Loading the Calendar

This is a description of the annual calendar load, as of 2007.

We are using the node_import module. The input to this module is a CSV file. Each line has to contain:

start,end,title,categories

Maintainer Login

This page exists so that the login box can show on the left here, and nowhere else, so that it does not distract or confuse the members.

Jack's test page

Here is Jack's page

[view:barbatmizvah]

Creating Events and Stories

After you have your pages set up, you can turn to events and stories. Unlike pages, which are static, events and stories are dynamic. New ones are created all the time, and old ones become less and less interesting over time.

On the web site, the Temple has a calendar. The calendar is a collection of events. An event is like a very small web page: it has a title, a category, and a text to describe the event. It can have an attached PDF file. Oh, yes, and it has a date and a time.

Stories, on the other hand, are like events without the date and time. They also have titles, categories, and text. Under the covers, in fact, events are special kinds of stories.

You Have a Page. So, Now You Want More Pages?

If all went well, you now have a page. I still owe you an explanation of what to do about events and other dynamic information, like news or announcements. That's not the next topic in line.

If you are working on the content for one of our very busy committees, you may feel that you have too much information for one page. No problem. You can add more pages. You will notice at the bottom of your page is a link labelled 'create child page.' It does just what it says: it creates a new page that is a child of your page.

If you create a child page, be sure to pick an informative title and select your committee as the organization. So, now you can make a page with a list of your officers, and a page with a list of your ongoing programs, and a page with tzedakah opportunities ...

Need Hebrew Transliteration? Need Hebrew?

Hebrew in Transliteration

Sometimes, you just want to write L'Ḥayim!

Rabbi Lerner tells us that the Hebrew letters ח (ḥet) and כ (spirantized kaf, sometimes called ḥaf) should each be written in English text as the letter h with a dot under it. Not an h with a line under it, and not 'ch'.

To make this easier, we've added some extra syntax you can use in HTML:

&h_dot; for ḥ and &cap_h_dot; for Ḥ. These turn into the necessary sequences.

What About Hebrew?

Our web site operates in Unicode, which means that you can have actual עִבְרִית right in the page. You may experience some problems with the formatting when you mix Hebrew and English; more help on this will be coming to the site.

Local Drupal Modifications

I've been modifying some of the more or less standard Drupal code to fix problems I've encountered.

In search.module, I shrank the size of the input text box. Otherwise, our layout exploded. I can't find a way in CSS to constrain the input box to prevent it from blowing up.

I modified nice_menus.js to assume the 4.7-ish Javascript support provided by the Ajax module. This allows more than one module to have an onload handler. The ajax_spellchecker wanted one, and so does nice_menus.

I modified filter.module to add a named div around the form with the permissions. This allowed me to shrink the size of the print in the 'th' elements, and thus get the form

Editing Your First Page, Take 2

In a second, I'm going to encourage you to click on 'Edit' and start to edit content. First, though, a word of warning.

You are about to use the Temple Emunah Website to edit the Temple Emunah Website. Think about that. You aren't using Microsoft Word or any other program. You're just using forms on the web site. Once you type something, you have to click on the 'Submit' button to save it. If you don't click 'Submit', you will lose your work. There's no save button and no auto-save.

Content Alternatives

Sooner or later, all of the text that displays on the site is stored in HTML format. HTML is a 'markup language' that uses special tags to tell the browser how to make things italic or bold, or arrange them in tables. Our site uses HTML together with 'Cascading Style Sheets' to display information.

Some of you may know that a major goal of the original project to replace the Temple Emunah web site was to avoid the need for all the contributors to know how to use HTML. You might be wondering, then, why I'm writing about it.

The good news is that you don't have to use any HTML at all to add content to the site. You have several choices, depending on what you are trying to present and what you know, or are willing to learn. Here's a little table that describes the alternatives:

Editing Your First Page

Your first task will be to put some content onto a page. The administrators will create the page for you, and send you a link to it. Here is an image of what you will see when you follow that link in your browser:

You can click on the tiny litle picture to see it full-size. It will open in a new window. First, there are two tabs above the content, 'View' and 'Edit'. View has a light background to show you that it is the current situation. 'Edit' has a dark background. In a moment, you will click on 'Edit' to get on with the job.