Global Moxie - Help!

How can I display link lists horizontally or in columns?

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:39:43 UT

Question

How can I display link lists horizontally on in columns?

Answer

With a few minor tweaks to your page templates and your theme style sheet, you can make any of Big Medium’s link widgets present links horizontally across the page.

The premise

The HTML generated by Big Medium’s link widgets places each link inside its own <div> tag, with class bmw_link. By adding CSS styles that float each of these <div> elements to the left, the links stack up horizontally instead of vertically.

Setting the width of these <div> elements sets the width of the column. The right margin sets the “gutter” spacing between each column, and the bottom margin sets the spacing between each row.

The hitch

If you want one link widget to display more than a single row of links, you have to set each link’s text block to a fixed height. Otherwise, if one of the text blocks in one row is larger than the others, it will “catch” the first item of the next row, preventing it from aligning at the left of the row, and the whole thing is thrown out of whack.

By setting the links to a fixed height, we can enforce a grid no matter how much text is in each link. The drawback: If a link’s text block is longer than this height, its text will be clipped.

Putting it all together

In Big Medium, go to “Layout>Edit Templates.”
Select the template where you want to display links horizontally.
Edit the template, wrapping the widget you want to display horizontally in a <div> with a “horizontal” class. For example:
```
<div class="horizontal">
    <%links%>
</div>
```
After saving the template, follow the link on the next page to rebuild the necessary pages.

Go to “Layout>Edit Theme Style Sheet” and add the following CSS to your styles, editing the values to suit your design. For example, the following will display links in three columns in a 500-pixel block.

div.horizontal {
    width: 500px;        /*overall width for the block of links */
    overflow: hidden;
}
div.horizontal div.bmw_link {
    float: left;
    width: 150px;        /* width of each column */
    height: 150px;       /* height of each row */
    margin-right: 15px;  /* spacing between columns */
    margin-bottom: 15px; /* spacing between rows */
    overflow: hidden;
}

Save the settings, and you’re done.

"403: Forbidden" when adding new sections

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 15:07:43 UT

Question

Why do I get a "403 Forbidden" message when I try to add new content sections to my site?

Answer

This message typically indicates an error in the server's configuration file.

The gory details

(This section is primarily of interest to server administrators; if that's not you, you can skip down to the next section for the fix.)

Some Apache servers have a module named mod_security which scans page requests and form submissions for suspicious-looking behavior. Some Apache distributions, however, include a configuration error which incorrectly blocks valid form requests, returning the "403 Forbidden" error message.

Specifically, this problem configuration rejects any form submission that contains a semicolon in the Content-Type header. Alas, this breaks any valid request that happens to add a charset declaration in that header:

Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset-UTF-8

Big Medium happens to do this when it makes Ajax form submissions (i.e., submissions that happen within the page rather than requesting an entirely new page).

The fix

The fix is to change the mod_security configuration on your server.

Option one: Edit the server's configuration file

If you are the server admin and have access to your server's configuration file, you can make the following change (otherwise, contact your admin or hosting company to do it for you).

Find the SecFilterSelective entry that looks like this:

SecFilterSelective HTTP_Content-Type "!(^application/x-www-form-urlencoded$|^multipart/form-data;|^text/xml;)"

...and change that "$" symbol to ";?" like so:

SecFilterSelective HTTP_Content-Type "!(^application/x-www-form-urlencoded;?|^multipart/form-data;|^text/xml;)"

After restarting Apache, the error should go away.

Option two: Edit the .htaccess file

If you don't have access to the server's configuration file or your server admin will not make this change for you, you may be able to make the change by editing the .htaccess file in your site's main HTML directory. (If no such file exists, you can create a new file named .htaccess and upload it to your site's main HTML directory.)

Add these two lines to the .htaccess file:

SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off

After adding those lines, the error should go away.

Why don't images appear on my pages?

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:29:57 UT

Question

When I add images to my pages, they don’t appear on the page. What gives?

Answer

The problem is likely related to either the “page position” setting for the images or incomplete loading of images when adding image sizes manually.

Check the “Page Position” field for the image

The “Page Position” field determines where the image should be displayed on the page. If the “do not display on page” option is selected, the image will not display at all.

