Wine Life Today Wiki Manual - Recently Updated Pages

Feedburner Tool

juicecowboy — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:10:54 CST

Adding a link to your feed.

To add a Toast This! link to your RSS feed and to your POSTS being handled by FeedBurner, simply do the following:

Log into your FeedBurner.com account.
Select the feed you wish to manage.
Choose the Optimize tab.
Under Services click on the FeedFlare link.
Under the list of Official FeedBurner Flare, there is a "(Enter or paste a Flare Unit URL)" input box, add http://www.winelifetoday.com/system/wlt_feedflare.xml to the box and click the Add New Flare button.
There should be a new entry under Personal Flare. Make sure both the Feed and the Site check-boxes are checked.
Scroll down and click the Save button. All done.

REMEMBER: Go to your Blog host and enable FeedBurner FeedFlare

Submit RSS Feeds

juicecowboy — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:24:39 CDT

This is a free community thing. No one wants Ads submitted to the site!

Wine Life Today has a very active user community. Recent community vote has asked that no more feeds be added and, in fact, the current feeds be scaled back. The issue? Auto-feed submission was pushing user submitted stories out of the newsroom. This is completely counter intuitive to the goal of WLT - User publishing. So, we're not adding feeds to the site but rather allowing the newsroom to be populated by readers.

We suggest that you add a "Toast This!" link to your site using one of the blogger tools. You'll be happy about the response from the community!

Thanks for visiting Wine Life Today's user manual.

Blogger Tools

juicecowboy — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 13:21:30 CST

Remote voting buttons and links

TypePad users - put "Toast This" links in your posts and/or footer!
Wordpress users - put a "Toast This" in the footer of your posts!
Feedburner users - put a "Toast This!" text link in your feeds!
RSS Integration - Submit your RSS feed for Auto-updating
Blogger Integration - put a "Toast This!" text link in your post or footer!

Generic blog link

Say you're a blogger and you've crafted a masterpiece. A total beauty of an article. You can put it up for your readers along with a "Toast" link back to WLT that will allow the reader to submit the article to the community right from your blog.

Just copy and paste this line into the source of your post:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.winelifetoday.com/api/check_url.js.php">

When you're done, it'll look something like this:

Remote vote example

The Wine Life Today symbol will appear where ever you place the javascript code.

Thats it!

One note, the button must be used in the extended version of your post (or “permalink” location). If you put it on the post and the button displays on the front page, the script will use the homepage URL for submission, which won’t promote the story you want. This will really help build the community. We're trying everyday to ease the submission process so that there are more stories to vote on and review.

Google Blogger "Toast This" link

juicecowboy — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 17:19:10 CST

First, from the Blogger help section you should understand this:

How do I create permanent links to my posts?
Permalinks are "permanent links" to blog posts; they're one aspect of blogs that differentiate them from other forms of web content. Some good discussion of their history is over at plasticbag.org.Permalinks are created in two steps.

First, a unique identifier is applied to each post using an anchor tag, like this:
<a name="<$BlogItemNumber$>"> </a>

(This should go somewhere in your post body. If you include it in the itemtitles section, your post will only get numbered if you specify a title.)

Second, you need to display the permalink for each post. This is usually done in the footer and near the author name:
<a href="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" title="permanent link">#</a>

These tags are already present in Blogger's default templates, but could be useful if you're rolling your own.

Now for Wine Life Today the code is easy. Instead of the:
<a href="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$> title="permanent link">#</a>
Use this:
<a href="http://www.winelifetoday.com/submit.php?url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" ><strong>Toast This!</strong></a>

note: This is for classic Blogger templates

Help Wanted

juicecowboy — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 14:54:43 CDT

Wine Life Today is a community project for wine enthusiasts. We are working diligently to create a very useful social networking tool for wine lovers. To that end, if there is anyone with PHP, CSS, MySQL experience interested in partnering up or working with us to take this site to the next level don't hesitate to let us know.

