The Linux Channel is Linux Today, Linux Today blog, LinuxPlanet,
and LinuxPR.Linux Today
http://newsadmin.linuxtoday.com
Linux Today is a news aggregate site that provide a continuous
feed of news and information about Linux, free, and open source
software.Content Management
Management of Linux Today is the most time-consuming of the
sites in the Linux/Open Source channel. Look for the best and most
interesting stories. It doesn’t matter what time of day you post
any particular type of story, except the early morning is prime
time for industry and enterprise news. Mix it up throughout the
day: news, howtos, opinion and analysis. Throw in the occasional
press release when it seems sufficiently interesting, or is
something not covered well.Managing Contributed Stories
On a daily basis, there are some 20-30 stories contributed to LT
by readers. You are not obligated to post all of them. They must be
relevant, good-quality, and not a subject that has been beaten to
death. After a certain amount of time, you will recognize stories
as not acceptable and will want to quickly clear them out of the
Contrib queue.
Click the Contribs link in the LT admin navigation bar. The
Contribs page will open.Click the Delete radio button for any contributed story you know
does not meet editorial criteria.Click the Execute Selections button at the bottom of the page.
Any contributions marked Delete will be removed from the list.To continue, click the View link for individual stories to
review them, and the Edit link to use them.LinuxPR stories are automatically entered in the LT queue. Don’t
use them.Posting a New Story
Posting new stories found on the Internet is the key function of
the LT editor. In the LT administrative site, it is done on the
Submit page. Don’t forget to search Internet.com for pertinent
stories. I’m always encouraging my fellow editors to submit stories
to LT, and sometimes they actually do.After finding a story to link, follow these steps:
Click the Submit link. The Submit page will open.
Copy the exact headline for the story into the Headline
field.In the Lead field, type the name of the source site, enclosing
it in tags.Copy and paste a lead into the Lead field after the source site
name. The lead should be enclosed in quotes and should not be much
longer than the capacity of the Lead field.Copy and paste content from the source story into the Story
field. You should not take much more than two paragraphs of
content, under fair use. Less if the source story is short. Be
sure:
The content is enclosed in the
tags.
Each paragraph begins with
“
The end of quote ends with …”
Copy and paste the URL to the story into the URL to Resource
field. If there are extraneous RSS feed parameters in the URL, try
to delete them (testing to make sure the link to the story still
works).Copy and paste the author name info the Story Author field.
Specify the Section.
*****Solution Center, Press, and EL Today are broken categories;
do not use them. Don’t use Features or Small Features; see below
for what to do with them*****
Developer—Development techniques, tools, or the
developer community.High Performance—Virtualization, supercomputers,
clustersInfrastructure—Catch all for any other stories
IT Management—Enterprise-level content,
governments, business (all stories with this Section label will
automatically go into Enterprise Linux Today).Security—Any security-related story, howto,
alertsStorage—Storage-related stories
Solution Center—This section is no longer
operational
Specify a Category.
Interviews and People—Interviews and feature on
business, community personalitiesNews—Straight-up news
Open Source—A catch-all category for features,
tutorials, analyst articlesOpinions—Opinions and rants
Press—This category is no longer operational.
Press Releases—Used only for LinuxPR stories or
full press announcementsReviews—Reviews of hardware and software
Security—Any security related story. This will also
add “Security:” to the headline
Seriously—this is a special new category for stories that are
so obviously wrong or so blatantly propaganda that it’s hard to
believe they’re even published. Use this sparingly.
Specify a topic in the Topic 1 field.