If you select “image gallery” but the page template does not include Big Medium’s <%gallery%> widget, then the image will not display. Likewise, if you select “other position on page” then the image will display only if the page template includes the <%images%> widget with the limit="other" attribute or no limit attribute at all. (If you’re not sure whether your page templates include the <%images%> or <%gallery%> widgets, check with your Big Medium administrator or webmaster.)

For more on the <%images%> and <%gallery%> widgets, see their entries in the “Widgets” chapter of the Big Medium 2 book.

The remaining page positions should display the images within the content of the page text itself, within Big Medium’s <%content%> widget. If you see neither content nor images on your pages, then your page template may not include the <%content%> widget. If that’s the case, add the <%content%> widget to your page template and give it another go.

Are you loading image sizes manually?

In Big Medium, every image has multiple versions, one for each size. For servers that have ImageMagick or another supported image library installed, Big Medium sizes and generates all of these various versions for you automatically behind the scenes. But if you do not have ImageMagick, you need to manually load each image size that you want to use. In that case, when you add a new image to Big Medium, you will see an individual field for every image size.

If you do not load an image for the specific size that you have set to display on your pages, then no image will display on that page. For example, say that you have your page-image size set to “Small (200x200 max).” If you do not load an image for that size, then no image will be displayed on the page, even if you load other sizes of that same image. In our example, you must load an image for the “Small (200x200 max)” image size for the image to display.

If you’re not sure what the page-image size is, administrators and webmasters can check and change this setting on the “Images” screen of the site’s HTML preferences (“Settings > HTML Preferences”).

For details on how all of this works and for pointers on loading images manually, please see the Big Medium 2 book (specifically, the “Images & Media” section of the “Editing Webpages” chapter, and the “Image Management” chapter).

Can Google Analytics track Big Medium file downloads?

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:40:13 UT

Question

I use Google Analytics to track visitor activity on my Big Medium-powered site. How can I configure it to track file downloads in addition to regular HTML pages?

Answer

The default HTML that Google tells you to insert into your pages will track only those pages that include that code. This means that it can’t track file downloads (because they are not HTML pages, downloads cannot include JavaScript code).

Google offers a workaround for this. The solution involves adding an onclick attribute to every link to files you would like to track. However, there’s another way to attach an onclick event to all Big Medium download files, which does not require this kind of intervention in the code. Here’s how.

Google’s recommended script looks like this (where UA-xxxxxx-x is replaced by your Google Analytics account number):

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x");
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>

To track Big Medium document files, update the code like so (be sure to change UA-xxxxxx-x to your actual Google Analytics account number):

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
  var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x");
  pageTracker._initData();
  pageTracker._trackPageview();
  (function(){ //track BM document files
    var logDoc = function(evt) {
      var e = Event.element(evt);
      if(e.nodeType == 3) { e = e.parentNode; } //Safari bug
      if (e.tagName=='A') {
          var match = e.href.match(/(\/bm~doc\/.*)/);
          if (match) { pageTracker._trackPageview(match[1]); }
      }
    };
    BM.onDOM.addEvent(function(){
      Event.observe(document.body,'click',logDoc);
    });
  })();
</script>

Limitations

This code change makes Google Analytics track links only to files loaded via Big Medium's control panel. It will not track downloads of files that are linked directly from other sites, and it will not track downloads to files that were not loaded via Big Medium's control panel.

Can I add additional data fields to my Big Medium pages?

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:59:24 UT

Question

Can I add additional data fields to my Big Medium pages?

Answer

You betcha. You do this by creating a custom code plugin for Big Medium. This requires wading through a bit of code, but this tutorial includes a sample plugin that you can use as a template. Depending on your needs, you may even be able to use the plugin as-is.

This page walks through all of the code and describes exactly how the plugin works. You may find this useful if you're a developer or if you’re otherwise curious how Big Medium plugins work. If you prefer not to know the gory details (ignorance is, after all, bliss), you can skip to the installation section below.

Anatomy of the Plugin

Our example plugin will add two new edit fields to your pages:

A “secondary content” field that you can use to display a second block of content on your pages, separate from the page’s main content
An “edit history” field where you and other editors can add internal notes about a page as it goes through the editing process

Our plugin will consist of three files, all of which will get installed into your Big Medium installation’s moxiebin/plugins directory:

add-fields-register.pl
This file registers your plugin with Big Medium, telling it to load the other two files at the appropriate time to do the actual heavy lifting.
add-fields.pm
This file contains the code that adds your new data fields to Big Medium’s default fields for pages. It also tells Big Medium where to add the fields in the page edit screen.
add-widget.pm
This file contains the code to create a custom widget to display the contents of your new fields.

