This article details the basic configuration of the article manager, and the configuration options available.

Configuring articles.php

The look and feel of articles.php is taken directly from the configuration used in the header.php and footer.php files, so when these are configured, the articles section will match any other PHP sections of the OpenCrypt frontend.

The article manager can be called with query strings to show an article of your choice, for example if you are linking to it. The format for these query strings is as follows: /oc/articles.php?a=2 where 2 is the ID of the article you require.

It is important to set a default article for when the article manager is loaded without a query string. To do this, edit the articles.php file and change the $default_article variable, the format is $default_article = "1" where 1 is the ID of the article you require.

Layout of articles.php

The default layout of articles.php is that the Table of Contents is set out in a panel to the left.

The main content of the article is layed out to the right of the Table of Contents, with the header and article at the top.

Visitor Comments, Responses and Ratings are by default set out beneath the article, including a system for submitting new comments, and statistics as to how popular the article is.

It is possible to alter this layout if required, though we would recommend this is only approached by those with a good working knowledge of PHP and HTML.

The templates for the article manager can be found in the /oc/php/templates directory, or via the 'PHP Frontend Template' section of the 'Templates and Styles' configuration. The templates which begin with 'article' are those associated to the article manager.