Zine Configuration

The different types of zines differ only in their basic rules, which determine how they accept, present, and index their articles and comments. The rules are:

Rule	Description	Values
whatami	what this item is called	any string
allow	whether this class can be posted directly under a zine	0, 1
nest	whether this class can be posted under another item of the same class	0, 1
policy	who may post items of this class	forbidden, admin, owner, member, public
indexlimit*	maximum number of items to list in an index	any integer, or -1 for unlimited
indexmin	minimum number of items to list in an index	any integer
indexformat*	how to present each item in an index	title, basic, summary, full
indextype*	how to structure the index	basic, list, numbered, paged, gallery, grid, deep, threaded, semi-threaded, wiki, archive
indexsort	how to order the items in an index	sorted, date, reverse-date, flip-flop, reverse-flip-flop
indexage*	maximum age (in days) of items in an index, before expiring them	any integer, or -1 for no limit
attachments	how many attachments to prompt for when posting items of this class	any integer
status	default status of newly posted items	active, pending
showdate	whether to display the posting date	0, 1
showauthor	whether to display the author	0, 1
fields	which record fields to prompt for	list of column names
required	which record fields must be filled out	list of column names

Rules can be set in the following ways:

Zine/Article-specific Rules

Some rules (marked with asterisks, above) can be set in the records of individuals articles. They may be ignored if set in regular articles or comments, but for zines, they should take effect fairly reliably.

Configuration File Rules

Rules can be set in the Zine configuration file, using one of these syntaxes:

# CLASS.RULE, for example:

article.policy = admin

# ZINE.CLASS.RULE, for example:

blog.article.policy = owner
wiki.article.policy = member

These configurations say that only administrators can post articles. However, in blogs, the blog owner may post articles, and in wikis, any member may post articles.

Similarly:

comment.policy = fobidden
blog.comment.policy = public
forum.comment.policy = member

This says that in general, comments may not be posted. However, the public may comment in blogs only, and site members may also comment in the forums.

Default Rules

The default rules are set out in Modules::Zine::Config. You only need to specify differences from these rules in your local configuration files.

Resolving Rules

When determining which rule to use in a specific case, the Zine Machine looks for a defined rule in the following order:

In the current article.
In the reference zine, if the reference zine allows articles of the current class. For example, blogs allow articles, but not comments to be posted directly to the blog (comments are only posted to individual articles). Therefore we will check the reference zine for an indexing rule for articles, but not for comments. Forums, on the other hand, allow comments to be posted directly. Therefore we do check the reference forum for rules on formatting comments.
In the zinetype-specific configuration setting, eg. blog.comment.policy.
In the generic configuration setting, eg. comment.policy.
In Modules::Zine::Config.