Inside EmuFanatics - Part: 1 - News Posting

(Notice: Current Admin CP design based on the open source software Mambo. All code and functions were written by me. Only the design of the admin cp was used.)

Well it is not too often that people get to see how an emulation site is run from the inside. So I thought I would take you guys on a little tour of our Admin CP and show you how we manage the site. This firt installment is Part 1 which covers the basics of managing news posts for EmuFanatics.

Part 1 - Section 1: Account Summary
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When you first go to the admin cp main menu which is our account summary you will see a few options as well as our latest news on the right side (Orange folder means news posted within the last 24 hours. Light blue is older then 24 hours). You will see me logged in as Keith and my current news post count. From the main admin page we can manage all the content for EmuFanatics. Ok lets head on over to the news management.

Account Overview Screenshot

Part 1 - Section 2: News Management
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On the main news management page you will see our last 40 news posts listed. At the bottom of the page are options to view older posts (40 posts per page). From here you can either mass delete, edit, compose a new post or manage news categories. There is also options to view comments per post for management as well as quick editing of news categories.


Main News Management Page


Bottom News Management Page


Part 1 - Section 3: Composing A New Post
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Let me show you how we actually make a news post for EmuFanatics. Our News form is made to be very simple with little options as possible to avoid confusion and overall bloat. We have a few cool things here to make things very simple. On the far right side you will see our 10 latest downloads listed as well as a link on each one titled "News Title". If you click the actual filename it will add a link to the news post for that files information page. If you click the News Title link it will add the news title for you for that file. In order for this to work we first add the file to our files database then create the news post. This feature saves a lot of time and makes writing a news post very simple and easy for everyone.

On the left hand side you will see some more options for quick and easy code. I have added my own custom bbcode support to make things easy for everyone as well. You can use the options to add a link to the official site, a regular link, a linkable image and an image with no link. The news info option is a custom bbcode that we use to display changes and other information from readmes and news posts from the official sites. This is the text that shows up indented on the main page and is a light blue.

We also have our categories option which is a pulldown menu that lists all of our news categories. There is also links provided to add new categories and manage the existing ones. At the bottom we have options to set commenting permissions which are basically all which means everyone including guests can post comments, registered for only registered user commenting, and off for no commenting allowed. We also have an option to set the post alignment to justify which stretches the text out to fit even across the news post from side to side.


Main Add News Page


Click News Title Link to add News Title


Click News Info Tags to add the tags


Click Filename to add link to file information page


Pull down menu for news categories


Part 1 - Section 4: Managing News Categories
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This is pretty basic. Just like the news post management all news categories are listed 40 per page and can be edited, deleted and of course new ones added.


Manage News Categories


Add a new news category


Part 1 - Section 5: Easy Management From the Fontside
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All of our content can be managened from both the backside (admin cp) and the frontside (main site). I have added in links to edit and delete content with ease that only the site maintainers can see. This enables us to manage content quickly without the hassles of going through the admin cp.


Edit and Delete Links at the bottom of news posts


Part 1 - Section 6: Last Words
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As you can see you don't need to have the most advanced news system to have a very effective and easy to use news management system. My main goals when creating this news system were to make it quick and simple as I could so any of our staff could come in and make a news post without any questions or issues even if they are not seasoned veterans. Overall I am very pleased with our system and works perfect for the lazy guy in me. ;)


Stay tuned for Part 2 of Inside EmuFanatics. :)