Using Radio to edit Manila site structure

Click here, to start.

Ken Dow, in an email to me, also wrote:

This may be more than you wanted to know but...

The key to the site structure is that it's a layer on top of the Manila story list. Editing the site structure doesn't create or delete actual stories, it just creates a map between an arbitrary path structure and the flat story list. You can actually point to any DG message, but it's normally a good idea to restrict that to stories.

So....when you right-click on a site structure in Radio and choose "Create Story", you're adding an entry to the structure. To connect this entry to an living, breathing story, right-click on it and choose "Set Message Number" - by default, new site structure entries point to message 1. You can assign any story on your site by its number. When you want a site structure category to return a specific story rather than the standard automated table of contents, you map the special site structure story name "index" to the Manila story.

For example, say my site had a category named "moose" with three stories in it.  The stories are mapped in the site structure as "talking", "walking" and "stalking", and each one points to a different Manila story. Now I want http://www.kendow.com/moose to return an introduction to moose story, not a list of Talking, Walking and Stalking. So first I write a Manila story called "Introduction to Moose", noting that it's story number is 47. I then add a new story to my site structure, called "index". I right-click on index, choose Set Message Number and enter 47. Voila - http://www.kendow.com/moose displays Introduction to Moose, /moose/talking displays the Talking story and so on.

To access the Manila site...

Right-click on the Radio icon in the system tray and bring Radio to the front. Choose File > Open Manila Site and enter the URL of your site (e.g., http://www.kendow.com). Provide your login email address and password when prompted, and shortly you'll see a new outline with several headings.  Before you do anything else, choose Bookmarks > Add Bookmark so you can open your site more quickly from now on.

Now double-click on the Templates to display the Manila prefs you can edit, then double-click Site Structure. That'll display your Manila site structure in an outline you can edit as I described. HTH.

PS. To have Manila display Radio edit buttons, browse to /prefs/radio and enable Radio editing. Leave the port number at 5335. Now you should see a Radio button directly below the Site Structure field on Prefs > Advanced, for example.