Registering the plugin

Big Medium loads plugins by running scripts ending with .pl in its moxiebin/plugins directory. That means that add-fields-register.pl will run each time that you run Big Medium. Its job is to let Big Medium know about the existence of the other two files in our trio and when exactly it should load them.

We want Big Medium to load add-fields.pm whenever it needs the data definition of a content page. And we want to load add-widget.pm whenever Big Medium needs to know how to build HTML pages.

The resulting add-fields-register.pl file is short ’n’ sweet:

package BMplugin::AddFields;
use BigMed::Plugin;
use strict;
use warnings;

#when loading content definitions, load add-fields.pm
BigMed::Plugin->add_content('add-fields.pm');

#when loading page format definitions, load add-widget.pm
BigMed::Plugin->add_format('add-widget.pm');

1;
__END__

Defining the new fields

The add-fields.pm file is responsible for adding the new fields to Big Medium’s page data structure and inserting the new fields into the edit screen.

There are a few steps to doing this, so rather than display all of the code at once for add-fields.pm let’s chunk it up into its key elements. The add-fields.pm in the downloadable plugin zip (in the installation section below) contains the final product, including comments explaining how to customize it.

Data structure

A data-field definition is composed of just a few pieces of information:

The field’s internal name
The field’s data type
The field’s default value in the edit screen

For the purposes of this plugin, we’ll also add one other piece of info:

The edit panel in which the field should appear on the edit screen

The top of the add-fields.pm file creates this data definition like so:

package BMplugin::AddFields;
use strict;
use warnings;

my @new_fields = (

    #content2 field definition
    {   name       => 'content2',
        type       => 'rich_text_brief',
        default    => '',
        page_panel => 'bmfsPageContent',
    },

    #comments field definition
    {   name       => 'comments',
        type       => 'raw_text',
        default    => '',
        page_panel => 'bmfsPublishInfo',
    },
);

sub new_fields { return @new_fields; }

This sets up the definition for fields named comment2 (our “secondary content” field) and comments (our “edit history” field). comment2 is a rich_text_brief field, and comments is raw_text (Big Medium’s data types are outside of the scope of this tutorial, but if you would like to know more, you can check out the Elements.pm file located at moxiebin/Modules/BigMed/Elements.pm).

We’ve also instructed Big Medium to add content2 to the bmfsPageContent (“Page Content”) panel in the edit screen. comments, meanwhile, will be added to bmfsPublishInfo (“Publication Info”). More on what that means in a sec.

With this initial code, we’ve set up the definition of the new data fields, but we still have to store them in the page data definition. By the time the plugin loads, Big Medium will already have the default data definition in place. So we can just piggyback on that, appending our new fields to the existing definition.

That’s what the following code does. The code should remain the same even if you change the fields that you’re adding; it simply takes the fields that we defined above and adds them to Big Medium’s existing page definition:

#extract the page-specific data fields (i.e. those that are not
#shared by all content types, including announcements and tips)

my %in_content = map { $_ => 1 } BigMed::Content->data_columns;
my %page_props = BigMed::Content::Page->properties;
my @page_cols  =
  grep { !$in_content{$_} } BigMed::Content::Page->data_columns;
my @elements;
foreach my $col (@page_cols) {
    push @elements, { %{ $page_props{$col} }, name => $col };
}

#elements now include the page-only data fields. Add our new
#fields, and store the revised definition
push @elements, @new_fields;
BigMed::Content::Page->set_schema( elements => \@elements, );

Add the fields to the edit screen

So far, we’ve told Big Medium how to save and retrieve data in the new fields, but we still need to teach it how to display those fields in the edit screen.

Our plugin will do this by overriding the built-in editor_fields routine and adding our fields to the default list of edit fields. Here again, the code that does this can remain as-is even if you change the fields that we defined above.

