Categories are used by Pligg CMS as a way to organize submitted content. Categories are used as suggestions to influence the content being added to the site. For example if you have a video game news website, you may want a category named "Consoles" which would be dedicated to stories related to all video game consoles. If you wish to further drill down the content, you could create a subcategory for each console or simply hope that members will fill in the blanks by tagging each post.
For instructions on how to template categories, see this entry.
Adding New Categories
Adding new categories and editing them is a very easy task in Pligg. Begin by logging in as a "god" level user then navigate to /admin/admin_categories.php. You can also get to this by clicking on the Manage navigational link on top of the admin panel, then click on the Categories sub-navigation link.
Once you are on the category manager page, click on the green "Add A New Category" link and it will insert a new category called "new category". Click on the "new category" tab and edit the value on the fields to the right to rename it and .
Deleting Categories
To delete a category, click on the category name that you want to delete then click on the "Delete Category" button. An ajax area will appear below the delete button where you can choose to either move stories to another category or delete all of the stories assigned to that category. After making a choice and clicking on the bottom "Delete Category" button you will be given one last chance to cancel. A popup box will have you confirm that you want to delete the category permanently.
Ordering Categories
At the bottom of the category manager page is a category display order management area. Pligg uses up and down arrows to manage the category order. Click on the up or down arrows to move the categories to the position that you want them in. If you want to change the level in which the category appears to make it a subcategory or move it out of a subcategory position you will need to change the "parent category" value from the category edit area. Any changes to the order of categories will immediately update on your site. Meaning that each time you click that up or down arrow it will change the positioning of the categories on your homepage without you needing to hit a save button.
Creating Subcategories
To make a subcategory click on the category name from the category list on the left side of the category management page. Change the "Parent" drop-down value to assign a parent category then click the Update Category button to save your changes.
Category Permissions
If you want your site to only allow certain user levels or group members to post to specific categories, this can be set from the category manager. Just click on the category link to the left, then click on one the selection area for one of the two options below.
Search Engine Optimized CategoriesRequired Level To Post: normal
Required User Group To Post: Group Names separated by commas here
Pligg offers two items to enhance your website's SEO concerning categories. The first feature is to assign SEO friendly URLs for category pages and the stories that are contained within that category. The category URL field will appear when you are viewing the category archive, as well as in the story URLs.
The second SEO enhancement is the ability to add meta keywords and descriptions to category pages. To do this, simply click on the category that you want to add meta information to then enter the data in the appropriate fields.
URL Method 2This area on the category management page contains a link that will attempt to rename the htaccess.default file to .htacceess. Most servers won't allow this, but we thought that we would be nice and at least try to save you a step if you choose to use URL Method 2.
User Selected Categories
Users have the ability to choose which categories they want to subscribe to from their user profile page. If a user doesn't want to view articles from a certain category, they can deselect it from the list which will result in hiding all of the stories posted to that category from view.
Reset User's Selected Categories to All
This link appears at the very bottom of the category management page. Clicking on it will reset all of the user category subscriptions to all categories for every user.
