Step by Step instructions for BlogAddOn needed

Dear Sirs,

I wanted to try out the Foswiki BlogAddOn. It sounds like I could easily integrate some blogging features into Foswiki based web sites. However, the documentation is somewhat sparse. Even with some TWiki/Foswiki experience I was not able to simply customize the Blog. Would it be possible to write a short Step-By-Step tutorial? For instance, I understand that I need to copy the BlogAddOn page to the appropriate Web and press the "update" button in the addon page then. But it is not clear whether copying should be performed in Foswiki (by copy/move of the Template) or to do this in the file system (and also to copy the additional .txt files then)? I tried both but the second seemed to be more reasonable. A partial success was, that I could add some categories then. But creating a first page failed then (completing the form resulted in a broken page).

Additionally it would be nice to have some typical use case examples:

• entering categories,
• writing new posts,
• handling/customizing of comments,
• customizing of preferences to make viewing of the Blog convenient to guests/view only users

and to answer some obvious questions, like "is it possible to prepare new posts in a hidden Web and to publish them to the official Blog Web"?

Regards,

-- Gerd - 22 Apr 2011

Hi Gerd

You not only need to copy the BlogAddOn page, but all .txt files from the _BlogAddOn web into the web you want to blog in. This is easiest using the file system.

Press "update" in the BlogAddOn topic to see the correct links. There is no other functionality behind the button. You will see a link to your web -> BlogAddOnHome, that contains some additional information.

Entering categories is done by editing BlogCategory, it is just a bullet list that is read.

Writing a new post is done using BlogPostCreator.

Customizing comments:

• you can use a per topic setting: checking the checkboxes in the data form
• settings for the site (or web) can be changed, information is in the BlogAddOn topic

make viewing of the Blog convenient to guests/view only users - I guess you mean that guests don't have edit rights, only commenting rights? This can be done by created by creating a guest skin. See PatternSkinCustomization, section "I want to hide the edit buttons from certain users".

You can prepare blog posts in a hidden web. Copy all BlogAddOn files to that hidden web, then write your posts. "Publishing" simply means copying over the ready posts to your public web.

-- ArthurClemens - 22 Apr 2011