Here's a slightly newer more complete draft of the docs. Unfortunately, a lot of this documents interfaces that have not been implemented yet :(

Overview

There are two main components to Blogware - your Blogware home page and your Blogware
Control Panel. This document explains the high-level functions of the Blogware Control Panel.
Other documents will detail specific functions in more detail.

Getting Started

Logging In

In order to administer your Blogware, you must be logged into the Blogware Control Panel. To login, simply point your web browser at http://www.blogware.com/admin and enter your Blogware administrator ID and your password in the Username: & Password: form fields. Clickt the Login button with your mouse or hit Enter on your keyboard to submit the data and gain access to the Blogware Control Panel.

Administration Overview

There are thirteen (we didn't plan it that way) functions available from the Blogware Control Panel.

• "Main" - Clicking this link will take you to the main login page.
  
• "Post Article" - Allows you to post a new article to any category of your
  Blogware.
  
  
  
  • "Advanced Article Options" - Allows you to modify advanced
    article publishing properties
  
  
  
  
• "Logout" - Logs you out of the Blogware Control Panel.
  
• "View" - Opens a new window and displays your Blogware home page.
  
• "Article Library" - The Blogware Article Library is where you will find
  all of the articles that you have posted to your Blogware. The Article Library
  allows you to manage all of your articles from one simple interface.
  
• "Category Manager" - allows you to create, manage and modify all of the
  Blogware categories that you have created.
  
• "File Manager" - allows you to upload, view and delete images and other
  files that you have uploaded.
  
• "Blogware Settings" - manage your basic Blogware settings and defaults.
  
• "Permissions" - change the settings for your Administrative Users and manage
  any User Groups that you have created.
  
• "Look & Feel" - manage the look and feel of your Blogware home page.
  
• "Manage Links & Blogrolls" - create new Blogrolls and manage existing ones.
  
• "Blacklist IP Addresses" - allow and disallow users from viewing your Blogware.
  

Post Article

Articles are the backbone of your blog. Articles are also referred to as "Posts",
"Entries" and even sometimes "Blogs" (not sure about that last one - http://ross.blogware.com
is a blog, not a collection of blogs). Creating, or posting, a new article is
a simple exercise. From your main Blogware home page, simply click on "Post
Article" (or do the same from your Blogware Control Panel).

This will load the Blogware Article Editor. The article editor is a simple
interface that allows you to create and publish a new Blogware article. Your
first step is to select which category you would like your new article to appear
in. If you have not created any subcategories, the only option available will
be "[Top level]".

Now, you must start composing your new post. There are three main parts to
every post - the title, body and excerpt.

Article Title: This is the general headline or name of the post. It should
be short and descriptive and entice the reader into wanting to read more. Think
of this as a newspaper headline.

Article Body: This is the main meat of your post. The Article Body can be as
long or as short as you want. It should be funny - or informative - or both.
:)

Excerpt (Article Summary): Some templates may choose to display a summary of
the article instead of the whole article. Filling in this field will allow these
templates to present more appropriate information to your readers.

Only the Article Title field is mandatory - you may leave either of the other
two blank - but keep in mind that it might make it difficult for people to understand
your point if you don't make it.

Lastly, you must choose whether or not you want to save this article and work
on it later, or publish it immediately to your Blogware. If you wish to save
your work thus far and finish it up later, simply select "Finish This Article
Later" and click "Save Article". If you would like to publish it immediately
to your Blogware, select "Publish this article now." and select either "Preview"
or "Save Article". Selecting "Preview" will let you see what the article looks
like before displaying it on the public section of your Blogware. "Save article"
will publish the article immediately with no preview.

Advanced Article Options

Advanced users might wish to modify the properties for an article before publishing
them. The average user will typically not need to modify these settings.

Formatting: Setting this to HTML will cause Blogware to render the text
that you have inputted for your article. This means that any valid (and invalid)
HTML tags will be interpreted by Blogware and alter the resultant output to
your readers. Setting this to text will cause Blogware to not render any input
and the text of the article will simply be displayed.

Convert Newlines: This allows you to set whether or not Blogware should
attempt to render line and paragraph breaks in HTML. If this option is checked,
Blogware will render paragraphs with appropriate <p></p> tags and
line breaks with a <br> tag.

Accept Trackbacks: Set this option if you wish to track when other sites
explicitly reference your posts. This is known as "Accepting incoming trackback
pings".

Allow Comments:Set this option to allow or deny your readers the capability
to post comments to your articles.

Use auto-discovery for remote pings: Set this option to automatically
discover which sites you have linked to in your post and notify them of the
reference you have just created. This is also known as "automated trackback
discovery" and "sending a trackback ping"

URLs to Notify (ping): Specify which, if any, web services or sites
you would like to notify that you have posted a new article. This is a free-form
field that allows you to enter in any valid http: address that accepts pings.

View available template variables for inclusion in excerpt and body:
Click this link to create and display a list of all template variables that
you may include in your article.

 

Article Library

The Article Library allows you to manage all aspects of articles that you
have already posted to your Blogware. You can change specific properties for
a single article, such as its headline, or change specific properties for a
number of articles all at the same time in batch mode.

The default view for the article library is to present up to 20 articles at
a time listed in reverse chronological order in a table format. You may increase
or deacrease the number of articles displayed by the Aritlc Library at any time
by changing the "Show x articles at a time" option at the top of the
display and clicking the "Change Article Count" submit button. This
will refresht the page and change the number of artiicles displayed based on
your preference.

If you have more articles in your library than you can display at any given
time, you can view the next page of articles by clicking on the [Next] link
at the top and bottom of the page. You may also directly jump to a specific
page by clicking the page number that you wish to jump to.

There are six columns to this table, labelled "Edit", "Title",
"Change Category", "Post Status", "Date Published",
"Author" and "Mark for deletion". The following descriptions
provide a more detailed explanation of each of their functions.

Edit - Click on the "#" icon that precedes each entry in the article
library will open the selected article in the article edtor. Clicking the title
of the article in the next column over has the same effect.

Title: Clicking the title of the article will open the selected article in
the Article Editor.

Change Category: Changing the drop down selection in this category will change
the category that you originally filed the article in and move it to the newly
highlighted category. Note that if you move an article from a privileged category
to an unprivileged category, that the article will be viewable by readers of
the new category and not subjected to the original article permissions.

Post Status: Changing this option allows to to publish an article that was
previously saved as a work in progress, or "unpublish" an article
that was previously available for public reading,

Date Published: This column can not be edited.

Author: You may enter in the name of any author that has permission to post
to your Blogware.

Mark for deletion: Selecting this option will delete the selected article.
You may select more than one article at a time for deletion.

Commit Changes: Selecting this option will save the changes that you made to
specific articles. You will be asked to confirm the changes once, and then the
changes will be effected.