Running Weblogs with Slash

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, he might have imagined something like the modern weblog — a densely packed stream of commentary and hyperlinks to the informative, the bizarre, or the just plain entertaining. Whether tucked away in a teenager's online diary or presented as nearly serious journalism, weblogs empower people to publish their thoughts.

One such site is Slashdot.org. Freewheeling and chaotic, the site has hundreds of thousands of readers and dozens of imitators. Driven by the open source Slash software, people are talking — about news, sports, religion, and technology. Communities are springing up, even even around the wild whims of a few college students from Holland, Michigan. if you have something to say, Slash can help you say it.

Slash is based on open source technologies — including Perl, Apache. and MySQL — and uses open protocols, such as XML and RDF. It is powerful enough to serve dozens of generated pages per second, yet can be administered almost completely through a web browser. More than just a weblog system, Slash can extend to all areas of web publishing. In spite of all the configuration and tuning options, you don't have to be a Perl or Unix guru to use it. Running Weblogs with Slash can be your guide to setting up a Slash site.

This book covers Slash from theory to customization. Learn how to install and configure the software to grow with your community and cover all sorts of common setups. Learn how to solicit and publish Stories and how to create community guidelines and let your site evolve over time. If you're a hands-on type with burning ideas, you'll even learn how to extend Slash and modify yje underlying code itself.

Running Weblogs with Slash is designed for people who want to run a medium-to-large weblog but have neither the time nor the inclination to wade through the voluminous source code. Targeted at site administrators and content managers, it distills the knowledge currently distributed through the Slash universe. Written by users and developers, it's also officially blessed by the people behind Slash and Slashdot. if you want to learn how this popular, powerful, and free system works, or how to make it work for you, this book is your answer.

As Rob Malsa, creator of Slash, writes in the foreword, "Hopefully, what we've learned over the years will make it easier for you to tell your story."

1. Slash: And Overview
• The Slashdot Story
• Becoming a Slash Guru: A Roadmap
• The Slash User Interface
• The Slash Author Interface
• The Slash Publishing Cycle
• The Slash Architecture
2. Installing Slash
• Before You Begin
• Getting the Software
• The Short Version
• The Details
• Advanced Installations
3. Basic Administration
• The Admin Menu
• Editing Authors
• Modifying Configuration Variables
4. Editing and Updating Stories
• The Stories List
• The Edit Story Form
• Gotchas
5. Reviewing and Approving Submissions
• The Submit Story Page
• The Submissions List
• The Review Submission Page
• Editing User Submissions
6. Comments, Filters, and Content Moderation
• Viewing Comments
• Posting Comments
• Comment Filters
• Comment Moderation
• Moderation Configuration Variables
7. Managing Topics and Sections
• Managing Topics
• Choosing Topics and Icons
• Managing Sections
• Choosing Sections
8. Managing a Slash Community
• How to Stifle a Community
• Setting the Tone
• Finding and generating Content
• Promoting the Site
• Managing Authors
• Managing Users
9. Basic Site Customization
• Blocks and Slashboxes
• Managing User Polls
10. Advanced Customization
• Changing the Look
• Customizing Template Behavior
• Themes and Plugins
• Modifying the Code Itself
• Internationalization
11. Advanced Administration
• Tasks
• The Slash Daemons and Tasks
• Slash Utilities

1. Slash Architecture
2. Common Slash Database Tables
3. The Slash Template Language
4. The Slash API
5. Slash Configuration Variables

Fascinating book. It is both a reference manual for the code that made SlashDot famous, as well as describing the reasoning within the development of the project. A truly recommended read, even if you don't intend to run the code itself.