the top of the list that have a red 'X' in the
Published column. Click on the title of any of these that you wish to review.
From there, you can change the section or category that the item appears in, edit
any part of the article or intro, and adjust any parameters, including clicking
on the check box next to Publish in the Publishing tab when you
want to put it on the site for everyone else to read. If you click on the box
next to Show on Frontpage, the item will show up on the first page that
visitors see when they visit your site. Either way, the article still can be
viewed from the section it was placed in. When done making changes, click the
Save icon at the top of the page.
Disproving and/or Deleting the article
If you have seen the article but do not wish to publish it, but hold it for later,
simply do not put a check mark in the box next to publish. When done reviewing
the article, click the Close icon at the top of the page instead of the
Save icon. This exits the area without saving anything or publishing the
article. If you wish to contact the author about the article, click on the author's
name in the Author column. You'll be taken to the user editor for that
user and can see their email address to contact them. Furthermore, if they are
in serious violation, you can change their access in the Group drop down
to Registered and they will no longer be able to add articles for review.
Or you can even block the user from using the site.
To delete the article, be sure your in the All Content Items page and
click on the box next to the article to delete. Then click on the Delete
icon in the top of the page. You can also permanently delete all items in your
trash can by going to Site -> Trash Manager,
clicking on a tab and selecting items to delete. Then click on the Delete
icon on the top of that page.
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