We are not highering consultants but if a serious commitment is made we'll talk about future revenue sharing.

e-mail us at help_us@winelifetoday.com .

Beta Test

juicecowboy — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 19:09:03 CDT

Thanks for you interest in the WLT Beta Test.

This page has some Beta information that deviates from normal operation to help us get the site going.

To learn how to use the site visit this page first.

The goal is to make this a great tool for bloggers, micro-publishers, and wine enthusiasts. The first step in doing that is to take this base functionality and add what YOU want to make it better.

If you're Beta testing please submit your feedback as a comment here (see bottom of this page) or in an e-mail to jc@juicecowboy.com

Some things about the Beta test:

Normally a story needs to receive 10 votes to make the front page but during Beta it will only be 3
Profiles have limited information now. We will add more personal profile information soon.

Some Known Issues so far:

Search has some issues - right now its working from the "Published" page and intermittently elsewhere. We're working on this one actively right now top priority. This also affects duplicate article submission.

Home

juicecowboy — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 23:36:29 CDT

Welcome to Wine Life Today Online Manual

What is this site? Basically its a manual that we're putting together here to explain stuff you can do with WineLifeToday.com. One difference - just as Wine Life Today (WLT) is community based, so is its manual. This site is completely editable and commentable by anyone who signs up (for techies out there - its a manual using a Wiki!). Here are some starting points:

How To Use This Manual

This manual is here to give you an beginning point. It is a living document designed to be both a user manual and a community tool. If you want another section in this manual j ust sign up to be an author and add the page with links. Wine Life Today is going to be a community platform in every way!

To navigate this manual look in the upper-left of this page, there you will see
this nav bar

Use it! Lots of information there!

If you want to add pages about how you're using the Wine Life Today to this manual just check this out and get an account to start editing:

Unlike a traditional manual, this one is "alive". If you've created something worth sharing and would like others to know how you've done it then create a page and link it to this home page.

News / Announcements

Wine Life Today BETA is starting! Beginning with the blogging community we've started a public Beta test of Wine Life Today.

How To Use WLT

juicecowboy — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 12:55:10 CDT

Wine Life Today (WLT) publishes user submitted stories. The flow is simple. You submit a story, it goes to the Newsroom and awaits others in the community to read it and vote or "Toast" your story. Get enough "Toasts" and your story makes the front page! Added bonus? If the story is on your own blog you get a whole slew of new readers whom you know are interested (they wouldn't be here if they weren't!).

WLT publishes what you submit. So visitors go directly to the submitted site (unless you choose to publish the article here in its entirety).

You can use the site anonymously to read news and subscribe to the RSS feed. But the fun comes in when you sign up. From that quick sign up you are part of the Wine Life Today community. Its fast and simple.

Navigation:

Once you're signed up you have a few different navigation menus:

Submit Stories while your surfing:

We've found a way to use a "Bookmarklet" to submit a story while you're surfing. If you follow the instructions below to set it up, then just click on it to submit a page. You'll be directed to a page where you can enter in the description and Tags for the story and you're done! Story submitted!

Go to the ‘View’->’Toolbars’ menu and make sure the ‘Bookmarks Toolbar’ is ticked
Right-click on the "Bookmarklet" link in the Wine Life Today sidebar, and choose ‘Bookmark this link’.
Click the down arrow to see a complete list of folders, choose the ‘Bookmarks Toolbar Folder’ and click ‘OK’

Thats it!

When you're surfing another site and see a story that the wine community might be interested in just follow that link and add the description with tags and the story will go in!

Site Information

juicecowboy — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:53:14 CDT

General Site Information

Wine Life Today is broken up into three main pages

Front Page News – this is the actual publication. If a story is popular enough it becomes “Front Page News”. Most news sites have content on the front page that is either some sort of news feed or an editorial director decided what story goes on the front page. At Wine Life Today, stories are submitted by anyone to the newsroom and then YOU the bloggers of the world decide what makes the front page by voting or “Toasting” a good article. In this way the front page always has news on it that is deemed interesting by the community, not by one person.

