Creating an Article Record in CS

Title: This is used to generate the title on the article page. Also used to generate the contents of the <title> tag in the html for the page.

Description (Brief Summary): Affectionately known as "blurbos". Generally used in article listing (title, author, description) or in bucket renderings. See Today on the O'Reilly Network for an example of this.

Search Description: The contents of this field are used in the <meta name="description"> tag that appears in the <head> of the article html document. It is picked up by search engines when the page is spidered. This description should be approximately 25-30 words and very succinct, opposed to the Description, which is done in the tone/voice of our publication. See this article record for an example of the difference between the two types of descriptions.

Keywords: Are submitted by the author along with article. These are used in the <meta name="keywords"> tag of the article html document. Also picked up by search engines. Keywords may also be used internally by CS queries.

Primary Author: This field is used on the article page to display the author's name and link back to their bio (found in their CS author record.)

Secondary Author: Same function as primary author, used if there is more than one author(s) of an article.

Publish Date: Date the article is to be published. Used for display on article page as well as a way to search or query internally for items.

Status: When an article is first entered into the system, it's status is Draft. Once it's been copyedited, the status changes to Hold. Right before it is ready to go live, the producer changes it's status to Final. If the status is not changed to Final, it can be published, however there are many queries that only find articles if their status is Final. So if you find that an article is not showing up in a listing where you would expect it, check to see if it's status is Final in the article record.

Multi Page: Used to create a multi-page article from one document file (meaning you don't have to physically split the document into several parts and catalog each part.) At the top of the document file, you must include:
 before the:
```
<h2>
<csfield name="title">
<csfield name="id_author" before="by " hrefaction="pub">
<csfield name="date">
```
then where ever you want to create a page break you must include:
```
<csinclude template="a/multipage_bottom.view">

<csinclude template="a/multipage_bottomb.view">
<a href="">
<csinclude template="a/multipage_bottomc.view">


<csinclude template="a/multipage_top.view">

<csinclude template="a/multipage_topb.view">
```
For an example of how this actually renders in the public version of the page, see this example. The code renders what shows up at the bottom of this page. The code below renders what you see at the top of page 2 in this example.

Subject: The subject field is used in a couple of ways. First, it defines the page layout. If you choose Apache as an article's subject, it appears in an apache page layout. Second, it is used to define where an article might show up in query listings.

Secondary Subject: Used if you want to associate the article with other subjects. Does not affect article layout.

Topics: An article is assigned a topic, that along with a Subject will make the article show up in a topic listing. Using the example above, where Apache is the subject and Getting Started is the topic, you would then see your article show up on this page.

While we're on the subject of topics and viewing this topic page it's a good time to point out some other items of interest about topics.

a. Topics are entered in their own table in CS. You can assign multiple subjects to a topic. So you wouldn't create a Getting Started topic record for Apache, and then a Getting Started topic for Linux. You create one Getting Started topic record and assign as many subjects to it as needed.
b. Documents are also cataloged with Topics and Subjects which is what triggers them to show up on the Subject/Topic pages as well.
c. Because we can assign more than one subject to a topic, it allows up to do the "All Articles For This Topic Across All Subjects" grouping that you see on this page.

Column Type: Pretty self-explanatory. Defines the column type for the article if there is one. This field is used to group articles by column type. This page is an example of a query that generates all Living Linux articles. The query uses the column type field to pick up and display only articles that have been tagged with that column type. The column type field is also used for display purposes -- an example of that is here in the right column space. We generally display items in the space with linked title, followed by the column type (if applicable) and then the description. For example (where Linux Network Administration is the column type -- bold added by me for easier identification):
Traffic Shaping in Linux Network Administration: Traffic shaping is the general term given to a broad range of techniques designed to enforce prioritization policies on a network link. Terry Dawson shows us some of the IP traffic shaping tools available for Linux and a simple example of how to use them.

Document Type: Again used to tag articles so that we can do listings according to document type, or a combination of fields, like subject, document type, topic, etc. The "Admin" type is usually used to keep articles outof query results -- usually used for navigation-related pages that don't actually contain article content or administrative content not meant for public consumption.

File Name: This is the path to the document file (actual content of the page - as opposed to the layout of the page.) If you're not sure where the document file should live, use Terrie's handy path generating tool by clicking on the "Build correct path and filename" link.

You can then enter the file path into the file field. Save the record. Then click on "Edit Article File" and paste your document into the form on that page. CS will save your document to the directory path you specified in the file field, elimating the need for you to ssh to the server, create directories, etc.

111 Image: This image is 111x91 and used on the network page at the top of the center column.

Short Description: This is used in conjunction with the 111 image on the network page. It displays below the image.

Alternate Template: Normally the layout for an article is defined by the subject field. However there are times when you want to define a subject for an article, but you don't want the layout associated with that subject. By creating an new .view template in the article table, you can assign that template to an article using this field. For example, we created a layout for the Roundtable articles called roundtable.view. Any Roundtable article will have "roundtable.view" in the Alternate Template field.

Notes: This field is used by editors, copyeditors and producers to record notes to each other about the article. Usually the notes are deleted once the article has been published.

Created by Nancy Abila on Sept. 12, 2000