Greymatter Installation Help

Working with Love-productions templates and the Greymatter journalling software


This document explains the contents for setting up the important greymatter templates. This document assumes that you already have set up your greymatter files as documented on the Greymatter page. If you need further help setting up Greymatter, check out the Blogplates resources page

The categories are broken up into the sections, and you may need to tweak with other templates to get them to your liking. If you'd like to hire me to install a copy of GM to your server and put the templates in, please drop me an email at graphics@love-productions.com. I'd be happy to work with you!



main menu screen
The main menu screen appears to the left. This is what you will see every time you log into Greymatter. It gives you all of the options for configuring the software, as well as the needed posting abilities. To set up your templates, click the Edit Template button.
















edit templates screen There are multiple options we will be setting up on this screen. First, click the Edit Main Index Related Templates. The Main Index Template is on the top of the page. Select all of the text within this box, and paste the following in its place:
{{header}}
{{logbody}}
{{footer}}


Your Entry Index Template (Standard Entries) should also be edited to read:
<div class="blogbody">{{entrymainbody}}</div>
<div class="blogfoot">Posted by {{authorsmartlink}} @ {{hourhour}}:{{minuteminute}} {{ampm}} {{timezone}} [<A HREF="{{pagelink}}" onMouseOver="window.status='{{monthmonth}}/{{dayday}}/{{year}}: {{entrysubject}}';return true" onMouseOut="window.status='';return true">Link</A>]{{commentslink}}</div>

The Data Entry Template should look like:
<div class="bloghead">{{weekday}}, {{monthword}} {{day}}, {{yearyear}}</div>


And, the Entry Separator Template will simply have:
<hr>


Click the Save Template Changes and we'll move onto the next set of templates to edit.



Next, we will edit the Archive templates - click Edit Archive Related Templates. At the top of the page, we'll start with the Archive Master Index Template. Paste the following:
{{header}}
{{logarchivelist}}
{{footer}}

Click all of the checkboxes on this window that say "Make this the same as the main index version".

Save Template Changes again, and we'll move on.


Now click Edit Entry Page Related Templates. Your top template is Entry Page Template: Current Standard Entries. Change this to the following code:
{{header}}
{{previouslink}} [<A HREF="{{pageindexlink}}">Main Index</A>] {{nextlink}}
<div class="bloghead">{{monthmonth}}/{{dayday}}/{{yearyear}} Entry: "{{entrysubject}}"</div>
{{entrymainbody}}<br><br>
{{entrymorebody}}
{{commentdivider}}
{{entrycomments}}
{{entrycommentsform}}
{{footer}}


Save Template Changes.




Finally, here's the part where you will customize your template with the files you have downloaded from love-productions. All of the sets use the code above, and the only changes are in the Header and Footer templates. This makes it easy to use GM and change templates :)

zip file screenOpen the Zip file that was downloaded. To do this, you will need Winzip or a similar unzipping program. It will looks similar to the image on the left (but not exactly because each set is slightly different).

You should unzip this onto your hard drive and upload all of the graphics files into a subdirectory of your journal called images.

Now, open the files in the gm directory called
header.txt
and
footer.txt





Back in Greymatter, click Edit Header, Footer, & Sidebar Templates. Copy the contents of header.txt and paste it into the Header Template. Copy the contents of footer.txt and paste it into the Footer Template. Copy the contents of sidebar.txt and paste it into the Sidebar Template. You probably will wish to customize these sidebar and add links to other sites. By pasting things into the Sidebar Template, they will automatically appear in your sidebar.

Save Template Changes.

And you are done! Post away, and don't forget to continue to give credit :)





Common Terms:

blog: shortened term for the word weblog. Check The History of Weblogs for more information on how this genre of websites came to be.
blogplate: (also plural form, blogplates) Weblog Templates. Many linkware and shareware graphic designers create templates which are expressly designed with blogs in mind. Blogplates.net is a webring of many of these designers sites.
sidebar: a common location for links and buttons to other related sites. Yours should include a linkback to love-productions.com for the template usage.
upload: using an ftp program to copy files from your hard drive onto your host's server. Recommended program for uploading - Leech FTP.
give credit: the idea of making sure to linkback on the same page to show where the items on your site came from. See Give-Credit for more information.




Greymatter images are of software © to Noah Grey. Instructions are ©2002 by Kristine Beeson of Love-productions.
No duplication is allowed without written permission.