This web site has been conceptualised, created and is maintained by | t r 3 3 | in cooperation with the IPCCA Secretariat.
On this page you will find a collection of explanations, links to background information, instructive videos etc. that will be helpful for users of (as well as visitors to) the website.
Depending on skills, interests and experience, some of the information here will for some appear rather difficult, while for others it will be very obvious. Hopefully it will be informative and provide a good introduction to the workings of the site. Likewise, for some the order of things will appear odd, while for others it might be just right. Find your own way to an understanding of networked computers: there is no one and right way.
With such open-ended and complex systems as networked computers and web site platforms it will always be difficult to satisfy everyone with one approach, so feel free to skip some of the following sections (which are linked to immediately below here) and to go through them in whatever order suits you best. And, of course, follow some of the links and see where they take you.
Keep in mind that even if some things are difficult to understand at first, they should become clearer as you progress. To begin with, if you are not entirely confident that you know how the internet works, please have a look at this video:
……. and if you want a comprehensive historical overview, check out this video.
Contents of this page:
In this section the hosting of the website is briefly introduced, It is not strictly necessary for users of the site to understand the details of this, but the information is provided for those who appreciate such details, including visitors to the site.
In order to be able to use the site smoothly and confidently, it will be helpful to have at least a basic understanding of the platform. The technical terms and concepts are linked to explanations.
The first thing you should do as a user of this site is to familiarise yourself with the way its layout – and the best way to do that is to click your way around on the entire site in order to get an overview.
This section gives you a conceptual overview of the site, which is necessary to understand how it functions and how the different parts relate.
Further notes in extension of the two previous sections with a more practical focus.
Once you have an overview, we go into detail about how to actually use the site: how to add posts and pages, and so on. This section is a collection of introductory and explanatory videos.
This site incorporates the use of cloud services, such as Google’s Picasa and Scribd.com. Although there are various problems with the concept of “the cloud”, these services offer the IPCCA website possibilities for embedding photos, videos and documents etc. without increasing storage and bandwidth cost. That is because the media files are stored in server farms and sent to the computers of visitors from there, thus adding next to no extra bandwidth use. It is convenient and has various useful presets, such as Scribd’s embedding of documents, which can be read, downloaded and so on from within an embedded (HTML5) player. In addition to keeping costs down, it also increases the visibility of IPCCA when using these services: your media files appear in the cloud as well as on your site, giving you double exposure.
Finally, a section with links to further information.
Hosting:
The site is hosted by Solarhost.co.uk on a GNU/Linux computer running the Apache webserver. Unlike many “green hosts” who offer “sustainable services” based on renewable energy credits – most commonly wind – and thus engaging in the carbon economy, Solarhost is powered 100% by Californian sunshine. Although there are serious environmental problems associated with the production of solar panels we decided that being powered directly by solar energy is an environmentally better choice than a solution based on renewable energy credits that strengthen the carbon trading economy. Cyberspace is by now a more carbon heavy industry than aviation, making decisions about computer use and hosting of websites of crucial environmental importance. There is – so far – no perfect solution for this kind of technology use, hence using solar power and making visitors aware of the environmental problems associated with the use of computers and the internet appeared to be the best we could do. Comments and suggestions are very welcome!
The platform:
The IPCCA website is based on the WordPress platform, which is developed by one of the biggest and most active communities in the blogosphere. WordPress is an easy to use and modify Content Management System (or Semantic Publishing Platform) for which thousands of themes, plugins (some of which are very complex and elaborate) as well as very useful support forums exist, allowing for a very wide variety of sites to be developed and maintained within its framework. WordPress uses a MySQL database.
We are currently exploring the possibilities for developing a Knowledge Base within this site, using the tags and categories system (explained below).
Building websites can be done by pointing and clicking with your mouse, but if you want to really understand the principles at play behind the scene, and hence be able to master your site better, it is highly recommended to at least understand the basic concept of Hyper Text Markup Language or HTML is it commonly known. This video exhibits the inner workings of a website in simple terms, but keep in mind that you not need to know HTML to be able to use WordPress, but a little insight can be helpful:
See also a Spanish version.
We are currently exploring the possibilities for developing a Knowledge Base within this site, using the tags and categories system (explained below).
Navigating the site:
There is a map of the entire site here, which gives a good overview.
Five static parent pages and a syndication blog form the foundation of the site and links to these can be found in the primary navigation menu at the top of the header, which is also reproduced here:
Home: The front page of the site. It welcomes the reader and briefly outlines IPCCA.
