4. Admin Panels

The blocks administration module allows you to view all active and/or inactive blocks, create a new block, create a new block position, change the global block settings, set a block to active or inactive, edit an individual block's settings, change the order that blocks are displayed, and delete a block.

View: When you first click on the icon for the blocks administration module or click on "View" a list of blocks is displayed above a list of block positions. Clicking on the links "Show active blocks/Show all blocks" will toggle between showing only active blocks or all (active and inactive) blocks.

Setting A Block's State: In the "State" column of the blocks list, you can toggle a block's state (active or inactive) by clicking on the state icon.

Editing A Block: Clicking on the edit icon in the "Options" column will display the settings for that individual block. Some block settings are universal between all blocks, with the block specific setting show below the universal settings.

• Title: This is a name that you will use to identify this block. The title is shown in the blocks list in the "Title" column.
• Language: If your block should only be displayed for a certain language, specify it here. Setting the language to "All" will display it for all languages.
• Position(s): This determines in what positions the block will be displayed. To display the block in more than one block position, hold down the Ctrl key as you click each location.
• Advanced Placement: At the bottom of the Block placement filtering section you will see a link titled "Click to show/hide advanced block placement options". After clicking this link you will see a list of modules with check boxes beside them. If you would like your block to only be displayed for specific modules, select them here. Leaving all modules unchecked will cause the block to be displayed for all modules.
• Collapsibility: You can set whether or not a block is collapsible and which state will be the default. If the display of collapsible menu icons is disabled in Layout>Blocks>Settings, this option will not be visible.
  

Deleting A Block: Clicking on the delete icon in the "Options" column of the blocks list will delete an individual block. You will be asked for confirmation before the block is actually deleted.

Create Block: Clicking on the "Create Block" link near the top of the page will allow you to create a new block for your site.

• Title: This is a name that you will use to identify this block. The title is shown in the blocks list in the "Title" column.
• Block: This is the actual block type and determines what content is to be displayed. The types of blocks available to you will be dependant on the add-on modules that you have installed. The core block types are:
  • Admin/Show admin categories and modules
  • Admin_Messages/Show Admin Messages
  • Blocks/Menu block
  • Blocks/Languages
  • Blocks/Simple File Include
  • Blocks/HTML
  • Blocks/XSLT
  • Blocks/Plain Text
  • Blocks/Extended Menu block
  • pnRender/custom pnRender block
  • Search/Search Box
  • Theme/ThemeSwitcher
  • Users/User's Custom Box
  • Users/Login block
  • Users/Online block
• Language: If your block should only be displayed for a certain language, specify it here. Setting the language to "All" will display it for all languages.
• Position(s): This determines in what positions the block will be displayed. To display the block in more than one block position, hold down the Ctrl key as you click each location.
• Collapsibility: You can set whether or not a block is collapsible and which state will be the default.

After confirming your changes on the initial block creation page, you are taken to the block specific settings page. Refer to the "Editing A Block" section above for details.

View Block Positions: When you first click on the icon for the blocks administration module or click on "View" a list of block positions is displayed below a list of blocks.

Changing Block Display Order: See the instructions below for "Editing A Block Position"

Create Block Position: Clicking on the "Create Block Position" link near the top of the page will allow you to create a new block position for your site.

• Name: This a unique name that will identify this new block position. You should not use a name that is already in use. This will be shown in the "Name" column of the block positions list. The name should not contain any spaces or special characters, as it will be used as the Theme tag for this position.
• Description: Type in a brief description of the new block position. This description will be shown in the "Description" column of the block positions list.

Editing A Block Position: Clicking on the edit icon in the "Options" column will display the settings for that individual block position. This will also allow you to change the order that blocks are displayed in. Below the block position settings (Name and Description) you will find a list of blocks that are currently assigned to this position as well as a list of blocks that are not assigned to this position. By left clicking on the movement icon and holding the mouse button, you can drag any block to the desired location, setting the order as you would like them to be displayed.

