HOWTO: Create Blog Posts, Mission Reports, and Gallery Images using Email

To make it easier to use the server on the ships, you can create mission reports, blog posts, and images through your email client (assuming you have access to your email client.) You must use the email address associated with your account on bloom.apl for this to work.

Here are the steps.

  1. What are you trying to create?

    Bloom.apl is set up to create three different kinds of nodes through email.

    • Mission Reports -- reports on important mission information.

    • Blog Posts -- Each account has a personal blog they can use.
    • Gallery Images -- The server has a central gallery for images.

    There's an email address for each of these types:

    If you send mail to these addresses, a node on bloom.apl will be created with appropriate settings for your system.

  2. How do I write it?

    You write the message like any other email message. The subject of your email will be the title of the blog post or mission report (or the caption of the image.) You can attach images and other files through your email client like you would normally, the system will handle them for you.

  3. How do I put images in posts?

    If you attach an image to a post, it will show up as an icon after a post that people can click on to see the full-sized version. To make it appear in your blog entry or mission report, enter the following text 

    [inline:filename.jpg]

    where filename.jpg is the name of your attachment. (Leave off the quotes.) That will cause the server to display the text in your message.

  4. 4. How do I make my mission reports show up in the upper left of the
    site?

    To make a mission report show up on the site, you should set its category to your area of responsibility. You can do this by specifying its taxonomy term as the first line of your message. For example, the following will make a mission report show up in the ISUS category, in the front page, and in the 'Mission Reports' block on the upper left of site web pages:

    taxonomy: [ISUS]

    You can get a list of categories to use on the site from Eric Rehm or from the web site when you're creating content on the site. You must use one of the following categories for your mission report:

    Summary
    Biofloats
    Seagliders
    Biooptical Properties
    ISUS
    NAB08 Model
    Ship

  5. Using Categories...

    Blog Posts, Mission Reports, and Gallery Images can all have any of the category terms associated with them. In general, using the taxonomy terms will make things more easier to find later for both you and other people on the site.

    To attach taxonomy terms to anything, put the following line as the first in your email:

    taxonomy: [The Term]

    The square brackets are important. If you want to use more than one term, use commas to separate them:

    taxonomy: [Seaglider140, Seaglider141, Biofloat47, ISUS]
  6. My blog entry is important!

    If you want your blog entry to appear on the front page, put the following right after the line with the taxonomy terms:

    promote: 1

    That will cause your blog entry to be promoted to the front page with other important information.

  7. More Complex?

    If you need to do more complex things through email, there is another address that lets you do other operations. If you need to do use it, contact Eric Rehm or Amanda Gray for more details. You might wish to just use the web interface at that point, though.

Page generated Sat, Jul 19th, 2008 at 20:14:39 UTC

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