Book Reviews—Articles with book reviews
BSD—Articles with BSD
Business—Business-related articles
Caldera—Any article about SCO or the Canopy
GroupCommunity—Community-related articles
Corel—Articles about Corel (depreciated)
Debian—Articles about Debian or any Debian-based
distro (incl. Ubuntu)Deployments—Articles that discuss deployments or
how to deployDesktop—Desktop applications, environments,
developmentDevelopment—Development tools, techniques,
peopleEL Today–Non-functional
Embedded—Embedded technology
Events—Topics referring to or taking place at an
eventFeatures—Used only to place article into the
Features section of the LT pageGames—Game-related articles
GNOME—GNOME-related articles
Hardware—Hardware-related articles
Help—Tutorials, howtos
High End—Clusters, supercomputers,
virtualizationHumor—On-purpose funny stuff
KDE—KDE- and Qt-related articles
Kernel—Kernel articles
Law and Licenses—Copyright, patents, licenses,
crime articlesLDP—Linux Documentation Project (depreciated)
Mandrake—Mandriva or any Mandriva-based distro
Market Research—Articles about surveys, analyst
reportsMicrosoft—Microsoft or Windows
Networking—Networking-related articles
Novell—Novell articles (non-SUSE)
OSOpinion—OSOpinion (depreciated)
Progeny—Progeny-related articles (depreciated)
Public—Government, education, municipal
articlesRed Hat—Red Hat-related articles
Releases—Software or hardware release
announcementsServer—Articles about servers, client-server
technologySlackware—Slackware or any Slack-based distro
Small Features–Non-functional
Software—General software stories
Suse—SUSE or openSUSE articles
TurboLinux—TurboLinux or any TurboLinux-based
distroUbuntu—The big kahuna, include Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and all the
other little buntusNot_set—Place holder to leave a topic blank
Specify a topic in the Topic 2 field. Or Not_set.
In a separate tab, open the LT Search page. Enter one-word
search terms at least four letters long in the uppermost ‘Search
Text’ box. Good search terms are product or technology names, the
names of people or companies mentioned in the article, the author’s
name, the site name.The Advanced Search Query field allows three-letter words and
two word phrases, such as ‘networking AND hardware’. “Or” searches
don’t work very well, it’s faster and better to do two separate
one-word searches.Click Submit. A list of related stories will appear.
Check any stories you want to include as a related story. I like
to use a half-dozen or so because it improves our Google power, but
if you only get one or two that is fine.Click Submit. The HTML code for the Related Stories will
appear.Copy and paste all of the code into the bottom of the Story
field back on the Submit page. Make sure it’s underneath thetag.
Click the Add Story button. The story will be previewed under
the editing fields and the Complete Story link will be added above
the Related Stories section. Open the Complete Story link in a tab
or new window to make sure it works.If all is well, click the Queue link at the top of the page. The
story will appear, ready for final post.Specify a time and date for the story to go live. Remember, all
stories on LT are based on UTC.Click the Post button. The story will appear on the LT front
page at the specified time and date.Editing a Posted Story
There may be times, such as an error or an update to a story,
when you will need to change something on a story that’s already
posted. This is a pretty straightforward process.
Click the Edit link in the LT admin navigation bar. The Edit
page will open.Scroll to the story you want to edit and click the Edit link
below the story. The story will appear in the Submit page.Make the changes you want and click the Submit button. The
changes will appear in the story preview area on the bottom of the
Submit page.When the changes are finished, you can move on to other things.
The changes will be reflected on the “live” story in a few minutes,
due to the lag of the MySQL database updating.Unposting a Story
Sometimes you will come across a situation where you will need
to remove a story from the LT front page, but not delete it
outright. Examples of this include having to get confirmation about
a story’s accuracy or accusations of possible plagiarism. Until
such things are sorted out, it’s best to pull the story until you
can track down the resolution.
Click the Edit link in the LT admin navigation bar. The Edit
page will open.Scroll to the story you want to unpost and click the Unpost link
below the story. The story will be moved from the Edit page.To edit or repost the story, you can find it by clicking on the
Queue link in the LT admin navigation bar.Deleting a Story
If you have posted a story that’s a duplicate, really out of
date, or just an outright lie (and such mistakes will get past
you), you will need to delete the story altogether.
