Managing Blogs Globally

As a site administrator, you can specify permissions and other related settings for the management and appearance of blogs globally. In this section, we will examine these options in detail.

Firstly, you should log in as an administrator and open the Dashboard by clicking on the Control Panel link located at the top of the page. Once you are inside the Dashboard click on the link titled Administration. You will see a new page with the caption Site Administration. From the page, you can give permissions for various applications included with Community Server. You should note that any modification to any of the settings will affect the whole site globally.

Pull down the Blogs link from the navigation panel located on the left side. You will see a series of options. We have already examined the first three options in the earlier sections of this chapter. Let us examine the other options.

The Global Permissions option enables you to specify various permissions globally. You can, however, modify them individually for each blog at the time of its creation.

The Default Settings option includes several settings for the management of blogs. We will examine each one of them in detail:

Create Directories

If this is enabled, a new directory will be created for each new blog. The advantage of this feature is that you can access the blog without specifying default.aspx at the end of the URL. This setting is enabled by default.

Auto Create

If this is enabled, a new blog will be automatically created when a new user registers on the site.

Enable Cross-Posting

If this is enabled, the blog owners can cross-post all the entries to one or more remote blogs by taking advantage of the metaWeblog Application Programming Interface. This feature is disabled by default. If you enable it then you can set up remote blogs by clicking the Spam, Ping and Cross-Posting link located under the Global Settings section inside your Blog Management area. You will be asked to give the required username, password, and other related settings. Whenever you post a blog entry from your Community Server site, it will be also posted to the specified remote blog provided, if the settings given are correct.

Enable Blog Owners to add content to HTML Head

If this is enabled, blog owners can add raw content such as meta tags and JavaScript to their blog pages inside the Head tag.

Default Group

You can specify a default blog group using this setting. All new blogs will be added to this group.

Default Ping Services

You can include the URLs that Community Server should ping while adding or modifying a blog post. By default four URLs are included, but you can add more if required. Each URL should be separated by semicolons.

Default Aggregate Tags

With the help of this setting, you can specify a list of tags that will be included on the home page of the blog and on the RSS feeds, by default. These tags will be visible to all blog owners.

Service Post Count Limit

This setting enables you to specify the maximum number of posts that should be returned by the Community Server web services such as CS Weblog and metaWeblog services.

The Default Presentation option enables you to specify the settings related to appearance of the blog and blog posts.

Enable Themes

You can enable themes using this setting. The blog owners will be able to choose one of the themes from the provided list, which will ultimately change the look and feel of their blog. This setting is enabled by default.

Default Theme

You can select a theme that will be used for all new blogs created on the site by default. However, blog owners can change it from the Blog Management page.

Aggregate Post Count

You can specify the maximum number of posts that should be displayed on the aggregate home page of the blog on the site. The page can be accessed by clicking the Blogs link from the home page of the site. The default value for this setting is 25. Hence, the first 25 posts will be visible on the home page and the remaining posts will be automatically paginated.

Individual Blog Post Count

You can specify the maximum number of posts that should be displayed on the home page of the individual blog. The default value for this setting is 15. Hence, the first 15 posts will be visible on the home page and the remaining posts will be automatically paginated.

Service Post Count Limit

You can specify the maximum number of posts that should be displayed by the CS web services such as CS Weblog and metaWeblog services. The default value for this setting is 25. Hence, the first 25 posts will be visible on the home page and the remaining posts will be automatically paginated.

Aggregate Post Excerpt Size

With the help of this setting, you can specify the maximum number of characters for each post that should be displayed on the aggregate home page of the community. The default value for this setting is 250.

The Enable Post Relevance Sorting setting inside the Post Relevance Sorting section enables you to specify the settings related to the relevance of blog posts. Community Server considers the various factors, using which your posts are sorted and displayed on the site. The advantage of this setting is that the popular posts appear on the home page much longer than those posts with less importance. The blog home page always displays posts with high importance. This setting is disabled by default.