Take a look at the default form and make sure you have the right amount of fields. If you need more fields, go down to the red plus sign below the form and click it (you can always add more fields later and rearrange them however you need to).

Be sure to click the Update Settings (same thing as Save) button often so you don’t lose your work.

Name your form.

Enter the name of each field in the text boxes on the left.

Select your type of text in the box on the right.

Click on the wrench in the middle of the two text boxes to add the text for the check boxes, select boxes, radio buttons, etc.

A check box and a check box group can be used when you need one or more boxes to be checked (e.g. Check all of the following that apply…).

Radio Buttons are used when only one is allowed to be checked (e.g. Yes or No).

A select box is a drop down option box (e.g. Choose the form of insurance you need).

Make sure the admin email address is correct by going to the bottom of the page and clicking on Core Form Admin / Email Options.

Under Messages, Text, and Button Labels you can changes the options for what certain buttons say or what success or failure message will be sent.

Putting your form into your site:

1. Click “Update Settings”
2. Find and click the “Manage” button
3. Underneath “Manage” click “Pages”
4. Find and click the page you want your form under
5. Find and click the “cfII” button (it is in the same row as the “Bold,” “Italic,” “ABC,”… buttons)
6. Choose the form you want from the select box and click insert
7. Click “Save”

What is a “blog”?

“Blog” is the abbreviation of the word “weblog.” This term refers to a website that holds a continuous stream of information. A blog is a personal website that is updated often and has links to articles on other sites. Blogs can be anything the author wants it to be, personal or political, and can include one topic or a range of topics.

Although blogs talk about many different subjects, such as web design, home staging, sports, or mobile technology, most all have a few things in common.

• A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often, the articles are organized into categories.
• An archive of older articles.
• A way for people to leave comments about the articles.
• A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a “blogroll”.
• One or more “feeds” like RSS, Atom or RDF files.

The Blog Content

Content is the most important part of any website. A retail website has a catalog of products and list of store locations. University sites contain information about their campuses, curriculum, and faculty. News sites feature the latest news. A personal blog might contain observations, reviews, and thoughts. If there is no updated content, no one will want to come back to the website more than once.

On a blog, the content is the articles, or posts, that the author writes. There can be multiple authors for a blog site. Blog authors usually write their articles in a web-based interface, which is built into the blogging system. Some blogging systems also support the ability to use stand-alone “weblog client” software, which allows authors to write articles offline and upload them at a later time.

Things Bloggers Need to Know

In addition to understanding how your specific blogging software works, such as Shoestring, there are some terms and concepts you need to know.

Archives

A blog may have an archive that is based on dates, maybe monthly or yearly. This helps users to find a previous article easily.

Feeds

A Feed is a function of special software that allows “Feedreaders” to access a site automatically looking for new content and then post updates about that new content to another site.

Blogroll

A blogroll is a list of sites that are usually other blogs and have similar information. It is usually a sidebar on the page or a separate page dedicated to the blogroll. Shoestring has a built-in Link Manager so the author can manage and create there own blogroll.

Managing Comments

One of the most exciting features of blogging tools are the comments. This highly interactive feature allows users to comment upon article posts and link to your posts and comment on and recommend them. These are known as trackbacks and pingbacks . We’ll also discuss how to moderate and manage comments and how to deal with the annoying trend in “comment spam”, when unwanted comments are posted to your blog.

Trackbacks

Trackbacks were originally developed by SixApart, creators of the MovableType blog package.

An explanation of a trackback:

• Person A writes something on their blog.
• Person B wants to comment on Person A’s blog, but wants her own readers to see what she had to say, and be able to comment on her own blog
• Person B posts on her own blog and sends a trackback to Person A’s blog
• Person A’s blog receives the trackback, and displays it as a comment to the original post. This comment contains a link to Person B’s post

The idea here is that more people are introduced to the conversation (both Person A’s and Person B’s readers can follow links to the other’s post), and that there is a level of authenticity to the trackback comments because they originated from another weblog. Unfortunately, there is no actual verification performed on the incoming trackback, and indeed they can even be faked.

