TextBook

From Textbook

Figure 1: The advanced preferences location.

The Advanced Preferences is where you enhance your site beyond just what is essential for basic function; for example, folder locations, custom fields, and the specifics on your publishing needs, just to name a few. All of the Advanced Preferences features are discussed on this page. (Edit: Updated to 4.2.0, but needs screenshots.)

Advanced Preferences

As of Txp verson 4.2.0, the Advanced Preferences view is composed of six different regions. At the bottom of the view is a Save button, which should be clicked after any changes to any region are made.

Admin

The Admin section is composed of ten controls detailed in the following sections.

Image directory

The root-relative URI (without opening or closing slashes) of the directory (folder) that holds images uploaded through the Images panel. By default this is "images", and you only need to change this if you have renamed and/or moved this directory.

File directory path

The full path (file path, not URI) to the directory (folder) for files uploaded via the Files panel. By default it is named "files" and is in the root directory of the website. As with the Image directory, you only need to change this if you have renamed and/or moved this directory.

Maximum file size of uploads (in bytes)

Maximim size for file uploads via the Files panel. Note that this value is also limited by the configuration of PHP on your Web server; if Textpattern detects that your PHP configuration only allows smaller downloads it will automatically correct this value downwards. If you want to allow larger file uploads via upload from the browser you have to talk with your host. (The relevant values in php.ini are post_max_size, upload_max_filesize and memory_limit.)

Temporary directory path

Full path (file path, not URI) for this directory, which is needed by Textpattern during uploads. By default it is named "tmp" and is at the root level of the installation. You should not need to change this.

Plugin cache directory path

Leave this empty unless you are using a plugin that requires it, or you are a plugin developer and want to test uncompiled plugins. No such directory is included by default.

SMTP envelope sender address

This preference should be left blank unless you experience problems with sending email in Textpattern (i.e., no email is sent at all). Should that problem arise, you can enter any valid email address here, although preferably one that has the same domain name as the website where you've installed Textpattern (i.e. if your website is example.com, you might use you@example.com).

Use ISO-8859-1 encoding in e-mails sent (default is UTF-8)?

For whatever reason (can someone give one?) you might want to use ISO-8859-1 character encoding for e-mails, but the more internationally friendly UTF-8 unicode is set by default, so why change?

Enable XML-RPC server

If you wish to use XML-RPC for controlling TXP content from remote places (e.g. mobiles, PDAs) you must switch the server on by setting this to Yes.

Default admin tab

Set this to the panel you want to appear when you log in.

Admin-side theme

Set the theme (appearance) of the admin panels. As of Textpattern 4.2.0, two themes are offered. "Classic" is the original theme with two rows of tabs. "Remora" is the updated theme with a single row of tabs with drop-down menus.

Comments

Require user's name?

If set to Yes, people that want to comment on your blog will have to enter a name in the comment-form. They will receive an error message otherwise.

Require user's e-mail address?

If set to Yes, people that want to comment on your blog, will have to enter an e-mail address in the comment-form. They will receive an error message otherwise.

Never display e-mail address?

This setting controls whether the e-mail address of a commenter should be shown publicly.

Apply rel="nofollow" to comments?

This will add an additional attribute to the links made in comments. It is intended to be a measure that takes away the incentive for comment-spammers and was initiated by a range of search engines and software-writers. You can find out more about it by reading Google's announcement.

Disallow user images?

With this option set to Yes, images included in comments will be stripped out.

Allow more Textile markup in comments?

When set to "Yes", comments may contain Textile elements which would otherwise be treated as plain text:

• headings
• ordered and unordered lists
• foot notes
• tables
• code
• extended block syntax (bc.., bq.., etc.)

For security reasons, raw (X)HTML is transformed into regular text.

Spam blacklists (comma-separated)

The blacklist providers entered here, will be contacted when a comment is posted to your blog and the IP of the comment poster will be checked. If the IP is listed, it means there have been spamming complaints made about this IP in the past and a comment will be rejected.

You can enter a list of domain names that should be seperated by commas. Potential blacklists can be found at dmoz, but be aware that it is your responsibility to make sure you can trust those blacklist-providers before you add any.

New comment means site updated?

The database keeps track of when the last change to your site has happened. When this setting is set to Yes, a new comment will also update this value. This value is used for example for the "Send Last-Modified header" functionality.

Style

Use raw editing mode by default?

This selects the default method of editing CSS in Styles. If set to yes, you will see one large text-area with all the content of the CSS by default. If set to no, you will see the css-editor by default.

Custom Fields

This region is where your ten (10) custom fields are managed.

By default, the first two custom fields are given arbitrary names: custom 1 and custom 2. When a custom field has a name like this, it automatically appears in the Advanced Options section of the Write subtab so you can make use of them as needed for custom articles. Whenever you make edits to custom fields (such as changing the arbitrary names of the first two for real use), you do so here in the region of Advanced Preferences.