Click the Edit link in the LT admin navigation bar. The Edit
page will open.Scroll to the story you want to delete and click the Delete link
below the story. A confirmation screen will appear.Click the YES link. The story will be removed from the LT
database and then the front page in a few minutes.Repairing a “Wormhole”
The database of LT is sometimes a cantankerous beast. It does
pretty well based on the demands we place on it, but sometimes
glitches happen. One particularly nasty glitch occurs when a reader
click on the link to a story on the front page and is directed to a
completely different story summary instead. This phenomenon has
been dubbed a wormhole, and it is caused by the database assigning
the same URL link to more than one story.The best way to prevent this from occurring is to avoid
assigning identical categories and topics to stories while posting
them in a single session of posting. For example, if I had a slew
of stories about a kernel developer causing a fuss about something,
I might assign story one as News/Kernel/Development, then the next
story as News/Kernel/Software, then News/Kernel/Not_set, and so
on.Once a certain amount of time passes (experiments show it to be
about an hour) between posting sessions, then you can start using
the same category and topic assignments for stories, as the
database’s timestamp has moved on sufficiently to assign different
URLs.If a wormhole does happen, the only way to fix it is to kill the
newer story then re-post it. What I do is open the malfunctioning
story in the Submit page, then in another tab of my browser, open a
blank Submit page. After copying and pasting the information from
the original story’s fields to the new fields, you can revisit the
Edit page and delete the broken story.Once the broken story is deleted, revisit the duplicate version
in the Submit page and finish the steps to post it. Be sure to
assign it different categories and topics so the problem isn’t
duplicated.Note: Deleting the original story
will kill any talkbacks that were posted to that story. This is
unfortunate, but unavoidable under our system.A related problem is when you click the story link on the front
page of LT, the inside LT page is a dead end and the story summary
does not appear. To cure this simply change the categories, and in
a few minutes it should be OK.Managing Talkbacks
Besides posting stories, a big part of the LT editor’s job is
the moderation of talkbacks. Under the current system, there are
two types of talkbacks to moderate:Registered users are able to post their comments right to a
story without any prior moderation by the editor. These users
typically follow the rules of the road and don’t abuse the talkback
rules very often. A CAPTCHA system prevents comment spam. If they
do get out of hand, their posts can be pulled off the site and (if
their poor behavior continues) their account privileges can be
removed, which means they would have to post comments through the
other LT system.Unregistered users can post comments to any story, too, but all
of their comments are first read and checked for conformance to LT
talkback policy. In this way, they can still maintain their
privacy, but the trade-off is they have to wait for their posts to
clear.There is a very subjective nature to this part of the job;
maintaining the line between free speech and outright flamewars is
hard. Sometimes a flamewar will be get started despite your best
efforts. The good news is, most LT readers are self-correcting in
their behavior and the troublemakers get easily discouraged and
move on if you keep consistently deleting policy-violating
comments.Posting New Talkbacks
Moderating unposted talkbacks from unregistered users (also
known as pushing talkbacks), is not time-consuming, but it should
be done about once every half-hour/45 minutes during the week day
and a couple of times in the evening to keep the flow of
conversation going. On weekends, I try to push talkbacks three-four
times a day. But if you have other things to do, then do them.
Registered users will be able to comment, and sometimes the delay
will give incentive for other users to register.
Click the TalkBacks link in the LT admin navigation bar. In a
few moments, the Talkback page will open and if any talkbacks are
available for review, they will be listed.Read each talkback. If a talkback is acceptable, click the
comment’s Post radio button.Note: I try to check any URL contained in a talkback to confirm
authenticity/safety/relevancy.Continue on through the rest of the comments. Click the Delete
radio button if a comment does not pass the policy test.If a talkback needs to be edited, click the Edit radio
button.Click the Execute button. Talkbacks marked Post or Delete will
have those operations performed. Any comments marked Edit will
appear below the execution status list.To edit an unposted talkback, make the changes you need in the
Comment field.Click the Post radio button for the comment.
Click the Doit button. The edited comment will be posted.
Managing Posted Talkbacks
To keep an eye on a long comment thread, you may want to visit
the master talkbacks list, which lists all of the talkbacks for a
given period. (The default is the current day.)
Click the TalkBacks link in the LT admin navigation bar. In a
few moments, the Talkback page will open and if any talkbacks are
available for review, they will be listed.Moderate any unposted commnents.
When finished, click the Display Posted button. In a few
moments, a list of all talkbacks live on LT will appear.If any talkbacks need to be deleted, click the Delete button for
the comment.Click the Execute button. Talkbacks marked Delete will be
deleted.Mass Deleting Posted Talkbacks
Though LT has a CAPTCHA system to weed out comment spam, every
once in a great while, a spammer will sign up for an account and
flood the comment system with spam.The first thing you need to do in this instance is track down
the offending account and delete it. (See the upcoming Account
Management section.) This will prevent more spam coming in.After that, it’s not too hard to kill off the offending comments
in one or two steps.
