Publish your own articles, and retain credit; edit other articles
 

Firstly, i apologize if this is in the wrong forum category. I've been procrastinating on this for a while now, because i do not quite have my system complete; but this feature has been usable for a long time now, and i guess that i can start letting others use it...

Anyway, as some of you may already know (or not, i guess), i have http://LinuxIntro.com which is (obviously) a Linux and open source software oriented website. I am too damned busy to keep up with creating new articles, and updating out of date articles, and exploring new areas of Linux and Open Source software to educate myself enough to make articles for others to learn it.

I have been running my unfinished Content Management System on this site (and on my political reform website, that is likewise falling into a state of neglect for the same reasons), and noticed that many others are trying to assist the open source movement by publishing their own articles on their own little home pages, or blogs.

So now it is a community content management system; a hybrid between a wiki, a blog, and a high-end commercial CMS. It allows users who have any at least Level 1 privileges (normal 'users' are level 0) to publish articles and edit articles (even if they did not create it, as sometimes another user may have more experience, and thus more useful information to add to an existing article), and for users with Level 2 privileges to move articles and upload images, and for users with Level 3 (highest you can be) privileges to delete articles and to delete images.

I don't have any publishing guidelines written yet, but for the most part it is common sense. All articles must be filed in the appropriate category (just try your best, and at worst i will just move it to the correct category), and limit only 1 video per article page (articles can have many pages).

When you log in, you can click on "Account" and then "My Website" to enter your own website address for others to see. When a user reads an article you've written, they can click on your name below the article, and see your profile, which will display anything you want to share (website, bio, interests, etc). If you publish an article, you are not limited to keeping it only on Linux Intro. You can publish it on your own site, or any other site; however you cannot delete it, as others may have made a contribution to your article, and that would not be fair to them. You can add YOUR VERY OWN you tube videos that you already have, or any new ones that you make; just remember 1 video per page. Also, if you DO post a video with your article, make sure that what you do and say in the video is typed out in the article's paragraphs. This is not a video site, and so textual content is mandatory for articles; also text is accessible and video is not, so i try to adhere to 801 standards as much as possible (or practicable).

For the record, in case anyone is wondering, this is NOT an attempt to 'steal users' from this website. It is only an attempt to create a more user-engaged, comprehensive, and in-depth informational material for new Linux and Open Source users to benefit from; and to make it MUCH easier to publish content.

Oh, almost forgot, if you have been a member of this forum for longer than 4 months, and have over 200 posts, PM me HERE with your Linux Intro user name, and i will raise your security clearance on Linux Intro so that you can publish articles (otherwise you're only a user). If you already have a moderator/maintainer/admin status here on this forum, then PM me HERE with your user name on Linux Intro and i will raise your security level on Linux Intro.

I know that the site may still look like crap, but i'm about to redesign it again to look much more clean (like i just did with http://Ionisis.com ) and presentable. I am brainstorming for ideas atm, and should begin with a new design tomorrow.

Also, if you do not find an appropriate category for your article, then feel free to suggest one; but i believe that i have a fairly comprehensive --yet still generalized-- list to choose from. And please do let me know what you think about this system.

Try to remember that "articles" are not the same as "article pages". An article is an object that is independent from its pages, and has a parent-children --or one-to-many relationship with its pages. You publish the ARTICLE's details, like its title, keywords, and description, and THEN you publish any/all of the pages that belong to that article. You can completely ignore the "previous" and "next" options, as the system takes care of pagination automatically; those are for advanced use, namely, chainlinking disparate articles together (the end of one article leading to the beginning of another).

Enjoy, and please do give feedback!

Awkward how it's always other people who have to do something, isn't it?..


Know Rene Magritte? Made a wonderful painting of a pipe and called it "Ceci n'est pas une pipe".


"More". Sounds good. But if that's your unique selling point then I'd say that's a bit shallow, isn't it? Besides you may attempt it (and good luck with it) but we and some other well-established sites already do it.


You mean "easier" as opposed to logging in and clicking "Post"?

If you were already doing it, then i wouldn't have needed to build this one.

And "yes", easier than logging in and clicking "post". Forums are almost as useful as a pile of crap for a brand new-to-linux user. They need more than question-and-answer formatted information from cocky and condescending forum users. New users usually do not know the right questions to ask, and never get the answers they need; and so they need a middle ground to educate them enough to get to the point that they can understand how to ask better questions, and understand the answers. Textual articles with images and video is not being done on very many sites at all --especially for Linux. I'm not going to argue this point any further. If YOU think that it is pointless, then you can 'opt-out'. Over 1000 other new Linux users would disagree with you as to the usefulness of such a project.

That's no argument, that's incorrect reasoning.


Cool.


And since you already wrote: what makes you think people would believe that you'll have time to keep things in check?.. If it's going to be used and if it is FFA then you'll find it'll turn into a mess RSN. Unless you've worked for a major site you don't know what needs to be done in the background just to keep things tidy.


And that's what they'll get. Funny though you use the term "condescending". That's exactly the term I had in mind when I saw you write
...so we ask them questions to help them get out the details and educate them where necessary.


Of course your site will do soo much better now that you haven't got any time to create content anyway...


Video might seem nice as an added bonus but, unless you have still that Eighties webdesigners misconception of "interactivity", it will never replace the previous.


