Getting Started

From SubjectsPlus

[Note: Add links to videos when updated]

Contents 1 Configure the First User 2 Explore the Admin Tab 3 Create Your First Record 4 Make a Research Guide 4.1 Base Pluslet 4.2 Heading 4.3 RSS Feed 4.4 Delicious Links 4.5 Twitter Feed 4.6 Flickr Images 4.7 Key to Icons 4.8 Subject Specialist 4.9 Related Guides 4.10 Books: Use the Library Catalog 5 Test out the Other Modules 6 Make sure unauthorized people can't get in 7 mod_rewrite 8 Clean up

Configure the First User

Once you have SubjectsPlus installed and you can log in to the control panel, you will want to set up your users. Go to the admin tab and click on the edit icon next to "Someone, Iam." You can change your personal information here. Or, create a brand new user. Give yourself access to all modules--why not?

The email address is your login. If you want something else to be your login, you'll have to mess around in login.php and the isCool() function in control/includes/functions.php

Back on the main admin screen, change your password by clicking the key icon. The password is saved in encrypted format in the database, so you can't retrieve it by looking directly in the staff table. You need to set and reset passwords here.

Explore the Admin Tab

The Admin tab contains the following options:

• Manage Existing Users (i.e., the splash page). You can get a bird's eye view of permissions here, and by clicking the little pencil, you can edit the user's information + permissions. The little key allows you to change the password, the little camera gives tips on changing the user's picture (and in a later revision will allow you to upload pix--but maybe the user will do that directly), and the X will send this user to oblivion.

• Add New User - Since this form will ask you to specify a user's department, you may want to set up your departments before you add your users.

• Subjects/Librarians - This allows you to add subject areas and to associate a subject with the librarian/user assigned to it. This will determine the contact information that appears in the sidebar of a subject page. One subject ("General") is currently in place. Make sure at least one subject is always there.

• Departments - Add/delete departments (for use on the public Staff page). The admin of users requires they be assigned a department, so even if you don't want to use the staff list, keep one department in here.

• Sources - This lets you manage the list of source types (e.g., web site, encyclopedia, journal).

Create Your First Record

• Go to the Records tab. You'll see the splash screen. Add your first record using the "Add New Item" tab. Make sure you never enter an item without a location, as this can screw things up royally.

• Once you've added a record, you'll be able to add additional subject associations, and additional locations (say, you have both an online and print version of a resource).

• To check for your new item on the live site, click the "Subject Guides" link at the top of the admin screen. With any luck, and if things set up correctly in config.php, you'll see the main page of the public site. Select your subject, and behold your new resource.

• If the content isn't showing up, maybe you need to tweak the config.php file to get the path to your server correct. If you're getting PHP errors, check the include paths in the top of subjects/includes/header.php, subjects/index.php, subjects/guide.php etc.

• You can also check to see if your new item shows up on the A-Z list of resources (assuming you ticked this box), which will be located somewhere like:

http://www.yoursite.edu/sp/subjects/databases.php

• You may also want to check the staff page listing at:

http://www.yoursite.edu/sp/subjects/staff.php

If you don't want to use staff pages, just can delete them from the subjects folder. Or just never point to them

Make a Research Guide

Click on the Guides tab. You won't see anything yet. Click "Create New Guide" and fill in the options. You will be transported to a blissfully empty screen. Ponder nothingness for a moment, then click the "New Pluslet" tab thingie. You will see a bunch of content types. You can drag and drop these onto the "Add to Main Column" section spot, or the "Add to Sidebar" spot. (You can rearrange items later, don't worry.) Try out the various item types, to make sure they work.

Base Pluslet

This will open up an input box for a title + a WYSIWYG editor(FCKEditor). Try entering some text, a link, maybe an image. Now examine that second row of icons in the FCKEditor toolbar. Each of these custom buttons allows you to add stuff from elsewhere in SubjectsPlus. You might not have that content yet, but still, here's an explanation:

Icon #1: Cylinder -- Insert Database Link. Pop up window allows you to search for and then insert content from the Records tab. Find the record you entered before and add it. Does it work? Does some funny string of text appear? Good.