Click the TalkBacks link in the LT admin navigation bar. In a
few moments, the Talkback page will open and if any talkbacks are
available for review, they will be listed.Moderate any unposted commnents.
When finished, click the Display Posted button. In a few
moments, a list of all talkbacks live on LT will appear.Enter a term common to all of the spam comments in the Search
and Delete field.Click the Delete button. Anny comments with the search term will
be immediately deleted.Note: You may have to repeat steps 4 and 5 if
the spammers actually got creative with their wording.Other Management Responsibilities
The daily aspects of managing Linux Today are wrapped
up in the posting of stories and handling of talkbacks. But, there
are other administrative duties that come up at various
intervals.Posting the Weekly Top 2 Stories
On Mondays of every week, I like to post the two most-read
stories on LT for the past week. The number one story appears in
the Editor’s Pick box in the right margin of LT, and the number two
story appears in the Linux Today Features box.This is a little something extra I like to do for the readers,
and it can keep a conversation going on a story long after it would
have cycled off the page.
Click the HOF THISW link in the lower LT admin navigation bar.
The Hall of Fame (This Week) page will open.Ctrl-click the small Edit link next to the first story in the
list. The story’s Submit page will open in a new tab.Repeat step 2 for the next story in the list. You should have
two Submit pages open, one tab for each story.In the first story’s Submit page, change one of the
Topic fields to Features.Click Submit. The story will be updated.
Close the tab and repeat steps 4-6 for the next story.
Click the Features link in the lower LT admin navigation bar.
The Features page will open.You will now need to clean up last week’s featured stories to
avoid a build up in the Features page.
Ctrl-click the small Edit link next to story 1 in the list. The
story’s Submit page will open in a new tab.Repeat step 9 for story 2. You should have two Submit pages
open, one tab for each story.Using the master LTSN value at the top of the Submit page as a
guide, change the Features topic in the story to its original
value. For instance, LTSN = 2008-06-29-005-26-OP-DT-KE tells us the
Category is Opinions, and the Topics should be Desktop and KDE.Note: A “missing” topic means that it should be
Not_set.Click Submit.
Close the tab and repeat steps 10-12 for the next story.
In the Features page, mark the most-read story as 1, the
next-most-read story as 2, and last week’s stories as 0.Click the Update button. If you reset the old stories’ topics,
you should now just have two stories in the list, 1 and 2.Account Management
Sometimes you will get a request for a lost password, or have to
punitively remove the account of a user. To do this, you will need
to visit the Accounts page.
Click the Accounts link in the LT admin navigation bar. The
Accounts page will open.Enter any known information about the account in the appropriate
field.Click Search. A list of potentially matching accounts will
appear.To view the details of the account, click the VIEW link.
To delete the account, click the DELETE link.
To make changes to the account, click the EDIT link.
If you edit the account, make the changes in the edit account
page and click the UPDATE button.Note: If you want to see a list of the last 20
accounts (or whatever number you want), you can leave the fields
blank on the Accounts page and just click Search.Category Management
Because categories and topics tie right into the URLs created
for LT stories, it is not feasible to change the categories/topics.
You can add values for these fields, in the Categories page of the
admin site, but it should only be done with the long term in mind.
Also, the database may crash after any additions, so it is very
wise to have one of the database techs on standby to reboot the
system if need be.Posting the Top Yearly Stories
Near the end of the calendar year, I like to post a Top 10 or 20
list of most-read stories for the year. Getting the data for this
list uses a hidden feature of LT.