Feeds

Syndicate article excerpt only?

If this is set to no, then feeds will always contain the full article bodies. If this is set to yes, feed items will contain an excerpt instead of the article body where it is available.

How many articles should be included in feeds?

This is the maximum number of current articles to be syndicated at a time, in RSS/Atom format. Recommended: a low value, such as 5 through 15

Show comment count in feeds?

When set to "Yes", this setting will append the number of comments to your article titles in your XML feeds.

Include e-mail in Atom feeds?

This allows you to include the e-mail address of the author (as set in their user account) of an article in the author part of your Atom feeds.

Use e-mail address to construct feed ids (default is site URL)?

Feed items in Atom, require a unique ID. To generate IDs unique to your site, Textpattern allows you to choose between either an e-mail address or your domain name to include in these IDs. The e-mail address will be the first one used when creating the site. Unless you are likely going to be changing your domain name, it is probably safe to set this to No.

Publish

Prevent widowed words in article titles?

The term "widowed word" refers to the single final word of an article title that is shown on a new line when the article title is too long to fit on one line. Widows are considered sloppy typography and should be avoided. Setting this preference to 'yes' will ensure that long article lines will never have only the last word on a separate line. Instead, the two last words will appear on a separate line.

Articles use excerpts?

By choosing no the excerpt field will not be shown to the author on the article-editing screen.

Allow form override?

This setting allows article authors to override the form to be used when their article is rendered. If enabled, an "Override form" dropdown will be available under "Advanced Options", when editing an article.

Attach titles to permalinks?

This setting will attach a dirified version of your article-title to your url, it is either generated automatically or can be manually overriden in the "Advanced Options" when editing an article.

This setting will only have an effect when you are using clean urls. For certain languages this may result in long and ugly urls, in which case you probably want to set this to off.

Permalink title-like-this (default is TitleLikeThis)?

This setting only has an effect when "Attach titles to permalinks" is set to on. When dirifying article-titles for use in urls, you have the option of:

1. using all lowercase letters, and replacing spaces with hyphens
2. completely removing spaces, and using CamelCase, which means that the beginning of new words will be marked by uppercase letters.

Send "Last-Modified" header?

When set, Textpattern will read a visitor's HTTP If-Modified-Since header (if one exists) and compare it to the last site update. If nothing has changed since the visitor last loaded the page (i.e., if the timestamp the browser sends is the same as the last site update), then a header is sent back instructing the visitor's browser to use its cached version of the page.

This can reduce bandwidth consumption, page load times, and reduce the load on the webserver.

Publish expired articles?

When set to "Yes", expired articles will continue to show on your site after their expiry date has elapsed. You can use if_expired to show alternate content or markup for expired articles.

When set to "No", expired articles will be removed from the public site and return a "410 Gone" HTTP status instead. Visiors hitting an expired article will be shown a custom page template named "error_410" if it's present .

Compensate for persistent connections mod_deflate bug?

Some mod_deflate versions have a bug that breaks subsequent requests when keep-alive is used. Dropping the connection is the only reliable way to fix this. Setting this preference to 'yes' will close the connection, forcing the browser to reconnect for the next request.

Ping ping-o-matic.com?

Whenever you publish a new article, Textpattern will send a ping to ping-o-matic. Recommended: "Yes" for live sites, "No" for sites in development

Ping textpattern.com?

This will send a ping to textpattern.com whenever you publish a new article. Recommended: "Yes" for live sites, "No" for sites in development

Logs expire after how many days?

When you are using Textpattern for logging, you can set how long (in days) those logs should be kept. "7" will keep the logs available for seven days.

Use DNS?

This setting only has an effect, when "Logging" in "Site Preferences" is turned on. Using DNS will allow you to translate IP adresses in your logs to host-names. For some servers this might subjectively slow down your site, in which case you might want to turn this off.

Maximum URL length (in characters)

This prevents urls that are longer than specified from functioning. It could be helpful in damage limitation.

Use plugins?

This allows you to turn off support for plugins. You might want to do this, if you find strange errors happening on your site, and you want to make sure that it is not the fault of plugins.

Use admin-side plugins?

Admin-side plugins are those which can change the operation of the administration interface. They might hook into already existing actions, like editing or publishing articles, or they might add new tabs for added/extended functionality.

Allow PHP in pages?

When enabled, this setting allows PHP code within page and form templates. PHP code must be without both opening and closing PHP tags, and enclosed within php tags.

Allow PHP in articles?

When enabled, this setting will allow use of PHP within articles. The author must have sufficient privileges to do so. PHP code must be both without opening and closing PHP tags, and enclosed within php tags.

Allow raw php?

When enabled, this setting allows raw PHP code to be used. Normally this isn't allowed, and PHP code must be without both opening and closing PHP tags, and enclosed within txp:php tags. This setting is for backwards compatible purposes only, and it is recommended to be set to "No".