Most trackbacks send to Person A only a small portion (called an “excerpt”) of what Person B had to say. This is meant to act as a “teaser”, letting Person A (and his readers) see some of what Person B had to say, and encouraging them all to click over to Person B’s site to read the rest (and possibly comment).

Person B’s trackback to Person A’s blog generally gets posted along with all the comments. This means that Person A can edit the contents of the trackback on his own server, which means that the whole idea of “authenticity” isn’t really solved. (Note: Person A can only edit the contents of the trackback on his own site. He cannot edit the post on Person B’s site that sent the trackback.)

Pingbacks

Pingbacks were designed to solve some of the problems that people saw with trackbacks. There are three significant differences between pingbacks and trackbacks, though.

1.  Pingbacks and trackbacks use drastically different communication technologies     (XML-RPC and HTTP POST, respectively).
2. Pingbacks support auto-discovery where the software automatically finds out the     links in a post, and automatically tries to pingback those URLs, while trackbacks     must be done manually by entering the trackback URL that the trackback should     be sent to.
3. Pingbacks do not send any content.

The best way to think about pingbacks is as remote comments:

• Person A posts something on his blog.
• Person B posts on her own blog, linking to Person A’s post. This automatically sends a pingback to Person A when both have pingback enabled blogs.
• Person A’s blog receives the pingback, then automatically goes to Person B’s post to confirm that the pingback did, in fact, originate there.

The pingback is generally displayed on Person A’s blog as simply a link to Person B’s post. In this way, all editorial control over posts rests exclusively with the individual authors (unlike the trackback excerpt, which can be edited by the trackback recipient). The automatic verification process introduces a level of authenticity, making it harder to fake a pingback.

Some feel that trackbacks are superior because readers of Person A’s blog can at least see some of what Person B has to say, and then decide if they want to read more (and therefore click over to Person B’s blog). Others feel that pingbacks are superior because they create a verifiable connection between posts.

Verifying Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Comments on blogs are often criticized as lacking authority, since anyone can post anything using any name they like: there’s no verification process to ensure that the person is who they claim to be. Trackbacks and Pingbacks both aim to provide some verification to blog commenting.

Comment Moderation

Comment Moderation is a feature which allows the website owner and author to monitor and control the comments on the different article posts, and can help in getting rid of comment spam. It lets you moderate comments, and you can delete unwanted comments, approve good comments and make other decisions about the comments.

Comment Spam

Comment Spam refers to useless comments (or trackbacks, or pingbacks) to posts on a blog. These are often irrelevant to the context value of the post. They can contain one or more links to other websites or domains. Spammers use Comment Spam as a medium to get higher page rank for their domains in Google, so that they can sell their domains at a higher price sometime in the future or to obtain a high ranking in search results for an existing website.

Spammers are relentless; because there can be substantial money involved, they work hard at their “job.” They even build automated tools (robots) to rapidly submit their spam to the same or multiple weblogs. Many webloggers, especially beginners, sometimes feel overwhelmed by Comment Spam.

There are solutions, though, to avoiding Comment Spam. Shoestring includes many tools for combating Comment Spam. With a little up front effort, Comment Spam can be manageable, and certainly no reason to give up weblogging.

Pretty Permalinks

Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to refer to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. Because others may link to your individual postings, the URL to that article shouldn’t change. Permalinks are intended to be permanent (valid for a long time).

“Pretty” Permalinks is the idea that URLs are frequently visible to the people who click them, and should therefore be crafted in such a way that they make sense, and not be filled with incomprehensible parameters. The best Permalinks are “hackable,” meaning a user might modify the link text in their browser to navigate to another section or listing of the weblog. For example, this is how the default Permalink (poorly-structured) to a story might look in a default Shoestring installation:

/index.php?p=423

How is a user to know what “p” represents? Where did the number 423 come from?

