Help

Introduction

The purpose of the website is to build a collaborative area, taking advantage of the latest blogging technologies so that we might be able to hold discussions and get work accomplished without physically meeting as often. Secondly the site provides a way to communicate research, findings, and architecture to the rest of IMT and APU.

The site is running the Drupal CMS. Site users have access to edit collaborative books (see "Documents" above), publish to your own blog, and participate in discussions via the comment system. Some content is public, some only viewable to AWG or IMT.  Comments are currently not publicly visible.

Nodes and Taxonomy

Everything published in drupal is considered a Node, whether it is a story, collaborative book page, blog, image, or weblink. The power of this form of content creation is that you can organize your content by selecting topics associated with a node, from the site's taxonomy.

The topic you set allows for navigation via the Site Map and the categories listed on the top of every node.

There are 5 main categories:
• Enterprise Architecture - things related to development of APU's EIA
• Initiatives -things related to IMT's 3 year plan
• Standards & Policies - things we are asked to define, clarify, or collaborate on
• Information Technology - general IT categories for research and news
• WorkBlog - for posting personal notes or things about what you are working on.
• AWG Website - information, help, or news relating the AWG website itself

Regardless of which Node Type is used, the information will be retrievable via browsing by topic.

If you don't see a Topic that you would like to connect a node to, then you have permission to add terms to the site taxonomy under the administration menu. There are 3 vocabularies in the site taxonomy. The "About" vocabulary is for static pages you see in the About block on the right. The "Topic" vocabulary is the primary categories for all content. Please do not create new vocabularies or new top/root level terms but rather add terms to the existing heirarchy based on the 5 main categories listed above. If you have suggsestions for major logical revisions to the heirarchy just email me, I am not sure I have the most logical layout. The last vocabulary is "Glossary" which allows you to add terms simply for defining them as you use them in text posts. This is especially helpful to define the thousands of acronyms we deal with in our industry that some readers may not know. Terms added to the glossary will automatically be linked to with a superscript i link next to the term. This vocabulary is not for navigation as the Topics vocabulary. You can use "Related Terms" if you would like to add "see also" links in your term description.

Blogs

You each will now have your own blog. Unlike what you may think about the world of teen angst blogging, this method of content creation is useful and is the main mechanism by which you will post intelligent content to this site. More than journaling, this is how you will write stories relating to areas of research and industry news that you want to share with the AWG or IMT in general. It is your platform to voice your expert opinion on various IT topics. Simply select a Topic appropriate for you content, you can even select multiple topics if they apply. Just want to share a link and a blurb? Use the Web Link node type under "create content". Have an image of an architectural diagram that explains your design, create an Image Node Type, or simply link to the image via html. When you post a blog entry you can choose whether or not you want AWG members to be able to comment on what you posted. The comment system allows for threaded discussions below the topic. These posts are not nodes in themselves, but can be linked to with an anchor tag. If you have a long post, it is better to respond to a blog entry with another blog entry rather than a comment. This is especially true if you would like your post to be world viewable since the comments are not world readable. But for conversations around a topic the comment system is effective.

Beyond posting stories for discussion, you can also use your Blog as a work journal. Set the topic to "WorkBlog" to keep a log of things you are working on. Maybe its the end of the day and you would like to write some quick notes to come back to in the future. This will alow us to share with eachother interesting things we are working on at APU. You can of course select WorkBlog and other IT related topics that you wish to file your entry under.

A link to your blog is provided in the Members page. You can hand out your blog link www.apu.edu/imt/awg/blog/[username] to those you want to follow your posts. Even better, an RSS feed is generated for each blog, allowing other sites, or client side RSS readers to pull content. The link is provided wherever you see the icon. The entire site is RSS enabled, so you will see xml icons on various sections. The xml icon on the front page, in the syndication block, only fetches the front page stories. More on this later, but each taxonomy term has its own RSS feed, so those only interested in certain topics can pull stories.

RSS Feeds

The AWG website generate feeds for external consumption. If your looking for an RSS reader you can find several via google. My favorite web-based feed reader is bloglines.

You can subscribe to feeds on this site via the XML icons on the front page and in each section. For a complete list of available feeds, see the sitemap.

Getting More Help

There are many many other features of the site, I would suggest reading the Drupal.org Handbook if you would like more detail. There is also built in help for the administration portions of this website.

Don't hesititate to post a node with any questions about the site, choose the "Website - Help" topic in your post. Also feel free to email James Janssen at any time.