Front Page News is in order of “Promotion Date”, i.e. the last story to get the requisite number of Toasts hits the top of the page.

There is an RSS feed for this page so that you can be notified (or use the story on your blog). This RSS feed is key to bloggers and micro-publishers. It sends to you stories that people have read and are actively interested in. If you notice many many blogs are just re-printing the same news (waste of time if you’re browsing). Now you can use WLT’s Front Page to find out what people are talking about and either write your opinion (in the comments section or on your blog) or write about something else that others have not already seen (can’t do that with any other news feed!).
Newsroom – the newsroom is the holding area for new stories. When any story is submitted it goes here. Contribute to the community by browsing the newsroom and finding stories that are interesting. If you find one, “Toast” the article. If an article gets enough toasts it makes it out of the newsroom and onto the front page – i.e. its promoted!
Sneak Peek – The Sneak Peek page is a snapshot of what is currently happening on the Wine Life Today. It’s a list of stories, their votes, whether they’ve been published or are still in the queue of the newsroom. Its exactly what it says – a sneak peek of whats going on in the Wine Life Today!

next: Navigating WLT

Definitions

WLT - the convenient contraction of "Wine Life Today"
Toast - is the term used to mean "vote" for an article. Like the article? Toast it!

<sign up for an account and add more definitions about Wine Life Today!>

Typepad Integration

juicecowboy — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:06:39 CDT

To place a "Toast This!" link anywhere in your blog simple use this HTML:

<a href="http://www.winelifetoday.com/submit.php?url=<$MTEntryPermalink$>" ><strong>Toast This!</strong></a>

If you're looking to get hardcore and put it in the footer then follow these instructions. It looks complicated but its really not. You need the Advanced Templates for this.

The MTEntryPostFooter tag displays the footer that you have set for Weblog Post Footer on Weblogs > Edit Design > Change Content Selections page.
Once you have converted to an Advanced Template Set, however, there isn't an easy way to change this option. Instead, you'll need to make direct changes to your Index templates.

Starting with the Main Index Template
Go to Weblogs > Edit Design and click on Main Index Template. In your Main Index Template, look for the following tag:

<$MTWeblogIncludeModule module="entry-list"$>

and then replace it with this (yes, you can cut and paste - just moving their abstractions around a bit here):


<MTEntries>
<MTWeblogPostIfShow field="date_header">
<MTDateHeader><h2 class="date-header"><$MTEntryDate format_weblog_date="1"$></h2></MTDateHeader>
</MTWeblogPostIfShow>

<div class="entry" id="entry-<$MTEntryID$>">
<MTWeblogPostIfShow field="post_title">
<h3 class="entry-header"><$MTEntryTitle$></h3>
</MTWeblogPostIfShow>
<div class="entry-content">

<div class="entry-body">
<$MTEntryBody$>
</div>
<MTEntryIfExtended>
<p class="entry-more-link">
<a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>#more"><$MTTrans phrase="Continue reading"$> "<$MTEntryTitle$>" »</a>

</p>
</MTEntryIfExtended>
</div>
<p class="entry-footer">
<$MTEntryPostFooter$>
<MTEntryIfAllowComments>

| <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>#comments"><$MTTrans phrase="Comments"$> (<$MTEntryCommentCount$>)</a>
</MTEntryIfAllowComments>
<MTEntryIfAllowPings>

| <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>#trackback"><$MTTrans phrase="TrackBack"$> (<$MTEntryTrackbackCount$>)</a>
</MTEntryIfAllowPings>
</p>

</div>
</MTEntries>

Once you've done that, look for the following tag:

<$MTEntryPostFooter$>

And replace it with this:

Posted by <$MTEntryAuthorNickname$> on <$MTEntryDate format="%B %e, %Y"$> <MTEntryIfCategories>in <MTEntryCategories glue=", "><MTBlogIfArchives archive_type="Category"><a href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"><$MTCategoryLabel$></a>
<MTElse><$MTCategoryLabel$></MTElse>
</MTBlogIfArchives></MTEntryCategories></MTEntryIfCategories> | <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>">Permalink</a>