In contrast, here is a well-structured, “Pretty” Permalink which could link to the same article, once the installation is configured to modify permalinks:

/archives/2003/05/23/my-cheese-sandwich/

It is easy to guess that the Permalink includes the date of the posting, and the title, just by looking at the URL. One might also guess that hacking the URL to be /archives/2003/05/ would get a list of all the postings from May of 2003. For more information on possible Permalink patterns in Shoestring, see Using Permalinks.

Blog be Email

Some blogging tools offer the ability to email your posts directly to your blog, all without direct interaction through the blogging tool interface. Shoestring offers this great feature. Using email, you can now send in your post content to a pre-determined email address.

Post Slugs

If you’re using Pretty Permalinks, the Post Slug is the title of your article post within the link. The blogging tool software may simplify or truncate your title into a more appropriate form for using as a link. A title such as “I’ll Make A Wish” might be truncated to “ill-make-a-wish”. In Shoestring, you can change the Post Slug to something else, like “make-a-wish”, which sounds better than making it sound like you are sick.

Excerpt

Excerpts are condensed summaries of your blog posts, with blogging tools being able to handle these in various ways. In Shoestring, Excerpts can be specifically written to summarize the post, or generated automatically by using the first few paragraphs of a post or using the post up to a specific point, assigned by you.

Plugins

Plugins are cool bits of programming scripts that add additional functionality to your blog. These are often features which either enhance already available features or add them to your site.

Shoestring offers simple and easy ways of adding Plugins to your blog. From the Administration Panel, there is a Plugin page. Once you have uploaded a Plugin to your Shoestring plugin directory, activate it from the Plugins Management SubPanel, and sit back and watch your Plugin work. Not all Plugins are so easily installed, but Shoestring Plugin authors and developers make the process as easy as possible.

Basics- A Few Blogging Tips

Starting a new blog is difficult and this can put many people off. There are lots of people who have blogs with no comments or visits. You want to stand out from this crowd of millions of bloggers, you want to be one of the few hundred thousand blogs that are actually visited. So here are some simple tips to help you on your way to blogging mastery:

1. Post regularly, but don’t post if you have nothing worth posting about.
2. Stick with only a few specific genres to talk about.
3. Don’t put ‘subscribe’ and ‘vote me’ links all over the front page until you have     enough people visiting your site that like your blog enough to ignore them (they’re     usually just in the way).
4. Use a clean and simple theme if at all possible.
5. Enjoy. Blog for fun and comment on other peoples’ blogs (as they normally visit     back).

Now What?

Let’s take a step-by-step tour through your Shoestring site and learn about how all the different functions work and how to make your new site your own.

During the first part of this tutorial, we ask that you don’t change anything within the program, unless it is part of the tutorial. Just follow these simple steps and soon you will be changing everything.

Starting from the Top

Begin by logging into the Administration Panel. This is the brain behind your website, the place where you can let your creativity explode, writing brilliant prose and designing the best and most lovely website possible. This is where the organization of your site begins.

From the Administration Panel, from the top of the screen menu notice the View Site button. This is where you are going to be spending a lot of time over the next few minutes, hours, weeks, and months.

Test Driving Your Shoestring Site

Take time to look at the site before you get into changing things and figuring out how all of this works; it’s important to see how the default Shoestring Theme is laid out and works. Consider this the test drive before you start adding on all the special features.

The layout you are looking at is called a Theme. It is the Presentation of your website, styling the look of the site. The default Shoestring Theme features a blue “header” at the top with the title placeholder of your site. Along the side you will see some titles and links. This is your “sidebar menu.” Within the main middle section of the page is the “post.” At the bottom of the page is the “footer.”

Let’s look at the post for a moment. There is a title, and below the title is some information. This is called the post meta data and contains information about the post such as the date and time the post was made, the author, and the categories the post is in.

Scroll down the page and notice the bar at the end of the page. This is called the “footer,” and for now it says “Thank you for creating with Shoestring.”

