Using topic pages was Clone of TLC : Plain Nodes (D7)

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Plain nodes

These are 'pages' of data which is more conveniently held on separate nodes from the place nodes that they are linked from, the latter would typically be country/county or parish based place nodes.

Practical examples are supplementary pages on specific subjects where the amount of data would clutter up the standard field on a place node, and also to hold items such as Gazetteer quotes, Indexes, articles etc which are more conveniently held separately from the main entry on a place node.

The Edit page for a plain node is quite different from that of a place node as there are no standard individual fields to hold data, just one  field called Body.

Plain nodes tend to be more static by nature as the content  usually  remains unchanged after initial set up whilst place nodes are prone to relatively frequent changes

Creating plain and place nodes

You are unlikely to need to create a new place node as in theory the parish structure is already well established in your county but it isn't impossible

To create a new plain node, as well as a place node, click on  'Maintenance/Add content' in the drop down menu in the blue menu bar at the top of any page after first logging in to your Genuki account.

This takes you to an Edit page called 'Create Genuki plain (or place) page' and the on screen instructions and data boxes all need to be considered in turn and completed as a first stage to setting up a new node.

There are two key items to be completed, the first being the URL Alias which identifies the node on the internet. For example, on a place node this might be  big/wal/CMN/Llanboidy where wal is the country, CMN the county and Llanboidy the parish. Note that there is no leading slash used here. The system automatically adds on the remainder of the url hence this is the address for the parish of Llanboidy in Carmarthenshire, Wales   https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/CMN/Llanboidy.

If the node is a plain one, an example being the one containing the National Gazetteer extract for Llanboidy then the address of the node will be  https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/CMN/Llanboidy/LlanboidyGaz1868. In this case it is immaterial whether the end section is LlanboidyGaz1868 or just Gaz1868 as long as they match !

The other important piece of vital information to complete on both types of nodes is the Place Code which in the Llanboidy example is CMNLlanboidy and this will also be the Place Code for the Nat Gaz plain node because it is subsidiary to the parish/place node. This is the key piece of data which is used to link to other components of Genuki such as the gazetteer and the church database. It is also used to automatically add content to this page based on those sources.

I tend to Save the node after completing this stage, which I think of as the 'admin' stage, before adding actual content, to ensure I have set it up it properly by viewing the bare bones published page.

You will note that the act of Saving a node will publish it so that it is immediately viewable by the world at large.

Each content field opens with Rich Text mode disabled by default so if you work in Rich Text (wysiwyg) mode, and most of us do,  you must first click on Enable Rich Text before entering content

CKEditor

We use a bolt on edit tool called CKEditor which has a menu bar which sits on top of every field in both plain and place nodes

It's worth familiarising yourself with the tools available on it, some are obvious and others require hovering over the symbol to find out what they do.

I will mention a few, the first is the Source button which switches you into a view that shows the underlying code that your browser bases the Rich Text on. Note that most of the CKEditor menu items become unavailable in this latter view, but you can edit content in either view

To add a link to an external site, first highlight the word to be used. On the Menu bar about a third way along from the left are the 2 link buttons. The green one is used to create a new link and the red one to remove an existing link

Another useful widget found right at the far end of the menu bar is the Media browser which enables you to embed images in the node by uploading them direct from your own computer; these images are then stored in, and linked to, Genuki's own central Media Library. Right clicking on the final saved image will allow some editing, and size can also be varied by dragging the black box in the bottom right corner.

Look to the left of the Media browser symbol to find the Maximise button (green arrows), this is most useful when working on lengthy plain nodes where activating it keeps the CKEditor menu bar in view at all times

Finally, if you wish to edit your county in raw html code as a default then go to your My Account, under Edit you will find a box Filtered html, deselect that and Save.