System

This group of settings deal with various system options.

[Main]

Settings: System-Main

  • Upload Min Size
    The minimum acceptable size (in bytes) of an uploaded item. It should be greater than zero!
  • Upload Max Size
    The maximum acceptable size (in bytes) of an uploaded item. Please, be aware that it cannot be larger than the value specified in PHP's ini directive “upload_max_filesize” (which defaults to 2MB).
  • Upload Max Width
    The maximum acceptable width (in pixels) of an uploaded image.
    Not currently supported.
  • Upload Max Height
    The maximum acceptable height (in pixels) of an uploaded image.
    Not currently supported.
  • Upload File Types
    A comma separated list of acceptable file extensions for uploaded items.
  • Upload Auto Resize
    Check whether the system should try to resize images that exceed the maximum limits (width and height) specified above. If left unchecked, they will be rejected, otherwise they will be resized to the nearest acceptable dimension.
    Not currently supported.
  • ACP
    The path of your ACP. It defaults to “acp”, but if you are security conscious you can change it and remove the icon from your toolbar. If you leave the icon, there is not much value in changing the path.
  • Run Cron Every
    The interval (in minutes) between Cron executions.
  • Cache Plugin
    The plugin that will be your domain's cache manager. Zoglair comes with “file” as default and only option, so, you might not have a choice.
  • Debug
    A bitmap of debug options.
  • Search Plugin
    The plugin that will handle search functionality in your site. Zoglair comes with 2 search plugins: “google” and “byMap”. The first one is a wrapper of Google Custom Search. The second one is native. You can switch between them two at any time, as well as you can add others through addons.
  • Search Params
    This is a string in URL query format, used for passing search plugin specific parameters. For example, if you choose “google” as your search engine, you should enter your engine's id as the “cx” parameter. Something like the following:
    cx=016927229563860619754:zs8d3gu4xn8
  • Maintenance Mode
    This is a bitmap value that controls how your site behaves when put in maintenance mode. It affects only accounts below the administrator security level. You can choose any combination of the following flags:
    • readOnly
      This flag controls the $zDbms object. Specifically, it instructs it to ignore data-write queries. This effectively results in a read-only database.
    • asGuest
      This flag controls the $zAuth object. Specifically, it instructs it to consider all visitors as guests.
    • e503
      This flag controls the $zUnit object. Specifically, it instructs it to return the “e503” node, no matter the request.
  • Ignore User TZO
    Normally, display dates and times throughout the system are adjusted according to the user's timezone offset. Select this option if you want them to be displayed unadjusted (as stored in the database).

[URL]

Settings: System-URL

  • Node Delimiter
    See SEF URLs below...
  • Slash Root Nodes
    See SEF URLs below...
  • Default Unit Alias
    See SEF URLs below...
  • Rewrite Rules
    This is a list of incoming paths that you want them rewritten for processing purposes. Every line must have the incoming path, the equal sign and the path's rewritten form. Path rewriting takes place in the bootstrap, before the front controller has a chance to process them. This is the way to support some common web requests, such as those you can see in the screenshot, without the need to use your web server's rewriting mechanism.
  • Robots Text
    As its name implies, this field contains your robots.txt file.

[Versions]

This is a text box used by the system for keeping version information of various components. You do not need to deal with this...

Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs

A CMS like zoglair, which delivers pages stored in a database table (Sitemap, in our case), all that it needs to display a certain page, is a unique identifier. Actually, in zoglair, there are 2 unique identifiers for every page stored in the sitemap table: an alphanumeric one, called Node, and a numeric auto-incremented value, called ID. With either one of these identifiers, zoglair can retrieve and display the corresponding page.

For example, the node of this page is “system”, and its ID is “97”. So, you could access it as following:

http://www.zoglair.org/system
http://www.zoglair.org/97

People dealing with SEO say that a URL must carry as much information as it can, so that it not only helps with its ranking but also can be easier for humans to perceive its content by just looking at it. Such “rich” URLs are called “Search Engine Friendly” (SEF) or just “friendly”.

The most common way to rewrite a URL, so that it becomes friendly, is to include a page's parent nodes (if exist), as well as its title (slug). Zoglair has built-in support for the first tactic (the parent nodes), but not for the second. Some people think that titles in a URL are just too much, plus, they create encoding problems when they are not in ASCII. Additionally, they are susceptible to link rot and duplicate content.

There are three settings used for generating SEF URLs:

  1. Node Delimiter
  2. Slash Root Nodes
  3. Default Unit Alias

“Node Delimiter” switches between SEF and non-SEF URLs. If set to be empty, no SEF URLs are generated. An empty node delimiter could result in this page being accessed as:

http://www.zoglair.org/system

...which, by the way, is a bit SEF, as it is much better than the native:

http://www.zoglair.org/97

...which is actually never used in zoglair (it is supported but not generated).

If you choose to go SEF, then you have 2 options: a hyphen or a slash. There is a great difference between them, so, please pay attention:

  • If you select a hyphen as node delimiter, then your SEF configuration ends here; you do not need to deal with the following settings. In such a case, this page would be accessed as:
    http://www.zoglair.org/documentation-userGuide-acp-settings-system
    ...which is a fine and clean SEF URL! Except that, some SEO experts say that a / (slash) is better, and this is where there is a slight problem...
  • If you select a slash as node delimiter, then there is a conflict with the architectural nature of zoglair. Due its principal design pattern (Front Controller), a slash in the URL is used to separate the controller (called unit) with the actual node known to this particular controller. In other words, the following URL:
    http://www.zoglair.org/documentation/userGuide/acp/settings/system
    ...would be just wrong, because zoglair would search for a controller named “documentation” to handle this request! It doesn't know that this is actually a “node” in the sitemap table, which is served by the sitemap unit. So, it has to be told, by prefixing the above path with the unit's name:
    http://www.zoglair.org/sitemap/documentation/userGuide/acp/settings/system
    ...but this wouldn't be needed for nodes that have no parents! So, here is where the next setting is used.

“Slash Root Nodes” is used to prefix (or not) those nodes that are in the root of the sitemap tree. They have no parents, so, there will be no / in their path. And since there is no slash in the path, zoglair is not confused, as it always uses a default unit (which is the “sitemap”) to handle them. You have three options, here:

  • none
    It means to never put a slash in front of root nodes. In other words, root nodes are not prefixed with the unit.
  • all
    It means to always put a slash in front of root nodes. In other words, all nodes are prefixed with the unit.
  • except index
    It means to always put a slash in front of root nodes, except the index (home page).

“Default Unit Alias” allows you to rename the default unit (sitemap) to something more familiar, such as “index”, “node” or whatever you think is best. It goes without saying that the name you choose should not clash with an existing unit! Zoglair comes with the following units: banner, clip, img, phpInfo, rpc, sitemap and var.

You should never change your URL structure on a live, published and indexed by the search engines site!!!

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