Back to the sidebar, you will see different sections with information. Among these you may find a list of Pages, Categories, Archives, Calendar, and Dates. This is part of the menu or navigation panel that people will use to move around your site, visiting posts from different categories or time periods.

It’s All in the Details

Take time to notice the smaller details of this web page layout and design. Move your mouse over the title of the article post. Notice how it changes color. This is called a hover. Most Themes feature a distinctive color or change when you move your mouse over a link. Move your mouse over any of the links in the sidebar. Do they change? Is the change the same? You can change your link hovers to look different in different sections of your page, but typically they should be uniform. Also look at the color of the links. How are they colored to stand out from the rest of the text?

Observe the small design details and where they are placed within the page. In the near future, you may want to change some of these details, such as the color of the title in the blue box at the top of the page. If you remember that is called the header then you will know to look within the header section of your style sheet, the file that controls the look of your web page, when you want to make changes to it.

Take a Quick Trip Around

For now you only have one post. It is residing within a page that is laid out as your home page or the front page. If you click on the title of the post, it will take you to the specific page for that post. The first page, or home page, of your site features the most recent posts on your site. Each post title will link to the actual page of the post. Some Theme designers design their single post pages to look different from the home page. By clicking on the title, you are taken to another web page that looks different from the home page.

Again, in the single post, pay attention to the layout and notice what is now different about the design elements. Is the header different? Smaller, larger, or a different color? Is there a sidebar? In the default Theme for Shoestring, the sidebar disappears in the single post. Look at all the details and take note of the differences.

Posts are usually stored in categories so you can keep related topics together. Right now you only have one category, but will soon want more. Click on the single category that appears in the sidebar of the home page. You are now in a page that has been generated to display only the posts within that category. Again, take a look at the layout and see how it may be different from the home page and the single post.

Do the same with the Archives. You may only have one post, but look at how the pages are laid out. They may or may not change, but look at all of it to see how it all works.

All of these changes are created from only a few files called template files and you can learn more about how they work in Stepping Into Templates. For now, however, let’s get on with how the rest of Shoestring works.

Test Drive the Shoestring Admin Panels

Now that you have an idea of how your site looks and what the different layout sections are called, it’s time to test drive the Shoestring Administration. This is like familiarizing yourself with the dashboard of your new website. In fact, the first page you see after logging in is called The Dashboard.

The Dashboard helps to keep you up to date on new and interesting bits of information from the many Shoestring resources. In the corner it also features a list of the most recent activity you’ve done on your site.

Across the top of the Admin screen is the main menu, which says:

• Dashboard
• Write
• Manage
• Links
• Presentation
• Plugins
• Users
• Options
• Logout (name)

You’re anxious to get started, so for now, let’s start with the Users panel.

Click on the Users tab. The screen will change and you will see the panel called Profile. This is where you will enter information about you, the author and administrator of the site. In the next tab called Authors and Users you can set up more authors. Let’s stick with you for right now. Fill in the information and click Update Profile when done.

Now, let’s look at the powerful feature functions of the Shoestring Admin.

Quick Changing the Look

The Presentation panel allows you to change the look of your site using Themes. Themes are presentation styles that completely change the look of your site. There are hundreds of themes available for you to choose from. In your Presentation panel, you will see two themes, classic and default. To try this quick-change process, simply select Classic and then click View Site to see how it looks. Wow, you have another look and nothing else on the site has changed. It’s that easy.

Go back to the Presentation panel (Back button on your browser) and select Default to bring the design back to what you had. To see it again, click View Site, and there it is. It is that simple.

Writing and Managing Posts

Back in the Admin panel, take a look at the Write panel, and the Manage panel. You can use the tabs under the Write Menu to write posts and Pages. Using the tabs under the Manage menu, you can manage the posts and Pages in your site.

Let’s start by making your first test post in the Write Post tab.