News and Updates: This page is the main blog of the project – where all news, updates, reports etc. are posted.
About IPCCA Provides detailed background information, including concepts, visions and strategies. This is a parent page for five further pages, as can be seen when clicking on the menu above the header, such as the page that you are currently on, which documents the site and provides helpful information for the users of the site.
The Assessments: Introduces the assessment and is a parent page for “Local Assessment Regions” and “Methodology”
Meetings: Here you find documentation of IPCCA meetings, beginning with the “Finland 2011″ page, which it is a parent page for.
In addition to the main site, which has been outlined above, the site implements a WordPress Network, which is a multi-user blogging platform, allowing each of the Local Assessment Regions to have their own web site and blog on which their work can be documented and their stories told; and over which they have control (although, of course, the each of these sites also can be controlled by the maintainers of the main site).
With the help of the secondary menu – below the header and above here – users and visitors can access the rest of the networked site. The theme settings and layout of these LA sites are by default very similar to the main site. In the following section there are further notes on the layout of LA sites.
The structure:
The site’s address is http://ipcca.info and it has a set of basic, static pages that were explained above as well as a dynamic page, which is a blog. This is the main site over which the Secretariat and the web maintainer have control.
There is also a set of plugins installed in the system, but not all of them are enabled for the LA sites. That is because we take a rather conservative approach to plugin use, as some conflicts betweeen plugins and between plugins and the theme and the rest of the site have the potential to “break the site” by causing conflicts (see this video for an introduction to resolving such conflicts, if that level of detail interests you). If you think that there is a plugin that you definitely need, but which is not currently available, but in touch with the Secretariat or the web maintainer and present your case. If possible – upon careful testing – it will be enabled for you.
Since IPCCA is a network of communities around the world, each of these Local Assessment (LA) communities or regions has their own site – linked to in the menu below the header and reproduced above – each of which includes a blog. In case you wonder what blogs are and how they work socially and culturally, take a look at this video:
The LA sites are found at for instance http://ipcca.info/sapara and are inter-dependent WordPress sites of their own: that means that (besides the Secretariat and the web maintainer) each LA has exclusive access to the admin interface of their respective sites, which can in principle be found by adding “wp-admin” to the URI, such as http://ipcca.info/adivasi/wp-admin. If you navigate to any given LA site you will also – in the bottom of the left hand sidebar – find easy clickable access to the admin interface.
Each LA can – with certain limitations – modify or customise their site. However, it is recommended to stay in touch with the Secretariat and the web maintainer about any major changes and it is equally recommended to attempt to maintain a certain like-ness of the different LA sites with the main site.
Within their sites LAs can post news, photos and documents etc. in their blog and create as many additional static pages as they need to present their findings and other community and IPCCA related material. It is recommended to use a cloud service, such as Scribd.com, which is explained below, in order to keep storage and bandwidth use from spinning out of control.
The layout of the site will now be outlined, before turning to an explanation of how to use the WordPress system for adding to and modifying your Local Assessment site.
The layout:
First a note on the theme, because it is within the theme (similar to a template) that the scope and options for the layout of the site(s) is defined. Currently IPCCA.info and the LA sites all use the Weaver theme with the Weaver Plus Premium Plugin. The settings are shared across all the sites with some minor differences between the main site and the LA sites. Before making changes to colour schemes and other aspects of your theme, do get in touch with the secretariat and explain what you have in mind. If you want to get an idea of what the Weaver theme can do, have a look at the user forum.
There are literally thousands of themes available for WordPress and we have decided on this theme, because it has a good balance between usability and modifiability: you can easily make changes to colours, columns, widgets and so on with just a few clicks, but you can also enter into much deeper detail if your (CSS) skills permit.
Generally, the site consist of a basic, static architecture combined with dynamic elements. There are two kinds of dynamic elements: blogs and (sidebar) widgets. A blog is a page where content is added continuously to form a rolling newsletter or communication channel, as explained in the video above. A widget is a component that is not always dynamic and the site uses both static and dynamic widgets. Each widget allows for specified control over a section of either of the two side-columns (or sidebars). An example of a static widget is the section of the sidebar (left-hand column), as mentioned below, in which the image of the planet and the tag line of the site appears. The tag cloud widget is an example of a dynamic widget, because its contents changes according to something external to the widget, as is the Event widget.
The blog page is called “News and Updates” and it has a different layout than the rest of the main site, which is a layout that it shares with the LA sites. This layout uses three columns, which means that a third column – a sidebar on the right hand side – is added. In this sidebar there are also six widgets: “Recent posts” and four dynamic widgets that use RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds. These widgets “pull in” headlines from selected news services. If you want to better understand RSS, have a look at this video.