Ctrl-click the HOF THISW link in the lower LT admin navigation
bar. The Hall of Fame (This Week) page will open in a new tab.In the URL for the Hall of Fame page, change the timeframe value
from thisweek to thisyear.Press Enter to reload the page. A list of the 20 most-read
stories for this calendar year will appear.Linux Today Blog
https://swarm.jupitermedia.com/mt.cgi
The Linux Today blog section is a collection of original and
syndicated blogs designed to provide more chances for discussion of
ongoing topics in the Linux and open source community.Entries in the Blog section of Linux Today are done with a stock
installation of the Movable Type content management system. Refer
to that system’s documentation for assistance.The only thing to remember for the blogs is that if you want to
link them from the LT main page, it’s best to make the blog first,
so you have a URL to link to.LinuxPlanet
http://us.mydesktop.com/
LinuxPlanet is the original-content site of the Linux and Open
Source channel, providing relevant reviews, features, tutorials,
and news analysis for its readers.LP posts original articles on Mondays and Thursdays, budget
permitting, editor contributions at editor;’s whim, and whatever
the budget allows.LP uses a unique content management system, which may seem
convoluted at first, but once the rhythm is down, it still makes no
sense.Posting a Story
Posting a story in LP comes in two stages: adding the story to
the system, then posting it to the front page of LP. Here’s how to
post a story:
In the AdministrationCenter page of LP, click the More Articles
link.Click the Add New Article link at the bottom of the Article
List.Enter a headline for the article in the Title field.
Enter a one-word code for the article in the Alias field.
Set the Article Type.
Enter some topic terms in the Keywords field.
Enter a lead for the story in the Description field.
tags are not needed, but other HTML can be used.
Set the Author for the story.
Set the Editor and Designer for the story. This should be
you.Select the following check mark settings:
Written?
Checked First?
Edited?
Designed?
Click the Submit Query button. The story will be entered into
the content management system.Click the Add a Page link. The Edit Article page will
appear.Enter a Sub-Headline in the Page Title field.
Enter the HTML-coded content for the page in the Page Body
field.Click the Submit Query button. The page will be added to the
story.If any screenshots are needed, click the Add Screenshot link.
The Screenshot page will appear.Enter a figure caption in the Image Title field.
Using the Browse button, find the local filepath for the
thumbnail image of your screenshot.Enter the pixel width of the screenshot thumbnail (240).
Enter the pixel height for the screenshot thumbnail.
Using the Browse button, find the local filepath for your
screenshot.Enter the pixel width of the screenshot (which must be no more
than 800).Enter the pixel height for the screenshot.
Click Submit Query. The screenshot will be added to that
page.Repeat Steps 16-24 for any additional screenshots for that
page.To add more pages, click the Article Number’s link in the upper
right corner of the Edit Article page. The main article page will
appear.Repeat Steps 12-26, adding pages until finished.
Once all of the pages are added and you are at the main article
page again, click the Edit Subjects link.Choose a subject, then click Add. You can add as many subjects
that are appropriate.When finished, click the AdministrationCenter banner to return
to the article list page.Click the article’s link in the Article Bay. The main article
page will appear.Click the Edit Article Information link.
If the article is ready, click the Ready to Post checkmark and
click Submit Query. The article is now assigned a URL and live on
LP.Note: Once the ready to Post box is checked,
the story will be visible to any search engine, and will also
appear in the site’s RSS feed. If you want to keep the story
hidden, do not check this box.Putting a Story on the Front Page
Once a story is live, you need to assign it to the front page.
LP will list five stories at a time on the front page.
In the AdministrationCenter page, click the Edit Front Page
link. The Choose Section page will appear.Confirm LinuxPlanet, then click the Edit button. The Edit Front
Page page will appear.Click the Insert an Article to the Top of Links link. The
Article page will appear.Select the appropriate story from the drop-down field.
Click the Submit Query button. The story will be placed on the
LP front page.Note: Updates to the LP content management
system will instantly appear on the LP front-end.Editing a Story
If you need to make a fix to a posted story, it’s pretty
fast.
In the AdministrationCenter page, click the More Articles link.
The Article List page will appear.Click the article’s link. The main article page will appear.
Click the link for the page to edit. The page’s information page
will appear.Click the Edit This Page link. The Edit page will appear.
Make the changes you need and click the Submit Query button. The
changes will be instantly on LP.Creating Screenshots
Screenshots in LP are not hard to do, using your favorite
graphics editing tool. I recommend The GIMP. For each screenshot,
you will need a thumbnail of the screenshot as well. Using The
GIMP, use these guidelines to make appropriate files.Thumbnails: PNG format, always 100 pixels wide.
Screenshot: PNG format, no more than 800 pixels wide.
