'News' as the main page?

[Shayde1]

Salutations!

I'm the webmistress for (http://imaginary.comicgenesis.com), and the artist and I have a bit of an issue. He wanted the newsbox advertisement to be on the main page, but it wouldn't fit with the site's layout if the comic pages were there too-- it got a bit crowded. So we made indextemplate.html a 'news and general updates' page, with the comic being on a page of its own (comic.htm).

Now. The archives work just fine. The comic page also works just fine and updates accordingly. However, if someone is reading an archive page and clicks 'newest page' or 'next page' on the second to last page... it takes them to the News page, which is indextemplate.html. Is there any possible way that's slipping my mind to make it so when someone presses the 'next' button on the second to last page, it'll take them to comic.htm instead of to indextemplate.html? I know that the 'latest comic' thing can be fixed by just hyperlinking the 'latest comic' button to comic.htm, I guess.

[IceFlame1019]

I think instead of using the ***next*** tag, you would use something like < a href = "...indextemplate.html">< img src = "...today.gif">< /a > in the Archives template page. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I have a horrible memory in terms of code but I think the general idea is correct ^^;

EDIT:

Yeah you'd probably have something like:
***first_day*** ***previous_day*** ***next_day*** < a href ="/comic.html" >< img src= "/images/last_day.png" >< /a >
(without the spaces in the <>'s)

[Shayde1]

Thanks, IceFlame, but that's not the problem I'm having. I already know how to write a hyperlink Try clicking 'next' on this page and you'll see what I mean. Instead of going to the last comic, it goes to indextemplate.html, which is the news page.

[FullmetalKitsune]

Oooh, ouch, that's... a toughie.

I doubt it's actually possible, which is kind of a bummer in that case. The way the autokeen software generates the links from those tags seems to be something you can't really change.
I'm not sure how often your comic updates (only took a quick glance, sorry!), but perhaps the BEST choice for experimenting would be to set your links up as such:

Disregard that, after giving it some realistic thought, using ***todays_truedate*** wouldn't work...;


ANYWAY. Another solution could be to use a file in place of index.html -- such as giving yourself a file such as main.html and placing it in the pages under workspace (make sure to include the ads, of course)... And modify (or well, create a file called) .htaccess so that it looks for main.html BEFORE index.html. That way you get your index page for the comic without anything fudging up, or something.
http://www.modwest.com/help/kb1-147.html

I would just be very, very wary of the Acceptable Use Policy and that - I would see about asking an admin to see if that's an acceptable method of getting things to work in your favor...

[Shayde1]

Ohmygosh, genius! I didn't even consider modding .htaccess. I'll ask about that and see if it's do-able. Thanks so much!

[Dr Neo Lao]

None of the above proposals will work, as far as I know. Regular users are unable to modify their .htaccess file.

There is an option in the Advanced Settings in SiteAdmin for setting a different default page, but although it is still there, it was disabled a long time ago as people kept breaking their comics.

As far as I know, there is no way to do this with the current AutoKeen system. However, I don't know what the full list of features is for the new version that is currently in beta testing. Ask Wendybird about it as she is one of the beta testers, or pm STrRedWolf directly.

[Kisai]

None of the above proposals will work, as far as I know. Regular users are unable to modify their .htaccess file.

There is an option in the Advanced Settings in SiteAdmin for setting a different default page, but although it is still there, it was disabled a long time ago as people kept breaking their comics.

As far as I know, there is no way to do this with the current AutoKeen system. However, I don't know what the full list of features is for the new version that is currently in beta testing. Ask Wendybird about it as she is one of the beta testers, or pm STrRedWolf directly.

Not quite. Everything in the siteadmin does something. It's not recommended to change settings unless you have been explicitly told to by someone who knows what they are doing.

What the OP wants is to have a the last page not be the indextemplate. However the method to do this is wrong.