The code works by inserting our fields into the panels corresponding to the page_panel entry for each new field. We used bmfsPageContent and bmfsPublishInfo, but here’s the complete list of IDs for the available edit panels:

“Page Content” panel: bmfsPageContent
“About the Page” panel: bmfsAboutPage
“Page Preferences” panel: bmfsPagePrefs
“For Search Engines” panel: bmfsSearchEngine
“Publication Info” panel: bmfsPublishInfo

Here’s the resulting code:

package BigMed::Content::Page;
use strict;
use warnings;

sub editor_fields {
    my $self           = shift;

    #get the default edit fieldsets
    my @fieldsets = $self->SUPER::editor_fields(@_);

    #organize our new fields by fieldset panels
    my %fs_add;
    foreach my $f ( BMplugin::AddFields->new_fields() ) {
        push @{ $fs_add{ $f->{page_panel} } }, $f->{name};
    }

    #step through all of the default fieldsets and add the new
    #fields to the appropriate panels
    foreach my $fs (@fieldsets) {
        my $rcols = $fs_add{ $fs->{id} } or next;
        push @{ $fs->{fields} }, map { {
            column => $_,
            description => 'BM_PLUGIN_' . $_ . '_desc',
            }
        } @{ $rcols };
    }

    return @fieldsets;
}

Teach Big Medium some vocabulary

Finally, we just need to tell Big Medium how to label these new fields. We’ll give each field a title and a description like so:

my %language = (

    #title and description of secondary content
    'page:content2'           => 'Secondary Content',
    'BM_PLUGIN_content2_desc' =>
      'Supplementary content to appear on the page',

    #title and description of comment field
    'page:comments'           => 'Edit History',
    'BM_PLUGIN_comments_desc' =>
      'Editor comments; only other editors will see these',
);

#store these language definitions
my $nat = BigMed->bigmed->env('LANGUAGE') || 'en-US';
my $lang = BigMed::Language->get_handle($nat);
$lang->customize_lang(%language);

And that takes care of defining our fields and adding them to the edit screen.

Displaying the fields on pages

With the above code in place, Big Medium now knows how to save, retrieve and edit your new data fields. All that’s left is to teach it how to display those fields on your new pages. The add-widget.pm file does this by registering a new widget. In this example, we’ll create a <%content2%> widget to display the new “secondary content” field.

Big Medium’s format classes are responsible for building the various HTML, JavaScript, RSS and sitemap files that compose your site. These format classes each have their own add_widget method to add new widgets. This code adds a simple widget that displays the contents of the page’s content2 data field:

package BigMed::Format::HTML;
use strict;
use warnings;
my $HTML = 'BigMed::Format::HTML';

#add new widget for HTML pages
$HTML->add_widget(
    name    => 'content2',
    handler => \&wi_content2,
);

sub wi_content2 {
    my ( $context, $obj, $rparam ) = @_;
    my $text = $HTML->inline_rich_text( $obj->content2, $context );
    return $context->build_markup(
        'wi_content.tmpl',
        content => $text,
        class   => 'bmw_pageContent',
    );
}

1;
__END__

With the new widget added, you can now display the “secondary content” field on any page by including the <%content2%> widget in the template for the appropriate page type (“Layout > Edit Templates” in the Big Medium control panel).

Installing the plugin

After downloading and unzipping the plugin package, follow these steps to configure and install the plugin package.

Plugin: Add New Fields (5 KB)

Download the plugin files.

If you would like to customize the data field definitions to be different than the “secondary content” and “edit history” fields described above, follow these steps:

Open add-fields.pm in a text editor.
The file contains comments that call out the areas of the code to edit:
- Make any changes to the field definition(s) in step one.
- Make any changes to the field titles/descriptions in step two.
If you would like to customize the content2 widget routine, open add-widget.pm in a text editor and make your changes.

After making your customizations (if any), set your FTP client to “plain text” or “ascii” mode and upload all three files to the moxiebin/plugins directory on your server.

With the files in place, you should now see your new fields in Big Medium’s edit screen.

Why doesn’t Big Medium’s search find my pages?

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:12:19 UT

Big Medium updates its search index with the help of its maintenance script. This typically means a few minutes’ delay between the moment you save your changes and when those changes are absorbed into the search index.

If you find that your edits never seem to make their way into the search index, the maintenance script may not be set up properly. Review the “Set up the Maintenance Script” section in Appendix A, “Installing Big Medium” in the Big Medium 2: The Complete Guide.