The layout of the main site consists of the header (a 940x198px image, below the site name and the name of the project), a main body that is divided into two columns, and a footer. First you find the left-hand column – also known in the administration interface of the main site as the Alternative Sidebar – which has an image of the planet and the IPCCA tagline in the very top contains widgets – explained in detail in the video below in the “Using the site” section. The main column is where text of postings and pages appears.
The sidebar – with the use of six widgets – enhance navigation of the site by complementing the two navigation menus. The first widget in the sidebar contains the image of the planet and some text. The next widget has a search bar that allows you to search the entire site. The third widget contains a set of direct links to the “Local Assessment Regions” divided into continental groups, followed by widget with links to the IPCCA partners. The fifth widget has a socalled “tag cloud” titled “Browse by Tags”, which invites the reader to explore the site through the use of these keywords, as they link to collections of content in which they are featured. Finally, the sixth widget, is titled “Upcoming Events” and features a plugin called The Events Calendar, to which you can subscribe and which generates a calender here.
Using the site:
The WordPress community has developed a very good resource for learning how to use their platform – find the overview of WordPress Lessons here and another set of tutorials here.
To begin with, here is a general introduction to WordPress::
This video introduces the WordPress admin interface, which is called the “Dashboard”:
Here is another introduction to WordPress admin:
If you liked Deltina Hay’s video above, have a look at her WordPress tutorial collection here.
How To Make A Page:
How To Make A Post:
Inserting an Image into a Post or Page:
When you add pages and posts you can assign them categories and tags, which is so called meta-data associated with the respective pages and posts. Categories and tags facilitate the organisation of the contents of your site. They give order and help visitors better navigate through your site, but importantly categories and tags are also picked up by search engines, meaning that a well organised site with a good use of categories and tags is more visible in search engines – in other words: people online can better see your site. This video explains further:
See also Categories vs. Tags
In addition to adding post and pages to the site, you might want to configure the socalled widgets, which were explained above in connection with the layout of the site. This video explains the use of widgets:
In addition to adding post and pages to the site and configuring widgets you can also modify the two navigation menus that appear around the header. The top menu – above the header – is is titled “Main Menu” and appears as the “Secondary Navigation” is the menu settings. This menu should not be changed without discussing it with the secretariat, since that menu is the same for all LA sites and we wish to maintain a certain degree of uniformity. The bottom menu – below the header – is called “Local Menu” and appears as “Primary Navigation” in the menu settings. This menu currently has two entries or links. These are Home/Blog and “About [your LA]“.The tutorials in the following three videos will give you an overview of how to modify your “Local Menu” (or “Primary Navigation”):
This is an introduction to user management, so that once you have found your way around, you will be able to add other users from your community project to join your WordPress site:
Finally, here is another take on the WordPress Dashboard:
Cloud Services:
For example IPCCA has a channel on Vimeo. That is a service, like Youtube, that offers you to upload videos that everyone else can watch. As part of their service and with the help of a plugin it is possible to embed a video on this site, such as this:
You can easily create a Vimeo channel yourself and begin collecting videos from your community projects online and embed in your IPCCA network site, as you have just seen above.
If you have audio files that you want to share with the world, there are also services for that, such as Soundcloud.com. The IPCCA site has the Soundcloud is Gold plugin installed, enabling you to “browse through your soundcloud tracks from a tab in the post’s ‘upload media’. Select, add a track to your post. Live preview, easy“, and also to embed your audio files in posts and pages with the standard player:
In the future we hope to enable the use of Soundcloud’s HTML5 player, which looks nicer and has more features. It is currently in beta and when we tested it on this site, it did not work properly, so we stick with the standard player for now.
Picasa is a gratis photo upload service provided by Google and IPCCA has a collection of photos stored there. There are many other photo cloud services, but due to plugin limitations it is recommended to use Picasa. Create an account, ipload your photos and embed them in your site. Here is one from the IPCCA album titled Huay Manao:
Scribd.com permits you to upload documents and update already uploaded documents with new versions without changing their storage location (very useful if you have already embedded a document, but want to update: you only update the document stored on Scribd.com and it will automagically be updated wherever it is embedded). You can either link to them as done with the Presentations of Local Assessment Progress and Results here, or you can embed a document within the page as done below, using the HTML5 Embed Code, which Scribd generates for you and which can be found by clicking “Share” below a given document.
Further information:
There is more to come…..