What you need to do instead is remove the indextemplate if you do not want your comic to appear on the front page. Then put in /workspace/webpages/ a file called index.html , and use an include tag or something to put the news in. The OP didn't specify what they are doing to generate news. The archives will still generate a "last" day in the /d/ directory, but will link to the index.html page at the end.

So instead what you really need is to change the "index" page. The .htaccess overrides this, or
"If not index.html, what page should be shown?" overrides what indextemplate.html turns into. This can be found under comic data if you enable advanced mode.
htaccess is intentionally locked to prevent breakage of peoples sites by people tampering with it.

I can't tell you if it will work if you change the siteadmin setting, as the average person doesn't know what they are doing by changing stuff here. Try it if you want, no warranty, no help will be provided.

Here's a list and what it does, default in (brackets):
Comic Directory (/d) [ADVANCED] Which directory you want daily processed pages (archives) to be placed
Comic Directory (/w) [ADVANCED] Which directory you want weekly processed pages (archives) to be placed
Comic Directory (/comics) [ADVANCED] Which directory you want comics to be placed in
Comic Directory () [ADVANCED] Which directory you want all other webpages to be placed (default is root of /public_html)
Comic Directory (/images) [ADVANCED] Which directory is where your non-comic images are placed in
Workspace Directory (/workspace/comics) [ADVANCED] Which directory you want comics to be uploaded to and processed from
Workspace Directory (/workspace/webpages) [ADVANCED] Which directory you want to process webpages from?
If not index.html, what page should be shown? [ADVANCED] You can use a different file as the first page people see.
Index.html template name (indextemplate.html) [ADVANCED] What file should be processed to update the front page?
YYYYMMDD.html archive template name (dailytemplate.html) [ADVANCED] What file should be processed to update the archive pages?

The first three directories you shouldn't ever change.
Comic directory should never be changed unless you are running two separate comics in the same ftp account. I don't recommend it, but it's provided if
someone was converting to CG from some other place and they had their comic like xxxxyyy.comicgenesis.com/newcomics/
You shouldn't change images, or the workspace directories. The diagnostic system uses these to rebuilt your site, so if you change it, you can trash your site.
The template names are read from the system, but assumed to always be called the above by older utilities, so if you change those, and it stops working, change it back.

Most of these fields were added back when sexy losers was on CG and were used primarily by "the guide" to determine the last update was. No other comic, to my knowledge that didn't convert from another system has no reason to change the settings. They DO do something, but there is little reason to change them. At most, someone might change the comic location to start a new comic without deleting their old one from the ftp account.

Anyway, no warranty and no help provided if you change the settings. You break it, you bought it. The defaults are right there, so you can put it back.

[Dr Neo Lao]

So instead what you really need is to change the "index" page. ... or "If not index.html, what page should be shown?" overrides what indextemplate.html turns into. This can be found under comic data if you enable advanced mode...

This has been asked before, and the last two times it was asked, you responded with "the 'not index' option has been turned off". Back when I first joined CG I was trying to change this and never got it to work via SiteAdmin. When I documented the advanced options for the CGWiki back in 2007, it didn't work then.

Has this option been re-enabled?

[Shayde1]

I don't need to change any other directory, just the main page. Kisai, you asked what we're doing for News-- the artist types his news directly onto the 'main' page and just re-uploads it. The text autoformats into a div. It's the neatest and quickest way I could think of.

If I understand correctly, this means that all I have to do is move the index.html to the webpages subfolder and it'll suddenly (magically) work? i'll give it a shot now at least. If it does work, then we have no need of changing the main page-- the only problem is that the server is not generating an archive page for the 'last day.'

UPDATE: Did that, and it still isn't generating a 'last day' page correctly. Went to advanced settings:

If not index.html, what page should be shown? news.htm

Index.html template name (indextemplate.html) news.htm

Then I replaced indextemplate.html with the archive template. it's still showing indextemplate.html rather than news.htm. So... I take it to mean this advanced feature is, in fact, broken?