Adding a New Author
If you assign a story to a new writer, you will need to add them
into the LP content management system so their name will be
available as an author. It is best to do this, therefore, before
you start entering their first story.
In the AdministrationCenter page, click the User Management
link. The Users page will appear.Click the Add New User link. The user information page will
appear.Add the appropriate information. JUPM employees should have
Full-Time Employee type, and all others should have Visitor
status.Click the Submit Query button. The writer will be available in
the system.LinuxPR
http://newsadmin.linuxpr.com/pr/
LinuxPR is a free service that posts any submitted press release
that pertains to Linux or open source technology. The site should
be updated at least once per day, though twice works well.Managing the site is easy, as you mostly have to just post
stories. Sometimes you will be asked to edit releases, which is not
too hard. The only thing you can’t help people with is with their
accounts. We have no access to accounts so we cannot assist with
passwords, logins, etc. For those requests, I just ask them to
create a new account.Note: The stories posted on LinuxPR
will appear in the Contrib queue for Linux Today. Unless the
release is very breaking news that isn’t somewhere else, you should
not link to it directly from LT.Posting a Story
Click the Unposted link.
Scroll down to bottom of press release list and click the Edit
link for the last release in the list. The release edit page will
appear.Edit release based on these criteria:
The release must mention Linux or open source or be from a known
Linux/open source vendor. If not, it should be deleted. No
exceptions.The Lead field should contain only a sentence or two lead. A lot
of contributers just paste the entire first paragraph in, which is
too much and looks bad on the front page. I usually just cut and
paste the first ‘graph into the Press Release field, then copy and
paste a good sentence back into the Lead field.There should never be any HTML tags in the Headline or Lead
fields. This will break the LinuxPR newsletter. Any special
chearacters, like (R) or (C) or TM, should also be removed from
these fields.If need be, you may have to add
tags to the Press Release field. Don’t feel obligated to add
,
- , or
- tags–if they didn’t take the time, why should you?
Remove any Press Contact information from the release. Check the
end of the release, which is where this is usually found.
When editing is complete, click the Finished button. The release
review page will appear.After reviewing the story, you can:
Post: Post the story by clicking the Post link. (NOT the Post
button; this is broken)Delete: Delete the story by clicking the Delete link. You will
be asked to confirm deletion, click Yes.Edit: If you see some editorial/formatting errors, click the
Edit link.
After clicking Post, the Unposted queue will re-appear if there
are more stories in the queue. (After deleting a story, you have to
click a provided link to return to the queue.)Continue until the queue is empty.
Editing an Existing Story
Visit the main LinuxPR page and locate the story to edit.
Obtain the story number by checking the URL of the press release
(.html)Log into the LinuxPR administrative site.
Click the Edit/Delete link.
Enter the story number in the Edit/Delete PR # field and press
Enter. The release preview page will appear.Unpost the story by clicking the Unpost link. This must be done
or when you edit and re-post, a new copy of the story will
appear.Click the Edit link and edit the story.
When complete, click the Finished button.
Click the Post link. The corrections will appear in the story
momentarily.Deleting an Existing Story
Visit the main LinuxPR page and locate the story to delete.
Obtain the story number by checking the URL of the press release
(.html)Log into the LinuxPR administrative site.
Click the Edit/Delete link.
Enter the story number in the Edit/Delete PR # field and press
Enter. The release preview page will appear.Delete the story by clicking the Delete link. You will be asked
to confirm.Newsletters
Another aspect of the editor’s job is the creation and
submission of the Linux Planet newsletter to the newsletter
production team at nlproductions@jupitermedia.com.
Each newsletter is in HTML format, and needs to be sent in by 1500
Eastern Time every Monday and Thursday.Give thanks to Michael Hall as you navigate to
http://tools.puddingbowl.org/linuxplanetnl/ and click a button to
get new content for the newsletter. Copy and paste into newsletter
template. Smile.
==========Notes==============
first ever LT story: https://www.linuxtoday.com
/news_story.php3?ltsn=1998-09-28-006-10-NW-SW
Apache 1.3.2 is released
Sites to avoid because they plagiarize:
Linux Tips
http://linux.dipin.info/
Linux Masters
http://www.linux-masters.com/
Open Help
http://open-help.blogspot.com/