PURPOSE

This guide is not intended to be a technical reference or installation guide. These aspects are fully covered elsewhere. Once you have your directory installed and running this guide should help you understand the administrative tasks to be carried out on a regular basis to keep the directory up to date and functional.

LATEST VERSION of phpYellow Site Administrators Guide

You may be reading the Guide which was distributed with your software. The most up-to-date Site Administrators Guide is found online at phpYellow.com:

FOLDERS

The more significant folders include:

root folder - here you'll find all the front end pages including index, recent, register, login, graph and more
/templates - header.php, footer.php, data display templates and more
/admin - code for administering the directory and its listings
/manager - similar to /admin
/css - generic.css has the potential to change the look and feel of every page on your directory. Try it.
/mwp - this folder is intended to hold all your custom made mini web page designer files, if any
/install - this folder should be removed as part of installation security
/subindex - optional code for creating subindexed lists, example, all found cities in a state
/userlogo - contains all the images your users upload identifiable by customerid and ckey

BEFORE GOING LIVE

Checklist of items to review before you go live

do a final review of Setup > Edit Configuration in particular for > General directory settings but review all settings, if using payment make sure all your prices are right and then submit
optionally use only a valid webmaster [webmaster@your_domain.com] and system email [no-reply@your_domain.com] address as configured in administration Setup > Edit Configuration > Email notification settings
add a listing just like a customer would - is all ok?
update a listing including image upload - is all ok?
verify you are receiving appropriate email for add/update listing as both customer and webmaster
use all the searches - do they give correct results? For example, when you do a search does each listing type show the data you want for that listing type?
if used - upgrade a listing (pay for one listing type to be improved to another, use the Test listing type)
Open admin > Setup > Edit Configuration > Listing types offered and uncheck Listing type E test for internal testing only. This MUST be unchecked before you go live or else customers can automatically upgrade to a gold listing type for FREE
open admin > Manage Categories and review and refine the categories you will offer

phpYellow Site Administration Control Panel

Two screens are available from the icons at top left:

Admin & Manager

The Admin screen is default admin.php page and allows point and click configuration settings as well as a number of account administration features.

In addition it allows options to notify customers whose listings are about to expire and to broadcast an e-mail message to all users.

Manager possibly gives easier options for day to day account administration. Some tasks are easier to do from the Manager page than from the admin page. The two pages have some similar capabilties. This lets YOU decide between 2 different styles in how you will manage your directory listings.

MAIN

INFORMATION CENTER

Shows how many entries are in the directory and how many categories are in use. If you make related changes they can be seen by reloading this page. To reload, press F5, click Refresh or click on the admin icon.

MANAGER

Alternate account and listings management system. You may manage listings with tools on the admin page - these are listed below - but also with tools on the manager page. You choose what tools work best for your style. For example, to work with listing ckey#123:

browse the manager page
click on 'Work with All'
in the entry box beside the word 'Search' enter '123'
click the select list (aka dropdown box) and select 'ckey' (at the bottom)
click on 'go'
the script brings up listing ckey #123 ready for management

APPROVE LISTINGS

If during setup you chose to queue all new listings for approval by the site administrator, then this tool lets you quickly find and approve those queued listings. If you have not set new or updated listings to be queued for approval then you may ignore this feature.

QUICK SUBMIT

Ideal for those of us who are actively setting up accounts and listings in a local environment Quick Submit lets you populate your directory quickly and easily.

If you have called on local businesses and collected their data (and payment if necessary) you will probably not get the full information and in some cases they will not have or do not know their e-mail address. Quick Submit will allow you to make a quick entry without the normal requirements of e-mail, password and e-mail notification or invoicing. Also ideal if you do not have an online payment process.

MANAGE ACCOUNTS

The functions allowed by this screen are also covered in the Manager page and in some cases the operation is more easily understood in the manager page. However, all accounts can be viewed on this page and accounts and listings can be edited or deleted.

The buttons on the right are

Return to control panel
Edit Account details
Delete account
Edit this customer's Listings

Note that items such as approval and changing the expiry date cannot be done from MANAGE ACCOUNTS (See Manager).

