hintsandtips :: Blog

If you would prefer to see your friends icons rather than just the text links on your sidebar go to 'Account Settings' and scroll down until you see the toggle - 'Sidebar friend icon'.

You can also change the landing page for your site - again, go to 'Account Settings' and look for the option 'Change your default page'.

You can now create community feedbooks - this is a handy feature if you want to creating content for a particular community. Here is how you can do it.

1. Go to your community and select 'resources' - located in the sidebar profile box
2. You can now subscribe to as many feeds as you like
3. Following the instructions in the last tutorial, check the box - to populate the blog - and filter, as appropriate, using tags
4. All this content will now populate your community blog
5. Now your learners just have to either (a) read the physical blog to get all the material you want them to receive or (b) they can subscribe to the community RSS feed using their Elgg aggregator or an aggregator of their choice and they will receive all the information, aggregated, from all the external sources plus what is put in the community file repository, such as podcasts.
   

This is an easy way to pull together diverse content and have it be presented to learners in an aggregated output. One of the best things about this approach is that you can combined external content with installation specific content such as podcasts and community member contributions and have it all available via one RSS feed.

(note: we are working on making the interface for this more intuitive)

 

This is a great way to participant within an Elgg community while using a different blogging platform (good news for those learners that already have a blog and are asked to use Elgg) or it can be used to create feedbooks for a commuity - a short tutorial will appear on this soon.

You should only do this if you have the legal right to use the resource you are subscribing to.

1. To populate your personal blog go to 'Your Resources'
2. Now you need to subscribe to the particular feed you want to populate your blog
3. Once you have subsribed, the feed will appear under Resource name
4. If the feed you are subscribing to contains tags (such as flickr feeds or from WordPress) you can filter the content based on tags, just choose the tag(s) that you want to appear in your blog - if you use the tag 'Vancouver' this will populate your blog with only those images from your flickr account that were tagged with 'Vancouver'- if you don't filter by tag all your flickr content will populate your blog
5. Check the checkbox
6. Click 'update'

That is it - your blog will now populate with this content (note: it does not happen straight away but the next time the RSS feed is active)

Thanks to Edith for providing these instructions:

 

 

1. Make sure you're logged in to Flickr, and go to the add blog page.
2. Choose 'MetaWeblogAPI enabled blog' from the drop-down list, click 'next'.
3. Enter 'http://elgg.net/_rpc/RPC2.php' (without quotes) in the API Endpoint box, and your elgg username and password in the other boxes. Click 'next'.
4. If you're given a choice of weblogs, choose the one you want to post to (normally YourName :: Weblog).
5. Finally, choose whether or not you want Flickr to store your password and give the weblog a name memorable to yourself (I just called mine Elgg to differentiate from my personal weblog). The weblog URL should automatically be filled in correctly. Click 'all done', and the setup is finished!
6. To actually blog a photo, go to the photo's page and click the 'blog this' button above the picture. From there on it's very straightforward; just follow the instructions, enter any text you want to accompany the photo, and submit!

This tip will show you how to change the header image in both the connections and Northern theme.

As with everything - we are always trying to improve how this is done and eventually want to make this stuff possible without having to touch code. In the meantime here is how:

1. You need to have created your own theme based on an existing one.  For this demo choose Northern.
2. Once you have your image and it has the dimensions width=769 height=201 you want to upload this to your file repository.
3. Once uploaded click on the image so it appears in your browser - copy the URL, we will use this later.
   
4. Now go to 'Account settings' 'Change Theme' and scroll down to where you can create your own theme type in a name for your new theme and then from the drop down select 'Northern'
5. Once you press 'Create' you can now edit this theme - you want to go to the CSS panel - this is the first one.
6. Search for the following: #header
   {
   background: url(/_templates/northern/totems_2.jpg);
   width: 769px;
   height: 200px;
   margin: 0;
   padding: 0;
   text-align: right;
   }
   
7. You are going to want to replace the url between the brackets with a url pointing to your new image.
8. Now you want to delete the url /_templates/northern/totems_2.jpg and paste that url we saved in step three into the space between the bracket
9. Save the theme and you are done - your image should now display.

For the connections theme do the same thing but make sure your new image has the following dimensions width=760px height=183 and you want to search for the following code.

#header {
    background:#fff url('/_templates/connections/top.jpg') no-repeat bottom;    
     height: 183px;
    margin: 0 auto;
    width:760px;
    padding:0;
    border:#fc9 0px solid;
}

We are in the process of building a sidebar manager but in the meantime if you are looking to add some content to your sidebar here is how you can do it. It is a little bit of a pain but will work if you want to try it out.

To add content: 

1. Click on account settings -> Change theme.
2. Create a new theme based on the one you're currently using (remember to give it a name).
3. Click 'edit' to enter the theme editor.
4. In the page shell (the second panel), position your cursor directly after where it says '{{sidebar}}'.
5. Type '<li><h2>Your title here</h2>'.
6. Insert your content
   
7. Finish off with a final '</li>'.
8. Repeat points 5 through 7 for each new sidebar section you'd like to add.
9. Remember to click save when you are done.
   

To remove content:

1. As with adding content you will need to have created your own theme and followed steps 1-3 above, if you have already created a theme just select 'edit'
   
2. Now you want to go to the CSS panel (the first one)  at the end of the CSS file you can put in the following code for any elements you don't want to have displayed: display:none;
3. For example - to remove your friends list you need to do the following:

#sidebar_friends {

         display:none;

}

Now just click on 'save' at the bottom of the page.

Here is a list of the sidebar div's - you can do the above for any of them. 

 
#sidebar_user {
}

#recent_activity {
}

#community_owned {
}

#community_membership {
}

#sidebar_friends {
}

#search {
}

#sidebar_weblog {
}

#sidebar_files {
}

If you don't want to use the HTML editor you can choose to turn it off. Go to 'Account Settings', it is the last option available to you, just switch the editor display to 'no'.

A new Elgg information wiki has launched - this includes help for both developers and users. Please feel free to contribute and help us build a truly useful resource!

Elgg Resource 

Did you know you can see a visual representation of your friends network? This is still in the early stages of development, but it is fun to see.

To do this, go to 'Your Network' then select 'Explore' from the menu options.

A new feature has been included in 'View your activity', located in your sidebar. Now, when you comment on someone's blog you will be notified about any follow on comments that appear on that post.

This will help follow conversations that develop.