Deleting A Block Position: Clicking on the delete icon in the "Options" column of the block positions list will delete an individual block position. You will be asked for confirmation before the block position is actually deleted.

The SecurityCenter administration module is broken into three sections:

View Hacking Attempts

Viewing the hacking attempts can be useful to determine if you are being targeted by someone with malicious intent and to help combat these attempts.

View Logged Events
System events of importance will be listed here.

Settings

• General Configuration
• Enable Hacker Protection
• Items per page
• Notify about hacking attempts via e-mail
• Log hacking attempts to database
• When logging to database, only send a summary e-mail message
  
• HTTP Variable Cleansing
• Sanitize '$_GET' variables
• Sanitize '$_POST' variables
• Sanitize '$_COOKIE' variables
• Output Filter Settings
• Select outputfilter
  
• Mailtext
• Summary content
• Additional content for full mail message
  

The SysInfo administration module is an excellent source of information for your Zikula installation as well as the server environment.

• System Summary
  A short system summary which can be used to help diagnose problems with your installation
  
• PHP Configuration
  This displays the same information as phpinfo()
  
• PHP Modules
  A list of PHP modules loaded by your server configuration
  
• Server Environment
• PHP Variables
• ADODB
• Zikula Extensions
  A list of enable Zikula modules/extensions and their version numbers
  
• Zikula Filesystem Check
• Zikula pnTemp Check
  

The Admin Panel Manager allows you to create and remove panels and move modules between panels.

Module Category List
Displays a list of all module categories. To the right you will see links to edit and delete each module category.

Create Module Category
You can create a new module category by entering the name and description of your new category.

Admin Panel Settings
Allows you to change how the Admin Panels are displayed and the content of each panel.

• General Settings
• Ignore check for installer
  Warning! Only enable the above option if this site is isolated from the Internet, otherwise security could be endangered if you omit to remove the Installer script from the site root and are not prompted to do so.
• Display Settings
• Display icons
  Whether or not to display icons in the Admin Panels. If you would prefer simple text links, click this option.
• Modules per page
• Modules per row
• Theme to use
• Stylesheet to use
• Category initially selected
• Module Categorization
  Each module is listed and allows you to choose the Admin Panel to associate it with.
  

The Zikula Mailer allows the system to send e-mail to users.

• Test configuration
  Enter the appropriate information to send a test message
  
• Settings
  If you performed a test and everything worked well, don't change these settings.
  

The Modules administration is the heart of every Zikula installation.

View
Displays a list of all modules located in your modules folder on your server. You can filter the list by clicking on a letter of the alphabet, or by selecting an installation state from the drop down box on the right. The installation state drop down box is a quick and easy way to see which modules are in an error state.
In the module list, you will see modules that you might be familiar with and some that are for system use only and cannot be accessed directly.

• Name
  This is the internal name of the module as used by the system. If the module has an administration interface, you can click on the name to access it.
• Display Name
  This is simply the friendly name of the module used for display purposes
• Description
  A short description of the module
• Directory
  The directory (under /modules) where this module resides
• Version
  The currently installed version of this module
• State
• The current state of the module. Possible states include: Not installed, Inactive, Active, Files Missing, New version installed, and Invalid
• Actions
  The available actions will depend on the current state of the module. Typical actions include: Install, Activate, Deactivate, Remove module, Hooks, and Edit.
  

Regenerate List
If you upload a new module, you will need to regenerate the list from the file system by clicking on this link.

Settings
You can set the number of items (modules) shown per page and enable or disable legacy support. As you would imagine, it is best to not load legacy support unless you absolutely need to.

The Settings panel allows you to personalize your Zikula installation and change much of the functionality.