If the screen looks a little intimidating, the Codex article on Writing a Post will take you step-by-step through the process of writing a post. Take a moment to read through the article and post your first entry and then return to this article and we’ll take you onto the next step.

If you are in a hurry, then simply fill in the blanks, one by one, in the post beginning with the title and then write a little test message in the post window. This is just for a test, so you can write anything you want. When you are done, click PUBLISH below the post entry window and it is done. You will then see a blank Write a Post screen and you’re ready to write another one. Go ahead. But do only three to four entries. We have more exciting work ahead of us.

Now that you’ve gotten a feel for writing posts, you can view your posts by clicking View Site at the top of the screen. Now it’s time to get down to the real work.

Planning Session

All good websites come from a good plan. Sounds redundant, but it’s true. If you want to create a good and solid website, you need a good and solid plan. I know it’s hard to do, and I know you want to keep poking and playing with this exciting program.

On a piece of notebook paper, or whatever is lying around, describe your site. Take five to twenty minutes to come up with a purpose for your site, or better yet, call it your Mission Statement.

Answer the following questions:

1. What am I going to do with this website?
2. Who is going to read this?
3. What kinds of information will I be posting?
4. Why am I doing this?
5. How often am I going to be posting and adding information?

Using the Information

1. You have just uncovered the possibilities for your site. You can make it about anything that interests you. What are your hobbies? What do you know a lot about? Maybe it would be a personal blog talking about your life experiences.

2. If you know your audience is mostly made up of young people under the age of 25, you will probably want a fashionable look ranging from wild colors and crazy graphics to dark foreboding tones. Something appropriate for that generation. If you are providing factual information about a serious subject, then you will probably want a more conservative look where the information is more important than a lot of pop and flash.

3. Your topics are your categories. Write your categories down below your purpose paragraph and notes about your web page design.

Now, what subcategories might be under these topics? Under Computer Tips, you might want to segregate them by Windows, Linux, and Mac. Or maybe Software and Hardware. You can have sub-sub-categories, but let’s stop with subcategories for right now. Write these down.

You probably already have a design idea in mind, or you will be copying over from your previous site, but take a moment to use this information to reconsider your design, and to see how what you want will work with the Shoestring options.

4. Remember why you are doing this? Is it because you have valuable and timely information or knowledge to share, because you want to talk about a subject that interests you, or maybe because you just think it will be fun to do.

5. Understanding the timeliness of the information you want to present on your site helps you organize the information on your website. Your website is organized by several different methods. If the date of when you posted the information is critical to the success of the page, then having links to your posts referenced by date is important. If the information itself is more important and timeless, then having your posts referenced by category is the best choice.

As you lay out your website on paper, consider what you want to put in your sidebar. Will you set your archives up by category or by date? The information you have and how you help the user find the information is critical to your website design.

What Information Do You Want To Share?

As you think about what information the user will need to know, you have to consider what information you are willing to share with them. That information may include how to contact you, what the purpose of the site is, who you are, and what your expertise is.

Shoestring offers a new feature called Pages which makes the process of presenting this information more easily. Pages, similar to posts, are most commonly used to present unchanging information such as Pages for About Us, Contact Us, Sign Up for Our Mailing List, and other static information. Before creating your individual Pages, you need to think about what information you would like the Page to hold. Write down the possible Page titles and describe the information you are willing to share online on each Page.

Comments

Part of the fun of Shoestring is the ability to have viewers leave comments on your site. It creates a dynamic interchange between you and the viewer. Do you want comments on your posts? Comments on posts come in a variety of forums, from positive comments to extensive conversations and commentary about the posts. Or maybe you are seeking comments that add to the information you’ve posted. How you present your comment form, and whether you do or not, invites people to comment.

Responding to comments and moderating them can also take up a lot of time. If they are critical to your site, then include them and consider how you want them presented. Go back to your test site; the first post created at the time of installation includes a sample comment. You can even make a few comments yourself on the posts you created. Take a look at how they are laid out and consider how you might want them to look to fit into the design and layout of your site.