It's not my problem but on the other hand your replies tell people how you deal with and how much you really care for things. Over the years I've had quite a few discussions with people who promote their website on LQ. One in a hundred falls in a niche market I see no problem with (actually I'd like to see such places thrive) but ninetynine percent usually ends in three posts as the OP doesn't respond anyway, gets all defensive or even abusive. Only one percent will be fruitful showing an OP with an open mind, willing to listen and discuss things.


Wow. That's an awesome number. Just awesome. Can't wait untill you reach 1001.

1) I DO work for major websites, and own them

2) You previous post was condescending, as is this one

3) Go ahead a let someone try to get their FFA on, it will be promptly and permanently taken care of ;)

4) I don't care if it is 101, the fact of the matter is that this site has been doing what forums and other Linux site's do not do in some cases. Those videos along with the text make a huge difference. This isn't about how many users you have, it's about helping the users who are having problems that they're not getting the right help with using any of the conventional methods. Look man, if you don't like it, i don't really care; this site is obviously not for you, it's for the people who want to help in more involved ways than what is currently available. Users like you are the reason that most users stop using forums.

FFA is a term used in gaming. It simply means "Free For All".


It's not about me liking it or not. It's about me challenging you to find out what it's all about. Those who don't know me or the business will call it presumptuous, those who do pretty well know themselves what the "right answers" should be in the first place. You may find this "threathening" somehow but if you don't care for one persons critique, remarks and comments then I assert you also don't care for the next. Unless it doesn't question in any way what you set out to do of course.


True. I'm so bad, it must be a crime.

Allow me to interrupt your little argument for a moment......

I'm sorry to say that my first impression of the site is completely negative. It looks like a lot of effort has gone into some flashy graphics that--to me-- are just a distraction.

What's more important is the content: I clicked on "Start Installing and Using Linux", and I found myself reading a long rambling introduction which took a very long time to get around to how to do anything.

Once you get a good user interface with SIMPLE graphics, you will need to figure out how to cover key points with maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the number of words.


(Not a Linux technical question, so it's off the General)

Here's the Scripting article from linuxintro.com

Wireless Drivers, Yum Repos, Multimedia Codecs Automatically Installed

I began this script as nothing more than a little curiosity about shell scripting. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that a shell script is not much more that a bunch of commands, and that installing wireless drivers, configuring repos, downloading and installing codecs, was also just a buch of commands. So out of curiosity, I decided to see if I could get a script to do, for other people, the same things that I do to install my wireless.

This is my very first shell script -- ever, so it's nothing spectacular or extreemly useful. It's really only meant to help those of you who are consistently unable to install ndiswrapper. This script DOES work for Fedora Core 7, but I haven't (and probably won't be) tested it out on anything else yet. The prompts in the script should be simple enough and clear enough to understand and follow along with, because I broke it down into really small steps. But if there's any questions, comments, complaints, etc, let me know. You must be root user to run this ("su -" at the terminal/command line).

Right click on the link below, and choose the "Save Link As" option to download this script to your desktop and run it from the terminal.

Eight of "I, me or my" feels excessive for a technical introduction where the reader is presumably interested in learning how to write shell script rather than in the author.

It would be a foolhardy reader who downloaded a script from a source with no verifiable reputation and ran it as root -- but they don't have the option because clicking on the link produces a 404 error "The requested URL /downloads/LinuxIntro.com-1.1.txt was not found on this server." For neophytes looking for an introduction a "Hello World!" script would be more appropriate than a utility "Wireless Drivers, Yum Repos, Multimedia Codecs Automatically Installed", that is only tested on Fedora Core 7 and is the programmer's first script -- especially with no instruction to make the file executable after downloading.

@Alex-Grim: sorry, on this quick assessment, linuxintro.com does not have the feel of a project I would be comfortable working on.

Here, i'll help with something...from the site:

You may want to run it by http://validator.w3.org/

@pixellany , my impression also. Ten pages of very fine print for Pre-installation prep.

I am not "piling on" because it is evident you have put an incredible amount of effort into this project, and as one who has had pet projects where I have been unable to see the "forest for the trees" (not linux related)I believe that is what is happening here.

I also find it disturbing that you criticize forums in general and when I read through your 17 posts in three years I only found one or two that could be generalized as being helpful. Anyway, good luck with your project.

I think that you have no idea. It isn't only this site that i have to handle, but all of the information management systems that this site uses, and all of my other websites, and all of the information management systems they use, and trying to get all of the IMSs ready for public use, and trying to get alllllll the websites to look presentable ( http://eInformationOrganizer.com http://TheReformProject.com http://Ionisis.com http://LinuxIntro.com, and i'm dropping the rest of my websites permanently because i just don't have the time; i'm keeping only the ones that i believe in, due to their purpose, whether anyone else does or not)

No, not really, but i can admit that the damned trees are in the way!

This is not my forum. I'm a http://fedoraforum.org user, and even then, i go through every few months and delete all of my outdated topics, which keeps my post count low (i think it's about 700 right now, otherwise it would be about 1,200 right around now).


Anyway it sounds like there's nothing but knit-picking going on here, and no one willing to give anything a try, so just delete this post, and my account. If any of you change your mind, the site re-design should be finished by tomorrow, as well as me cleaning up some of the older articles to integrate them into the newer CMS that it uses (Ionisis WCMS).

It's nit-picking. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Not that no one is willing to try, it's just that
it seems that it's very much your site (as it should be since you're the only one who's working on it) and there's no easy access apparent.

You can't delete your posts, all you can do is to delete the content and look like an idiot - that's how it will come across and will be how you appear.