You might want to pause and read the Explanation of Tokens

Icon #2: Folder -- Insert or Upload Document. Pop up window allows you to upload a file to your user folder (assets/users/[_first-part-of-your-email-address]). Or you can insert an existing file (probably, there is only one file there now--headshot.jpg). Try it out. If this doesn't work, get thee to Troubleshooting!

Icon #3: Question Mark -- Insert FAQs. You probably don't have any FAQs yet, but once you do, this pop-up will allow you to tick any FAQs you'd like to see in your page. It will display them as a bulleted list.

Icon #4: Book -- Insert Link to Catalog Record. If you have set up the various variables in control/includes/config.php that point to your catalog (Located in the section "Connections to Outside Resources"), you should be able to use this pop up to embed links to catalog items and searches. Try it out. If it doesn't work, fiddle with the strings in config.php. This was designed for Voyager. Maybe it won't work for your ILS?

Heading

This will give you just a pluslet with only a title. It's meant to be a way of dividing up a page into logical groupings. The default public styling has it black and taking up 70% of a column (while the regular pluslets take up all the column). You can change the styling, of course.

RSS Feed

This will give you a pluslet wtih a title field + a space to enter your RSS feed, choose how many items you want it to show, etc. Give it a whirl. The Feed should show up when you hit the "Save Changes" button. The little question mark icon will give your users some tips about finding feeds.

Delicious Links

Same idea as RSS Feed pluslet. Try it out. Note that you can also generate a page of delicous links using the link at the top of the Guides subtab.

Twitter Feed

Ditto. 2.0 bling to give your users a warm fuzzy feeling.

Flickr Images

Oh, yes. Just an RSS feed by another name, but it allows you to show a flickr collection inline. Kinda neat, right?

Key to Icons

This is one of the "fixed pluslets" and thus is uneditable by the user. You, however, can edit assets/fixed_pluslets/legend.php to make this look however you want. When you're more comfortable, you might want to create your own fixed pluslets: How to Create Fixed Pluslets.

Subject Specialist

This will drag in your subject librarian(s) contact info + picture. You can modify this in assets/fixed_pluslets/librarian.php . . . if you dare! Note that the librarian content doesn't appear in the admin until you log out and back into a guide (it will show up on the live site immediately). A future version will fix this.

Related Guides

Okay, don't use this. It's for the future. Imagine you're in a time machine, looking at something that will automatically generate related guides based on what people enter into the "parent" field when creating/editing a guide.

Books: Use the Library Catalog

Another fixed pluslet. You will need to customize this. assets/fixed_pluslets/catalogsearch.html

Okay, once you've tried out the item types and hopefully everything works. Make sure to save your guide, then click the title of your guide, i.e., Editing [Your Guide Name], and make sure it looks okay on the live site.

Test out the Other Modules

Try adding FAQs. Try submitting a Talk Back from the public website, and then answer it.

Make sure unauthorized people can't get in

• Try logging out of the SubjectsPlus Control Panel (using logout tab) and then navigating directly to a page that should be protected (say, http://www.yoursite.edu/sp/control/admin/index.php). You should get bumped to the login page. Try also logging in with incorrect credentials. You should be bumped back to the login page.

• Now, I'd recommend you also lock down that folder to on-campus IP addresses using Apache's .htaccess, to be safe.

• If you're assigning passwords, try to assign good ones.

mod_rewrite

The mod_rewrite directive allows prettier URLs, like /staff/joeblow rather than staff.php?name=joeblow, or subjects/art rather than subjects/guide.php?subject=art. It's controlled by a .htaccess file. Basically, if you have mod_rewrite enabled on your web server, it will read the .htacess file in the subjects folder and give you the prettier URLs. Turn this on or off in control/config.php. It's set to 1 or on by default.

Clean up

• If things seem to be working, remove the readme.txt and tables.sql files from the server.

• Don't leave the Iam Someone user with the password of "donuts" since every copy of SubjectsPlus goes out with this default user in place.

Excellent. Move on to Customizing.