Administration: Overview

The Manifesto codebase was developed to achieve a relatively high level of separation between code logic and output display. When you want to customize the site for your own needs, there are a few things to keep in mind:

The entire structure of the Manifesto codebase is similarly rigorous, and very consistent in its pattern. All pages begin with "index.php", and files are included from that starting point based on what section of the site you're in.

The current module is passed through the URL, either following /mod/, or using one of the hackfiles, e.g. /newswire/ (which is the same as /mod/newswire/). Manifesto decides what files to include based on the current module.

For the most part, every Manifesto page uses one of two basic workflows:

Workflow 1
----------

• index.php
• determine section (e.g. "newswire")
• no function given, so retrieve default number of records from the database
• include section listing (e.g. "current stories")

Workflow 2
----------

• index.php
• determine section (e.g. "newswire")
• determine function (e.g. "edit")
• determine ID and retrieve from database
• display the "Edit" page for the object (i.e., call $Article edit())

This covers a good 80% of the code, so it's relatively easy to follow once you get the hang of it.

Stylesheets are used extensively to control almost every aspect of the site design. If you don't know how to work with stylesheets, learn! They're wonderful. Virtually all sections of display code are tagged with a stylesheet class, so you can tailor various attributes by modifying the stylesheet. You are encouraged to _duplicate_ one of the existing stylesheets and modify it for your own use, or download one of the pre-designed themes available from the downloads page of this site.

The base stylesheets govern the display of elements found throughout the site. Each module you have installed then has its own stylesheet (where necessary) covering elements specific to that module. This allows for fine-grained control over the layout and display of each module separately.

In general, you shouldn't have to modify any of the code files in your Manifesto installation. Most desirable changes to the page layout can be effected through changes to the stylesheets, even hiding or omitting the display of certain elements. Since upgrades to the Manifesto codebase will often involve modifications that would overwrite your changes, upgrades will be easier if you avoiding making customizations outside of CSS.

You can now have the server act display dates and times as if it were in a different timezone than it may actually be located. If your server is colocated in Colorado, for example, but your site is for New York, you may wish to have all dates and times shown in Eastern Standard Time. This can be configured in the Site Prefs, as long as you know your timezone code (e.g. "EST") and GMT offset ('-0500'). Dates are still stored internally according to the server's locale, but users will see adjusted dates on the page.

Multiple categories! With the ability to assign multiple categories to an article, introduced in .96, you can do interesting things. If your IMC covers a broad geographical region, you can create new categories corresponding to various regions in your area. Users can then categorize their articles under the appropriate region as well as topic, and visitors can filter the display of articles based on region. User accounts can even set a "default category" for themselves so only region-appropriate articles are displayed for them by default.