Also, Big Medium does not index all text of all pages on your site. The search engine has these limitations:

Searches only Big Medium pages.
Any pages that you keep outside of Big Medium or in other applications are not covered.
Does not index documents.
The search engine searches only the text that you enter for individual pages. It does not index PDFs, Word files or other documents.
Does not index template text, announcements or tips.
Only the various text fields that you enter for individual pages are indexed. Secondary content in templates, ser ver-side includes, announcements and texts are not covered.

Tags: bigmedium, search

Why does Big Medium say I'm still running a previous version after I just upgraded?

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:24:34 UT

After upgrading your Big Medium installation to a new version, if the update script or page footer tell you that you're still running the previous version, it's likely that you installed that previous version in the wrong location the last time around. This means that you have two versions of Big Medium on the server, and Big Medium is getting confused about which one to use.

Give this a try:

Your moxiebin directory should contain only .cgi files and two directories: Modules and plugins. If you see other directories (especially a directory named BigMed) or any .pm files (especially a file named BigMed.pm), delete those extra files and directories.
After doing that, re-upload these files from the new version of Big Medium to which you want to upgrade:
- moxiebin/Modules/BigMed.pm
- moxiebin/Modules/BigMed (directory and all files within)

Why do images have extra white space and/or captions that extend beyond the image?

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:03:30 UT

The amount of space that images take on a page is controlled by the site’s HTML preferences (“Settings>HTML Preferences”). For example, images that appear within a page’s body text, are set by the “Page Image Size” setting in the “Images” preference screen. The default size for images on content pages is 200x200, which defines the maximum width and maximum height of images to be displayed.

Big Medium always carves out the maximum width for these images, no matter what the actual width of the image may be. So, for the default size of 200x200, the width of the slot where images are placed is always 200 pixels. If the image is less than 200 pixels wide (if the image is small, or if it has a vertical orientation), then there will be extra horizontal space, and captions could extend beyond the width of the image.

Admittedly, this is not ideal. One thing that you can do to make it to look better is to add a border and/or background-style to the image/caption box in the theme style. This helps contain the image and caption into a uniform box that makes the extra white space and caption misalignment less glaring.

To add a border and background image, add the following to your site’s theme style sheet (“Layout>Edit Theme Style Sheet”):

div.bmc_rightContentImage,
div.bmc_leftContentImage {
    border:1px solid #ccc;
    background-color:#eee;
}

You might also center the caption to make it look less off-kilter:

div.bmc_caption {
    text-align:center;
}

Finally, you can also change the image size that Big Medium uses in your pages (including adding your own custom image size). For details, see the “Image Management” chapter of the Big Medium 2 Guide.

Why don’t the <%quicktease%>, <%latest%>, <%tips%> or <%announcements%> widgets respond to my preference changes?

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:33:21 UT

If you don’t get the expected result when making changes to a section’s preferences for the <%quicktease%>,<%latest%>, <%tips%> and/or <%announcements%> widgets, it’s likely that you’re applying your changes to the wrong section.

The display preferences for these widgets are controlled by the “target” section whose links are being shown, not by the section where the widgets are placed.

Here’s an example. Let’s say that you have a “News” section, and you want to display links from the “Business” section (with slug name biz) using the <%quicktease%> widget. You do this by placing the widget on the “News” section’s template page like so:

<%quicktease slug="biz"%>

Changing the “News” section’s HTML preferences has no effect on the display of the widget, even though it’s displayed by the News section’s template page.

Instead, the display of the links generated by those widgets is controlled by the “Business” section’s HTML preferences (specifically, in the “Links” screen).

Why don’t link images appear in my link widgets?

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:10:48 UT

Question

I added images to my pages, but they don’t appear with my links. What gives?

Answer

Check the image’s “include with links” field

When you add an image to a page, make sure that you select something other than “No links” in the “Include with Links” field for the image. For example, to make the image appear with all links to the page (other site preferences allowing), choose “All links.”

After saving the page, if the image still does not appear with your links...

Check the HTML preferences for your link widgets

This requires an account with webmaster or administrator privileges:

Go to “Settings> HTML Preferences” and then to the “Links” screen. In the panel(s) for the widget(s) where you would like to display images, make sure that the “Link Image Display” is not set to “Do not include image” and that the “Link Image Size” is set to the size you want. After making these changes, save the settings, and rebuild all pages.

If the image still does not appear with your links...

Check section properties for custom settings

Individual sections can have custom display preferences that override the settings described in the previous section. If your HTML preferences check out as described in the previous section, check to make sure that you have not overridden those preferences with custom settings.