MANAGE CATEGORIES

Categories can be easily added, edited or deleted.

Add - your extra non-breaking leading and trailing spaces are preserved. This does result in 2 or more actual categories being created when you only wanted one. Double check to make sure there are no extra spaces in your category name. Edit or delete as needed.
Edit - If you edit a category with an existing listing/s all listings with the OLD category name will be automatically changed to the NEW category name.
Delete - If you delete a category which has listings which use the deleted category name then the existing listings will remain intact and continue to use the old category name. In the event you use manage categories to remove a category take note that new customer listings will not be able to choose the deleted category from the list of available and approved categories because the deleted category will be gone.

Main and subcategories can be created as follows:

Clubs
Clubs - Drama
Clubs - Musical
Clubs - Sport
Clubs - Sport - Outdoor

Example:
If you add a single listing under the main "Clubs" heading and set it to Gold status then populate the subcategories accordingly ... clicking on "Clubs" in the directory will bring up all the listings under the Clubs sections with the Gold general listing at the top. When using the uppper right hand search box with the 'Go' button, the same search for the needle "Clubs" within the haystack called "category" will display all the Clubs including Drama, Musical, Sport and Sport - Outdoor. Clicking on "Clubs - Sport" will bring up only sports clubs and on "Clubs - Sport - Outdoor" will yield only outdoor sports.

As mentioned at the start of this guide it is a good idea to edit the Manage Categories section before going live, but it is still possible to add, edit or delete categories at any time.

VIEW SITE

Opens a new window with the live directory. Useful if you want to see the effect of changes you have just made without logging out of administration.

MONTHLY TASKS

To keep your directory up to date it is essential that you complete these monthly tasks. It may seem irrelevant when your directory is new but you should get into the way of using them now. If you do not, you will probably have forgotten all about them in one years time when your entries begin to expire. In this case, listings will begin to disappear and you will probably not understand why.

SEND NOTIFICATIONS

Sends e-mail notification to owners of listings which are about to expire. This gives them the opportunity to renew their listing before the expiry date.

The text of the email notification is located in /modules/notify/proNotifyResults.php beginning on about line 440.

MANUAL EXPIRE

Listings which have expired are still set as approved but beyond their expiry date and therefore do not show on searches. Manual Expire will set the status of the listing to Expired which will allow you to make any alterations required on that basis (See Manager)

CLEAN DATABASE

Not totally necessary if you are not having problems but a good idea to do this monthly anyway. Instructions are clear within the function.

COMMUNICATION

EMAIL EXPORT

Exports comma delimited list of all account email addresses for use in email broadcast. The default query will select all unique email addresses and put them into a single group each separated by commas. Remember to remove the bottom, very last comma. This format is called .csv which means "comma separated value" because all the values are separated by commas.

If you understand Structured Query Language (SQL) you could extract email addresses which meet any given condition in time, location, expiration, listing type etc etc. Teaching beginners SQL is beyond the scope of this document and the application. Try your local php or web database club to learn SQL with the help of others.

Since many commands in SQL are by their nature irreversible you really should know what you are doing before you experiment. SQL is an unforgiving language.

EMAIL BROADCAST

Use the list of email addresses gained from the above to broadcast your own message to account holders.

POST YOUR NEWS

Post your news directly to the Globalissa.net newswire software.

A "Make News" module is now available for phpYellow. When installed (came with version 5.23 and higher) Customers are offered a ready-to-go form when they log into their Client Control Panel and click on the "Make News" button. Submit sends the post to the Globalissa.net site. If you purchased CN RSS we can configure the phpYellow "Make News" post to send to your own CN RSS site. Way cool, this is new software!

PASSWORD LOOKUP

Useful for sending a customer their password. Enter the customer email address. This tool looks up the password for the email address given and emails the password to the same email address. Bulletproof.

MISCELLANEOUS

PHPYELLOW.COM

The official phpYellow site with more information about add-ons (such as payment gateways, waive return link, custom mods and other) and detail about all facets of phpYellow. Also see globalissa.com for sales information and see for up to the second news about Globalissa, phpYellow, phpYellow bug fixes, phpYellow enhancements, Your Biz and more.

