This handbook is there to guide you, member of the HTC Wizard Web. It contains information about the HTC Wizard Web itself, the HTC Wizard Community, membership of the HTC Wizard Web and information about contributing to the HTC Wizard Web.
I decided to set up the HTC Wizard Web Community web site when I had been running the HTC Wizard Blog for about a month. The number of visitors of the HTC Wizard Blog was rising, and more and more people started asking questions I could not answer.
I wanted those questions to be answered for those people, but did not have sufficient time to go find all the answers myself. I did notice however, that some people started to help eachother in the comments. That's when it struck me that any question could probably be answered if I would create a community website where people can ask their questions and answer other peoples questions. All it would take is a website that allowed for structured archiving of all questions and their answers.
The Content Management System that the HTC Wizard Web community web site is built on, Drupal, does just that. It allows people to ask questions, answer other peoples questions, and it allows people to share information the have that could answer questions that have not been answered yet. On top of that, Drupal allows to archive all that information in a very structured way by adding the information to the handbooks.
Membership of the HTC Wizard Web is completey free and comes in two flavours. Let's have a look at those flavours.
Non-members have full read access on the HTC Wizard Web. Anyone can read articles, blogs, forum topics and the handbooks or subscribe to the collection of RSS feeds. Non-members can't contribute however. They cannot comment on blogs and articles and they can't participate in the discussions in the forum. Non-members can't have e-mail subscriptions either. All these options are available to members only
Authenticated users
When you register at the HTC Wizard Web, you automaticaly become an authenticated user. As an authenticated users you have the following privileges:
Contributing members have the same privileges as authenticated users, but they also have the permissions needed to administer the handbooks.
At the moment I am the only user with the status contributing member. I am going to leave it like that for at least a few days. Anyone is free to add content to the HTC Wizard Web, but the handbooks need to become the core of the HTC Wizard Web. I don't mean to be a snob, but I want to be selective about promoting people to contributing members.
I expect from contributing members that they are very serious about their writing, and very serious about building a well structured handbook. It is going to take at least a few days to get an idea of which members would fall into that categorie.
If you feel that you have what it takes to become a contributing member, please let me know through a private message. Tell me a little about yourself, especialy about your experience with writing in general. Write some stories or blog entries here on the HTC Wizard Blog, or send me the URL to work that is available online.
To sum it all up in on sentence: Contributing members have elevated privileges, but they are not privileged. But, we are going to need them. Don't hesitate to message me if you want to work on the handbooks. It will be fun, and it will be rewarding.
The HTC Wizard Web is running on a dedicated server running FreeBSD with a so called LAMP configuration. LAMP stands for Linux (FreeBSD is "similair" to Linux), the Apache webserver, a MySQL database and the PHP scripting language as a module compiled into Apache. On top of all that runs Drupal, a Content Management System with a strong focus on community web sites.
If you want to get more familiar with Drupal, there are several things you can do. First of all, you can simply register through the block in the top of the right hand sidebar and click around. When you register you will become a authenticated user, which will give you several privileges allowing you to contribute to the HTC Wizard Web community web site.
If you want to know more about Drupal and what it can do, I strongly encourage you to have a look at the Drupal website. There is a active community of Drupal users and developers, and reading up on what they have written in their blogs and forums should give you a pretty good idea of what Drupal is capable of.
Do mind that Drupal itself does not have all functionality that is available for Drupal built in. The core system supports basic features, more advanced features are available through modules. If you run into modules that you think can be a addition to the functionality of the HTC Wizard Web community web site, please let it know in the forum or comments and explain why you think a module should be installed.
Adding content to the HTC Wizard Web comes as a standard privillege for members of the HTC Wizard Web. Drupal, the Content Management System under the hood of the HTC Wizard Web, provides a backend that allows members to write their own content. There are several types of content that members can commit:
Forum topics
Any member of the HTC Wizard Web can open new topics in the forum and respond to existing topics in the forum. Opening a new topic can be done simply by clicking the appropriate link above the forum of your choice.
Blog entries
Every member of the HTC Wizard Web has his own blog. Members can write their own blog entries which will be visible on http://www.htcwizardweb.net/blogs/[userid]. Every blog entry written by HTC Wizard Web members will be visible on The HTC Wizard Blog, where all blog entries are shown in chronological order. As a bonus, HTC Wizard members have the choice to promote their blog entry to the frontpage of the HTC Wizard Web.
To create your own blog entry, click the create content link in the top of the left sidebar, and then click personal blog entry. Read the next page of the HTC Wizard Web Handbook to learn how to format your blog entry.
Story
If you feel that information you want to share does not fit the other entries in your blog, you can write a story. A story is completely similair to a blog entry, but it does not appear in your personal blog, nor in the HTC Wizard Web Blog where blog entries from all HTC Wizard Web members are aggregated.
Please note that before submitting a story, you should tick the option Promoted to frontpage. If you don't, your submitted story won't be linked to from anywhere on the HTC Wizard Web, except for the pages for the categorie(s) that you assigned your story to. If that situation is what you you want to achieve, feel free. If it is not, promote your story to the frontpage.
To create your own story, click the create content link in the top of the left sidebar, and then click story. Read the next page of the HTC Wizard Web Handbook to learn how to format your story.
Book pages
Only contributing members can create book pages. Book pages are added to either The HTC Wizard Handbook or The HTC Wizard Web Handbook. Like stories, book pages are completely similair to a blog entries, but they don't appear in your personal blog, nor in the HTC Wizard Web Blog where blog entries from all HTC Wizard Web members are aggregated. Book entries can be promoted to the frontpage.
Contributing members can create book entries by clicking create content in the top of the left sidebar, and then clicking book page. Read the next page of the HTC Wizard Handbook to learn how to format your book page.
Though members who aren't contributing members can't create book pages, their blog entries, stories and forum topics can be added to the handbooks by contributing members. If you feel that content you submitted should be in the handbook, please send me a private message
On the HTC Wizard Web you can format the content you contribute using HTML tags. Some Content Management Systems include so called WYSIWYG editing (What You See I What You Get). Working with WYSIWYG editors is like working in Word. Those editors let you select text and assign formatting to it by clicking buttons in menu bar, just like you would in for example Microsoft Word.
The HTC Wizard Web currently does not offer a WYSIWYG editor. WYSIWYG editors are available for Drupal as modules, but my experience is that those editors often fail to do what you want them to do. Instead, they do what you tell them to do. They are just like computers...
Not offering a WYSIWYG editor on the HTC Wizard Web was a choice. If you feel I should reconsider that choice, please let me know.
If you know HTML, formatting your entries should be a breeze. The HTC Wizard Web supports two input formats, both based on HTML. The first format is Filtered HTML, which only supports a limited set of HTML tags. The second format is Full HTML which supports all HTML tags. The HTML tags available in the Filtered HTML should be sufficient for most entries. Those of you who want to apply more advanced formatting to their entries are free to use the Full HTML input format.
Additional to these input formats, Unfiltered HTML is available for contributing members. The difference between Full HTML and Unfiltered HTML is that Unfiltered HTML supports the JavaScript language as well. This is not needed for regular contributions, and thus not available for regular members.
You can select which input format to use for your entry below the input area for the text of your entry (the area directly below the bold word Body).
Below the selection area for the input formats, there is a link to a page with compose tips that can be usefull for those members who don't have much experience with marking up text with HTML. If you don't have (much) experience with formatting text with HTML tags, I strongly suggest you read that page before you try to submit an entry to the HTC Wizard Web. While writing an entry, I suggest you open the compose tips in a seperate window, so you can swap between browser windows if you want to check the markup syntax for your entries.