This requires an account with webmaster or administrator privileges: Go to “Settings > Section Properties.” A gear is displayed next to sections with custom settings; if there’s a gear beside the section (or one of its parent sections) whose links are not displaying your image, click “Customize Display Preferences” under that section. Click “Links” to edit the section and review the settings as described above for the general HTML preferences.

Important: For the <%latest%> and <%quicktease%> widgets, the display is affected by the preferences of the section whose links are being displayed, not the section where you place the widget. For example, if you have a <%latest slug="news"%> widget on your homepage, the display is driven by the settings for the news section, not for the homepage. In this example, be sure that your “news” section’s properties have the image settings you expect.

If the image still does not appear with your links...

Are you loading image sizes manually?

If so, the problem may be related to how you’re loading images. In Big Medium, every image has multiple versions, one for each size. If the specific size that you have set for a link image is not loaded, then no image will display. For example, say that you have your link image size for <%links%> set to “Thumbnail (60x60 max).” Even if you add an image to a page and set it to display with all links, no image will be displayed if there’s no thumbnail version loaded for that image.

For servers that have ImageMagick or another supported image library installed, Big Medium sizes and generates all of these various versions for you automatically behind the scenes. But if you do not have ImageMagick, you need to manually load each size of image that you want to use.

What if my server does not support "PATH_INFO" URLs?

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:32:12 UT

The Problem

Big Medium constructs its URLs in a way that relies on the so-called PATH_INFO portion of the URL. If your server does not support PATH_INFO, Big Medium will not properly understand your requests. When installing Big Medium, this problem commonly manifests as one of the following two symptoms when following the setup wizard:

A “file not found” error after the first screen of the setup wizard, or
It’s not possible to get past the first screen of the setup wizard, it just keeps coming back over and over again.

The Solution

Are your running Big Medium on a Windows IIS server?

No? Proceed to the next section, “Install the pathinfo plugin.”

If yes, ask your server administrator to follow these steps:

Open the IIS manager on the server: From the Start menu, point to “Administrative Tools,” and then click “Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.”
In IIS, drill down the tree view on the left until you get to the moxiebin directory.
Right-click this virtual directory and select “Properties”. Select the “Configuration...” button to open the “Application Configuration” property dialog.
A list box on the “App Mappings” tab will display all of the “Application Mappings”.
Find the mapping for the .cgi extension. If it’s not there, try going back out and selecting “Default Website” in the tree view on the left tree view -- then properties and configuration as described in step 2 above.
Uncheck the “check that file exists” option for the .cgi extension mapping, and save.

After making that change, return to the setup wizard and try it again. If you can now get beyond the first page, congrats, you’re all set.

If not...

Install the pathinfo plugin

PathInfo plugin (2 KB)

Download the pathinfo plugin.

Download the zip file for the PathInfo plugin.
Unzip the file and locate the enclosed _pathinfo.pl file.
Upload the _pathinfo.pl file to your server’s moxiebin/plugins directory, making sure that your FTP application is set to “plain text” or “ASCII” mode.

Open the bmadmin/index.html file in a text editor and locate this comment:

*********************************************************************
UPDATE THE “ACTION” URL TO POINT TO THE DOMAIN WHERE BIG MEDIUM IS
INSTALLED. FOR EXAMPLE:
http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/moxiebin/bm-login.cgi/login-verify
*********************************************************************

In the URL below that, change the /login-verify at the end to ?login-verify (changing the slash to a question mark).

Make the same change in the second URL marked with a comment:

*********************************************************************
UPDATE THE “HREF” URL TO POINT TO THE DOMAIN WHERE BIG MEDIUM IS
INSTALLED. FOR EXAMPLE:
http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/moxiebin/bm-reset.cgi/password-help
*********************************************************************

...changing /password-help to ?password-help

Upload this revised index.html file to your server’s bmadmin directory.
Run the setup wizard and try it again.

What are the hosting/server requirements for managing multiple sites in different domains?

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 16:22:18 UT

A single installation of Big Medium can manage sites in different domains, with a couple of caveats.

First, the domains must be hosted on the same server as the one where Big Medium is installed. Second, Big Medium has to have permission to edit the web directories for those domains.