Owner Settings

• Owner Info
  Much of this information will be self-explanatory. If you choose to disable your site, please note that you will need to be logged in as an administrator to access it and/or re-enable it. Don't delete your cookies.
• Meta-Tag Settings
  In the Meta-keywords box you can enter keywords and phrases separated by a comma. By enabling Dynamic meta-keywords, Zikula will produce meta-keywords automatically from the current page.
• Start Page Settings
  In Zikula 1.0.0 there is a feature in the admin settings allowing you to select a specific page of content as your start/index page for the site. The one thing you have to keep in mind is the module must be API compliant, for example, sections is not an API compliant module, but HTMLpages is API compliant.
  note: The Sections module has been depreciated in favor of the API-compliant Pages Module.
  example url for the settings below:
  somesite.com/index.php?module=htmlpages&func=display&pid=11
  • Start module
    The name of the module that will be used for your start page. This is a drop-down menu, so just choose the module you want from the list.
    In the above example url, this is "htmlpages".
  • Start function type
    admin or user should be filled in here, with user being the default value
    In the above example url, this is "user" (the default)
  • Start function
    This refers to the module function
    In the above example url, this is "display"
  • start function arguments
    The arguments for the start function
    In the above example url, this is "pid=11"
  • Site entry point
    index.php is the default and should not be changed unless you have a good reason
    In the above example url, this is "index.php"
• General Settings
• Activate Compression
  Activate compression: Activating compression enables GZIP compression within PHP, so pages are compressed on the server before being sent to the visitor's browser. This is most important with text-intensive sites and only works with browsers that support GZIP compression. (Older browsers that do not support the GZIP compression standard will display the content normally.)
• Use JS Quicktags buttons
  JS Quicktags adds a set of buttons for common HTML tags to enabled text areas. An 'enabled' text area will have a Quicktags template tag in the template. Disable this setting if you use a visual editor.
• Short URL Settings
• Enable or disable short URL's which are more friendly to people and search engine spiders.
  Please note that if you enable short URLs, you must copy the appropriate .htaccess file from the documentation folder to your site root.
• Back-End Settings
  Your back-end is the RSS feed for your site.

HTML Settings

• HTML Entities
  Translate Embedded HTML Characters into Real Characters. This option parses and converts standard foreign language characters from their "&#xxx" format to real characters, which can be important if your site uses a foreign language.
• HTML Tags
  To prevent either intentional or accidental damage to your site and how it is rendered by the visitor's browser, Zikula by default limits what HTML tags are allowed. This section contains a table that lets you modify the defaults. Unless you understand the implications and risks, you would be better off not changing these defaults.
  There are three options for each listed HTML tag.
• Not Allowed. If this tag is typed into a form or otherwise submitted, it will be visible but not parsed as HTML.
• Allowed. If the tag is used, it will be parsed as HTML, but no attributes will be parsed.
• Allowed with attributes. If the tag is used, both the HTML and the attributes will be parsed.

Localization Settings

• Language System
  Activate multilingual features for your site
• Browser
  Auto-detect language from browser settings
• Server
  Set the default language and time zones

Error Settings

Reporting level: Zikula can be configured to notify the Administrator (by e-mail) when a visitor attempts to navigate to a page that cannnot be found (an invalid URL).

• Show all notices, warnings and errors - only available on development systems
• Show real errors only
• Suppress all errors

Security Settings

• Host Settings
• Cookies Settings
• Session Settings
  There are three basic security-level setting options:
• High: users will have to log in every time they return to the site
• Medium: users will stay logged in for a set number of days, which you can configure. This is the default setting. Users are tracked by a sessionID? and (as long as they navigate with Zikula links and not their browser back button) will continue to be recognized by your Zikula site. You can set how long users remain logged in (in days). You can also set how long an idle user's session remains valid.
• Low: users will stay logged on indefinitely, unless they choose to log off.

• View Groups
  The Groups administration module allows you to view all current user groups as well as add or remove groups. On the right side of the list of groups you will see links to edit or delete each group.
  
• Settings