LVW to AVN upgrade

This document highlights the changes made to LVW when it matured into ActiVeg Network

Important things first

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It is now called The ActiVeg Network.

Configuring your site(s).

www.lvw.makessense.co.uk is no more. Instead go directly to your site and use the login link in the top left hand corner. This will take you to a new secure server (login.activeg.org).

Your browser will issue a very scare message about login.activeg.org not being secure. It is, but the security certificate it is using is not valid because of unforeseen server configuration limitations. There is a solution (spend more money) which I am pursuing but it will take a few days to put in place.

You will be shocked at your plain looking site … read on.

Assuming you have the appropriate permissions you should now see a red on black “configuration-menu” just above the new “Status” box. This will take you to your main configuration page.

Alternatively you should see little red on black “edit” etc. links scattered around your site. These will take you directly to the appropriate edit page.

A lot of work has gone into the configuration forms. You should find them more intuitive, more flexible and nicer looking.

There is a new editor. Take a few minutes to read its help (bottom left of editor). Once you understand what is does I'm sure you will grow to love it.

Changes to particular objects.

About/Credit

Configuration

• Moved to their own section.

• Ability to insert from standard template.

Display

• List of credits removed

Articles

Configuration

• Improved search tools

• Introduction passage added.

Display

• Introduction passage.

• Articles are no longer automatically added to navigation menu as this was leading to ugly navigation on some sites. Use the menu tool instead.

Support and Bugs - new

Configuration

• Allows lodging of support requests and bug reporting

Display

• Support and bug link added to each page.

Comments - new

Configuration

• New

Display

• Comments can be added by users on News, Articles, Recipes and Events.

Contact

Configuration

• Moved to own section

• Contact details are inherited from your site users, typically this is the site owner but others can have specify roles. This allows for large groups to set contact details for specific areas to specific users.

• Option to insert template text.

Display

• As above concerning users.

• Uses contact form instead displaying email address

• Map of the appropriate location of group (see domain details)

Domain Details

Configuration

• Ability to place group on map – this has been none automatically so please check.

• Using this facility will allow google etc. to use your site in geographical searches.

• Region code added. Improved searching.

• Place name added. Improved searching.

Downloads

Configuration

• Easier configuration layout.

Events

Configuration

• Improved search tool.

• Option for “where” improved: at predefined locations from database, at a given address or at a given URL.

• Additional search option that allow the Network publicise the event effectively.

• Contact for the event is either a registered users or a named person.

• New priority settings (only really needed when you have many events)

• Bookings – examine and change bookings for an event

• About events – has optional template text.

Displaying

• User can book places for your events (up to 4)

• Your next event automatically becomes the top story on your home page.

FAQ

Configuration

• Improved configuration tool

Galleries

Configuration

• New gallery type of “pick”.

• Choosing images is far easier

• Keyword gallery can have multiple keywords

Displaying

• New slide show

Home

Configuration

• Moved to own section

• Optional template text

Displaying

• Your next event is top news story by default.

• Most popular network stories shown.

• Upcoming events from the network section.

• New content on this site section.

• New content from the rest of the net work section

Images

Configuration

• Improved search tool

• Simplifier upload

• Search images by tags (anywhere images are used)

• Image files have been renamed to include the original file name plus it unique id. This improves search engine searches and replacing images.

• AVN can resize images on the fly. Load in the image as big as you need it and let AVN make smaller version as an when they are needed. In fact you can adjust the image size your self by altering its URL.

• LVW_IMAGE tag gone. Hurray!

Links

Configuration

• Improved configuration tool.

• Removed email address.

Lists

Configuration

• Improved configuration tool.

• News lists of Products.

Locations

Configuration

• Improved search tool

• Summary of locations that need attention.

• New “recommended” flag.

• Vastly improved integration with google maps.

• Contact fields are more flexible.

• New open hours field

• Intelligent food type fields

Displaying

• New search tool

• Much faster maps

• A user on one AVN site can see the locations from another site. The map affectively goes on for ever.

• New AVN rating added for each restaurant calculated from various attributes.

• Distances to other nearby restaurants shown.

• Pop ups on google maps adds tabs for locations sharing same geographical area.

• Locations are “clustered” on the maps when there are many.

• Intelligent listing formats for sites with few locations and those with many.

Menu

Configuration

• Improved configuration tool.

• New link picker tool.

Displaying

• AVN works out when to add news stuff to the menu, there are no longer those rubbish “show … “ options in preferences.

News

Configuration

• Improved search tool

• Default news categories for new sites.

• Related field is dimplier.

Displaying

• Your news feed to the ActiVeg site.

• Its news feeds to yours.

• New priority tool

• Comments can be added

• News stories where the story reside off site, the link on the home page goes to your site first not directly to the stories source.

Recipes

Configuration

• Improved search tool

Displaying

• Intelligent listing formats for sites with few recipes and those with many.

• Pictures of most recent recipes

Skins – all changed

Configuration

• All new tools

• Important – the only thing I could not convert over were the site styling but in most cases it should be east to recreate what you had. Your original images are still on your site. Some sites I will corrected myself.

Stats – under review

I couldn't sort this until I had decided on the new hosting arrangements. Stats are still being kept and I'll start displaying them soon.

Templates – new

Templates allow your to change mostly anything on your site. Very powerful and very dangerous.

Users

Configuration

• Improved search tool

• You now have control over users – no me (so much)

• New statuses of CONTACT (for events) and BANNED.

• More than one user can have status of OWNER.

• New administrator's permission tool. IMPORTANT you must reset administrators permissions.

• New “contact role” field. See “Contact” section.

• New “moderation” field to control comment and review permissions.

• New registration page for users

• New lost password page for users

• New “request a web site” for users

• New profile page (secure)

• Change your user name. Your user names were imposed by me when you joined. You have a one off opportunity to change them.

Admin

Configuration

• New tools just for me!!!!

• But I have a global ban list which you may want to know about. Let me know about trouble some users.

Messages

There is a new messaging system. It is really there to help AVN communicate with you about things happening to your site. It will send you emails if you want them. It needs more testing on the new server, so don't expect to see emails flying straight away, but the internal messaging will be working.

Status

You will notice a status box when you login and a status line in the configuration showing things you should know about.

Products

There is a new product tool but its only available to AVN admins at the moment.

Browser compatibility

This is much improved.

Email addresses

LVW_EMAIL gone. Emails protection is now very neat – automatic and readable.

Content tidying

Your content has been clean as much as it could automatically be. The new editor should make things better. Golden role: Do not paste HTML and especially JavaScript from other application to AVN – its a security risk and is the main cause of strange looking sites.

Some character encoding corruptions have been accumulating in the old version (quotes turning into garbage etc.) due to a inherent design fault. I've tried to fix them automatically but with little success. All I can say is if you spot them and correct them manually, they won't come back.

I still have the old sites archived in different ways so if you think something has gone walkies please just ask.

ActiVeg.org

This acts as a hub for all sites. Have a look.

E.g.

http://www.activeg.org/network/map.html

applying for new sites, searching out content from other site etc.

Integration with facebook, twitter etc

Each page as a little “share” widget that will allow you (or any one else) to easily tell the world about new content on your site.

New hosting

We are on a much faster machine now.

I'm sure there is more …..

It is all new so get using that bug form and suggest what to add next – I've got more in mind.

Comments

Add your comment

Audit

Story posted by stephen on 2010-11-08 17:00:22.

Story last updated by stephen on 2010-11-25 09:19:12.

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