In a nutshell: scripts in the domain where you install Big Medium must be allowed to have access to the files in the web directories of the domains that you would like Big Medium to manage.

This is easily arranged if you’re hosting your own dedicated server, but if you rent web space from a hosting company, things sometimes get trickier. For quite valid security reasons, hosting companies often seal off each domain’s web directory so that customers cannot tamper with each other's files.

Unfortunately, this often means that Big Medium does not have permission to manage the site files in domains other than the one where it is installed. If that’s the case, Big Medium will complain about permission problems when you try to set up a new site in the other domain.

This can often be remedied, however. Many hosting companies allow you to set up domains under the web account of one “master” domain. Scripts installed in the master domain have permission to manage the files in these secondary domains. (DreamHost and Pair Networks are two well regarded hosting companies that allow you to do this.)

Check with your hosting company’s tech support team for details or help. They should be able to help you to configure your domains to allow scripts installed in one domain (the Big Medium scripts, in this case) to have read/write permission to the files in your other domains.

If your hosting company says it's not possible...

If your hosting company cannot or will not make the necessary changes to allow Big Medium's scripts to access files in your other domains, you have a few options:

Install Big Medium separately into each domain that you would like to host. Please be aware that this requires additional licenses. Big Medium’s license agreement requires an individual license for each installation.
Move to a new hosting company. There are hosting companies that can help you to get this set up. The aforementioned DreamHost and Pair Networks are two of them.
Last resort: Make your domains’ web directories world-writable. The web directory for individual domains is often named either public_html or www. In Unix-based servers, you make a directory world-writable by setting permissions to chmod 0777. CAUTION: This is not secure. Doing this means that others with web accounts on the same server also have read/write permissions to your web directory, not just your Big Medium scripts. It will work, but it invites trouble. If you decide to do this anyway, you should set your security settings to “low” in the “Big Medium server Info” screen of the “Settings” menu.

Why do Flash animations obscure parts of my page?

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 14:48:24 UT

Flash animations tend to display on top of all other elements on the page, sometimes obscuring elements that should appear above them. For example, dropdown menus and the image enlargement/slideshow features can sometimes be hidden by Flash animations included in your custom page template.

In many cases, this can be avoided by adding a wmode parameter to the HTML for the Flash object, which allows other objects to display on top of the Flash animation.

If your Flash object has <param> tags, add a wmode param tag like so:

<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />

...and if your Flash object uses an <embed> tag make sure that it likewise includes wmode="transparent" among its attributes, for example:

<embed src="flash.swf" quality="best" wmode="transparent" ... >

An example

Say that your template includes the following HTML to embed a Flash animation into your page:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash
        data="flash.swf" width="400" height="300">

    <param name="movie" value="/flash/movie.swf" />
    <param name="quality" value="high" />
    <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" />

    <embed src="/flash/movie.swf"
        type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
        pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"
        quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" align=""
        width="550" height="400"></embed>

</object>

You would add a new <param name="wmode"> tag and add the wmode="transparent" attribute to the <embed> tag, with this result:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash
        data="flash.swf" width="400" height="300">

    <param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
    <param name="movie" value="/flash/movie.swf" />
    <param name="quality" value="high" />
    <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" />

    <embed src="/flash/movie.swf"
        wmode="transparent"
        type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
        pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"
        quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" align=""
        width="550" height="400"></embed>

</object>

Why aren’t comments screened for spam by the Akismet service?

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 10:54:12 UT

Enabling spam screening

Big Medium offers the option to use the Akismet anti-spam service to screen comments for spam. Akismet is an online service that torture-tests comments with hundreds of tests and then tells Big Medium whether or not it’s spam. If a comment has the scent of processed ham, Big Medium chucks it into the spam bin instead of posting it to the site.

To get started with Akismet, you must have an Akismet “key” — a unique identifier, like an account name, that is provided by the Akismet service. See the Akismet site for info about obtaining a key and the available licenses.

Once you have your key, enabling Akismet is a two-step process:

Enter the key in the “Settings>Big Medium Server Info” screen (available to administrator accounts only).
Enable Akismet by checking the “Akismet” field in the “Visitor Comments” screen of the site’s HTML preferences (“Settings>HTML Preferences,” available to administrator and webmaster accounts only).

