Conversant Page Types

By Donald W. Larson
Version 1.6 October 25, 2000
Version 1.7 December 31, 2001 (Seth Dillingham)

Important: This documentation is for the user (the person readin gthe site), not the administrator!

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Conversant requires you to be a member before you can create or reply to messages. You need to go to the Sign-in page and fill out the required information to become a member. Once you are a member, you need to be logged-in for Conversant to recognize you. Your Administrator will have a page showing you where to log-in and log-out. In addition it is important to know that if you switch browser applications or move to a separate computer, Conversant may need you to log-in again using your email and password you used to create your membership.

If you want to log-out, the Administrator will usually provide that opportunity on the same page designated for log-in.

The basic unit of information in Conversant is a message. Almost all content is the result of a message information entered at some point into the particular web site structure discussed below. All messages are numbered uniquely per web site.

See also Using DG Calendar Support for navigating between message pages

There are several different types of page structures in Conversant:

• About

• Bound Message

• DG Calendar

• Event Calendar

• FullThreaded

• Help

• Message Editing

• Search

• Topics

• Weblog

• Weboutline

About Page

The About page gives some explanations as to what type of site this is, who is the administrator, what is the purpose of the site. The result is a bound message page.

Bound Message Page

A Bound Message page is created by taking any existing message and using the Bind to URL field, ascribing a path to be used as an alternative to using the message number.

For instance, let's say a message number exists as http://free-conversant.com/mysite/10 (meaning message number 10) in this site. Suppose message number 10 is intended to be a general purpose information page for phone numbers. Using the Bind to URL field we can enter "/phone_numbers" (without the quotes) and submit this information. The result is a bound message page that can now be referred to as http://free-conversant.com/mysite/phone_numbers.

The same message number can have several such bindings reflecting different names. All names bound in this way always reflect back to the message number. In our example, changing the content of message 10, causes the same information to be updated in all bound messages that are based from it.

The Bound Message Support page has more information on this.

DG Calendar Page

A DG Calendar page provides the mechanism to navigate through the Discussion Group (DG). Any day that is displayed as a hyper-link, has messages for that day. The General Navigation page has more information on this.

At the highest hierarchy, provides a listing of messages and replies with fields indicating author, date created or modified, and other particulars. You can click the field headers to sort the display other than the default display.

Clicking the message number hyper-link opens that message in the window, allowing you to read the message or edit it if you are an owner of it. See "Message Editing Page" below.

If you are an owner of the message you may also set it as a Bound Message as explained above.

In all cases, message viewing may be restricted from viewing by a "Label" setting. Indeed, if you are not assigned access to certain "Labeled" messages, those messages will not be visible to you. Your Administrator assigns "Label" visibility.

Event Calendar Page

The Event Calendar page is where events are created and optionally repeated for certain durations or intervals. For instance you may create an event for a holiday and have it repeat on its occurrence in the future. You may also ascribe a category for grouping purposes.

The Event Calendar User's Manual has more information on this.

FullThreaded Page

A FullThreaded page is a view that takes all related messages and displays them according to the design of the Administrator. It is intended to collect all such messages together for easy traversal.

Help Page

This is an example of a Help page. It's purpose to to supplement explanations that exist on the Conversant Support Site. Help pages may be elaborated upon by the site's administrator to customize its content. The result is a bound message page.

Message Editing Page

A Message Editing page is a place to enter or edit information in your site. You provides a Subject name and then enter plain or html-tagged text into the Body area of the page. Before Submitting the message, it is a good idea to Preview the message to determine if it displays as expected. If the results are approved, then Submitting the message stores it into the sites storage location and assigns a message number to it.

Any message may acquire a Label, providing the administrator has supplied them and made them available depending on a user's access.

To Edit a message is to replace the content and Submit it for storage.

Any location that is dependent on the content of this message is updated as those pages are displayed.

There are two situations to consider when creating a message:

1) Creating a brand new message means that you intend to start a new "thread" of discussion, distinct from any already existing discussions or other threads. It's as if you left one discussion with a group of people at a party and went over to start a new discussion on a different topic.

2) Replying to a message is intended to extend the current "thread" or discussion as if you are participating in a discussion and feel the need to respond.

In all cases, message viewing may be restricted from viewing by a "Label" setting. Indeed, if you are not assigned access to certain "Labeled" messages, those messages will not be visible to you. Your Administrator assigns "Label" visibility.

Search Page

The Search page allows a user to create criteria (a query) such as date ranges, author, subject matter, etc., display any and all records matching the criteria upon Submitting the query.

You may also select the method of sorting the information before Submitting the query.

Once results are displayed, you may change the sort order of the header fields and the page will be re-displayed according to that sort category.

Topics Page

A Topics page is a view that takes all top-level messages and display them as a table of contents, as it were.

Weblog Page

The Weblog page displays messages assigned to it. It is usually a chronologically ordered page broken down by individual days and displaying a certain range of days at a time.

This kind of page is populated by assigning any message number to the named weblog. The administrator has pre-determined the weblog(s) available and assign users that can post such messages to that particular weblog.

Any message that is updated and that is part of any weblog, has its content also updated in such weblogs.

The Weblog Support Site has more information on this.

Weboutline Page

The Weboutline The web outline page is an automatic way to build tables of content and site maps. Folders and pages can be displayed in hierarchical view, and this view can be automatically updated when new pages and folders are created.