COOKIES

If you have entered a listing for a customer through the normal customer interface and inadvertently left the remember me box ticked this will remove the cookie. To actually benefit, you may need to really close your browser and begin an entirely new browser session which means yes you'll need to login again.

EASYSQL

If you do not understand then EasySQL is probably best left alone! It is possible to destroy all your database records with one command. Destruction is swift, complete and irreversible.

E-DOWNLOAD POLICY

How to get a newer version of phpYellow Pro Edtion^TM.

COMMUNITY NEWS RSS (CN RSS)

Posting may improve your search engine ranking on Google
Free promotion can be a good thing. Post news, reports, feedback and anything you like to our Globalissa.net Community News site. Include an image (got a logo?) with your post. Posts for site administrators like you are FREE. The news is divided into categories. For each category, for example 'Your Biz', there is a newsfeed offered. This is also known as syndication. The news is syndicated over an RSS feed. Your single post, after approval, is carried on Globalissa.net, saved in the archive, and carried over all downsteam syndication sites. Since the news is propagated thru syndication and RSS news readers and RSS news aggregators your single post may be read by thousands of readers :) . Posting may improve your search engine ranking on Google and other engines.

Post to 'Your Biz'
Communication is a good thing. Let others know what you and your directory are doing. Post as often as you like. Use the 'Your Biz' category. This headline feed is embedded into the phpYellow distribution package (installed worldwide by thousands), for example right here on the demo:

http://phpyellow.com/phpyellow/news.php

Similar headline feeds are carried elsewhere. Carry a headline or news feed yourself. Copy and paste it into your page with just one line of code!

Buy it?
If you really like this idea you can buy your own newswire software and moderate your own Community News. Build your own categories or topics with point and click. Installation is included free with each CN RSS license purchase.

SOFTWARE ARCHIVE

Take a look at other free and retail Globalissa software.

SETUP

EDIT CONFIGURATION

Easy click setting for all of your configuration items. Self explanatory with help shown next to your choices.

All of the choices set in "EDIT CONFIGURATION" with point and click may also be manually typed into util.php. If you manually edit util.php PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE use a PHP friendly editor. Countless users open this file with Microsoft Frontpage or worse, and wonder why their site doesn't work anymore. It's because the editor wrecked the configuration file. ALWAYS MAKE A BACKUP before you change code, so you can restore to your last working state. Or just use the handy point and click EDIT CONFIGURATION button which is why we made it in the first place - it's point and click friendly :)

PHPINFO

Shows your web environment including web server, PHP, database and other useful data including version numbers, loaded php modules, php variable initialization for local and master scope, and server paths. If your directory is already up and running this is for interest only.

SUPPORT

SUPPORT - GENERAL

Comprehensive hyperlinked list of frequently sought information

F A Q

Frequently Asked Questions.

DOCUMENTATION

Includes Index - FAQ - Install - Configure - Customize - Payment - Security - Database facts.

TABLE DEFINITIONS

SQL commands used to create your phpYellow database tables including field name and attributes. Useful for reference and also when further customizing the database fields. The table names used throughout phpYellow are CONSTANTS as configured in util.php. You can use any (SQL valid) table names you like if you set them at the beginning of the install script in util.php.

Using EasySQL 'Show Tables' will also display a similar data structure.

CHECK VERSION

Wonder if a newer version is available for sale? Click the Check version button to find out.

SERVICES

License renewals, software installation, My Webmaster, custom modifications and other services including complete web application design are available.

Open ticket

Despite - or maybe because of - the exhaustive documentation you may not have found your answer. If you really did give it your best shot and can't find the answer then by all means ask us. Our policy is to respond in 2 business days or less:

EMAIL POLICY

It is our policy to respond to your inquiry within 48 hours or 2 business days, not including weekends or holidays. To contact us visit any Globalissa website and click 'Contact us'. If your inquiry is not answered by our staff within 48 hours or 2 business days then resend your message.

END OF DOCUMENT


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