Testing the Akismet feature

Akismet is configured to treat any comment submitted under the name “viagra-test-123” as a spam message. So, to test that your Akismet installation is working properly, add a comment to your site, entering “viagra-test-123” (no quotes) in the “your name” field of the comment form.

When you do that, you should get a screen that says that your comment has been held for review, but in fact, if all is working properly, the message should have been added to the spam bin. You can check by going to “Edit>Review Comment Spam” in the control panel menu. If the message is there, then Akismet is enabled and configured properly.

“It’s not working!”

If the message does not appear in the “Review Comment Spam” screen, this indicates a problem with your setup. A few things to check:

Make sure that you have entered the correct 12-digit comment key in the “Settings>Big Medium Server Info” screen (available to administrator accounts only).
Is your server part of a private network that requires a proxy server to access the Internet? If so, be sure to enter the URL of the proxy server in the “Settings>Big Medium Server Info” screen. If you’re not sure whether your network uses a proxy server, check with your network administrator.
Ask your hosting company or network administrator if your server is allowed to make outgoing HTTP (web) requests. Some hosts block outgoing connections, which means that Big Medium cannot contact the Akismet server.
Check the Big Medium server log for error messages. Big Medium writes an error entry in its log file when it runs into a problem communicating with the Akismet server. Submit a comment, and then check the log for error messages. It’s located here:
moxiedata/logs/bm_syslog.txt
Review the Akismet FAQ.

Why does Big Medium say that it’s “Temporarily Unavailable”?

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 14:34:47 UT

Why does Big Medium say that it’s “Temporarily Unavailable”?

The “temporarily unavailable” message indicates that the Big Medium software is being updated. If you’re not the one installing the updated version, hang in there, it should be up and running soon, just as soon as your server administrator finishes the work.

If you are the one installing the update, but you believe the update is complete, read on.

Have you run the updater script?

Big Medium will continue to be unavailable until you run the updater script to complete your version update. If you have not yet done this, browse to the bm-update.cgi script in your server’s moxiebin directory to complete your upgrade:

http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/moxiebin/bm-update.cgi

Did you customize `BigMed.pm` in a previous installation?

If you did run the updater script but continue to get the message, this may indicate that you previously modified a file named BigMed.pm.

Some servers require a small modification to the BigMed.pm module file in order to complete the installation. You might have done this the very first time that you installed Big Medium on your server if you encountered a problem where the setup wizard kept taking you back to the first page of the site.

If so, you need to repeat those steps again for your new installation.

After repeating those steps to customize BigMed.pm, run the updater script again.

Global Moxie - Help!

How can I display link lists horizontally or in columns?

Question

Answer

The premise

The hitch

Putting it all together

"403: Forbidden" when adding new sections

Question

Answer

The gory details

The fix

Option one: Edit the server's configuration file

Option two: Edit the .htaccess file

Why don't images appear on my pages?

Question

Answer

Check the “Page Position” field for the image

Are you loading image sizes manually?

Can Google Analytics track Big Medium file downloads?

Question

Answer

Limitations

Can I add additional data fields to my Big Medium pages?

Question

Answer

Anatomy of the Plugin

Registering the plugin

Defining the new fields

Data structure

Add the fields to the edit screen

Teach Big Medium some vocabulary

Displaying the fields on pages

Installing the plugin

Why doesn’t Big Medium’s search find my pages?

Why does Big Medium say I'm still running a previous version after I just upgraded?

Why do images have extra white space and/or captions that extend beyond the image?

Why don’t the <%quicktease%>, <%latest%>, <%tips%> or <%announcements%> widgets respond to my preference changes?

Why don’t link images appear in my link widgets?

Question

Answer

Check the image’s “include with links” field

Check the HTML preferences for your link widgets

Check section properties for custom settings

Are you loading image sizes manually?

What if my server does not support "PATH_INFO" URLs?

The Problem

The Solution

Are your running Big Medium on a Windows IIS server?

Install the pathinfo plugin

What are the hosting/server requirements for managing multiple sites in different domains?

If your hosting company says it's not possible...

Why do Flash animations obscure parts of my page?

An example

Why aren’t comments screened for spam by the Akismet service?

Enabling spam screening

Testing the Akismet feature

“It’s not working!”

Why does Big Medium say that it’s “Temporarily Unavailable”?

Have you run the updater script?

Did you customize BigMed.pm in a previous installation?

Did you customize `BigMed.pm` in a previous installation?