When you have reached your decision about how you want to handle comments, take time to read through the article on comments and Shoestring discussion options to help you set those features.

With this basic information, you are ready to return to your computer and start laying out your site and setting it up.

Setting Your Site Up

Before you get to the graphic look of your site, let’s do a little more administration to your site to set it up. Consider making your first plugin installation the Codex and Forum Searcher Plugin. It allows you to search both the Shoestring Codex and Shoestring Support Forum from your Shoestring Administration Panels. Click on one of the search results and the page will open in a new window or tab so you can have the article or discussion open while working on Shoestring. This will make your transition to Shoestring a much gentler one with information right at your fingertips.

You can also work from this page by clicking on a link with a Right Click and opening the documents in a new window or tab, so you can read along as you work on your site.

Let’s start with making those categories written down on your list.

Create Categories

In the Manage > Categories tab, click Add Category and fill in the information about your category. Continue to add your parent categories, going down the list. Hold off on entering sub-categories until all the main categories are entered.

NOTE: You can add any new categories any time, but make a note of the fact that categories can be sorted in Shoestring in two ways: by name (alphabetically) or by ID number. As you enter the categories, they are assigned an ID number. It is difficult to change this, so if you don’t want your categories sorted alphabetically, enter them in the order you want to see them presented on the screen.

When you have the parent categories entered, enter your sub-categories. In the pull down menu for Parent Category, you can select the parent to the sub-category you are adding. When you view your categories in the Manage > Categories panel, you will see the categories listed like this:

Computer Tips

- Windows
- Linux
- Mac

Internet News
Web Page Design

- Web Standards
- WordPress

- – Plugins
- – Themes

Put Posts in Categories

Let’s put some of your test posts into categories so you can see how this works.

From the Manage > Category panel, click on the tab for Posts. You should see the test posts you entered here. To the right are three links that say: View – Edit – Delete. Click on Edit to edit one of the posts. On the right side of the Edit Post screen you will now see your Categories. Choose one of them by clicking in the box next to it. Then scroll down the page and click SAVE. Repeat this for your other test posts, putting each one in a different category.

Now view your page by clicking View Site at the top of the Admin panel. Do you see the categories listed in the sidebar now? Great. If you are missing a category, that usually means that there are no posts in it. This is the default function of Shoestring, so not to worry. When you add a post to the “missing” category, it will appear on your web pages. Click on one of the categories and you will be taken to a page for just that category. You should see the posts that went into that category. This is a generated Category page.

Now, click on the Archives for the month showing. Now you are visiting a generated page of your posts listed in chronological order for this month – well, specifically for today only. Two methods of finding the same information.

Preventing Spam

There is more to think about when it comes to having comments on your site. Unfortunately we live in a world where spam is a fact of life. A spam prevention system is already built into you Shoestring site.

What Is Next

You’ve now done all the basics for your new Shoestring website. You know how to write a post, create a category, and how to view your site’s information by category and archive. You can start the customization process, and when you are done, don’t forget to delete your test posts. Then start writing some wonderful information to share with your new-found public.

Enhance Your Site with Plugins

Plugins add function and sometimes fun to your site. There are hundreds of different plugins from adding custom links like related articles to your sidebar to adding weather reports.

Shoestring Plugins

Shoestring Plugins are also known as add-ons or extensions. They are software scripts that add functions and events to your website. They cover the gamut from up-to-date weather reports to simple organization of your posts and categories. Plugins are designed by volunteer contributors and enthusiasts who like challenges and problem solving. They are usually fairly simple to install through the Shoestring Admin Plugin panel, just follow the instructions provided by the plugin author. Remember, these are free and non-essential. If you have any problems with plugins, contact the plugin author’s website or plugin source first, then search the Internet for help with that specific plugin, and if you haven’t found a solution, then visit the Shoestring forums for more help.

• Shoestring Plugin Repository
• Shoestring Plugins
• Managing Plugins
• Plugins