Now your footer is exposed. Just add the MT Tags that you want in the footer. Now you're ready to add the "Toast This!" to the footer. Just add this after the "Permalink" statement:

<a href="http://www.winelifetoday.com/submit.php?url=<$MTEntryPermalink$>" ><strong>Toast This!</strong></a>

Publish the blog and double check everything is OK. If columns are messed up then you may have missed some <DIV>, to keep the XML well formed, close everything properly.

Now repeat that for Category Archives, and Databased archives.

Individual Archives is basically the same but the tags you change are slightly different. Open the Individual Archives template and find:

<$MTWeblogIncludeModule module="entry-individual"$>

Replace this with:

<p class="content-nav">
<MTEntryPrevious><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>">« <$MTEntryTitle$></a> |</MTEntryPrevious>
<a href="<$MTBlogURL$>"><$MTTrans phrase="Main"$></a>

<MTEntryNext>| <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$> »</a></MTEntryNext>
</p>



<MTWeblogPostIfShow field="date_header">
<MTDateHeader><h2 class="date-header"><$MTEntryDate format_weblog_date="1"$></h2></MTDateHeader>
</MTWeblogPostIfShow>

<div class="entry" id="entry-<$MTEntryID$>">
<MTWeblogPostIfShow field="post_title">

<h3 class="entry-header"><$MTEntryTitle$></h3>
</MTWeblogPostIfShow>
<div class="entry-content">
<div class="entry-body">
<$MTEntryBody$>

</div>
<MTEntryIfExtended>
<a id="more"></a>
<div class="entry-more">
<$MTEntryMore$>
</div>

</MTEntryIfExtended>
</div>
<p class="entry-footer">
<$MTEntryPostFooter$>
</p>
</div>

<MTEntryIfAllowPings>
<div class="trackbacks">
<a id="trackback"></a>
<h3 class="trackbacks-header"><$MTTrans phrase="TrackBack"$></h3>
<div class="trackbacks-info">

<p><$MTTrans phrase="TrackBack URL for this entry:"$><br /><$MTEntryTrackbackLink$></p>
<p><$MTTrans phrase="Listed below are links to weblogs that reference"$> <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a>:</p>

</div>
<div class="trackbacks-content">
<MTPings>
<div class="trackback">
<div class="trackback-content">
<p>

<a id="p<$MTPingID$>"></a>
» <a rel="nofollow" href="<$MTPingURL$>"><$MTPingTitle$></a> <$MTTrans phrase="from"$> <$MTPingBlogName$><br />

<$MTPingExcerpt$> <a rel="nofollow" href="<$MTPingURL$>">[<$MTTrans phrase="Read More"$>]</a>
</p>
</div>

<p class="trackback-footer">
<$MTTrans phrase="Tracked on"$> <$MTPingDate$>
</p>
</div>
</MTPings>

</div>
</div>
</MTEntryIfAllowPings>

<MTEntryIfAllowComments>
<a id="comments"></a>
<div class="comments">

<h3 class="comments-header"><$MTTrans phrase="Comments"$></h3>
<div class="comments-content">
<$MTWeblogIncludeModule module="comment-list"$>
</div>
</div>

<$MTWeblogIncludeModule module="comment-form"$>
</MTEntryIfAllowComments>

Now find the footer reference again and replace it with your customer footer:

<$MTEntryPostFooter$>

Replace with footer code:

Posted by <$MTEntryAuthorNickname$> on <$MTEntryDate format="%B %e, %Y"$> <MTEntryIfCategories>in <MTEntryCategories glue=", "><MTBlogIfArchives archive_type="Category"><a href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"><$MTCategoryLabel$></a>
<MTElse><$MTCategoryLabel$></MTElse>
</MTBlogIfArchives></MTEntryCategories></MTEntryIfCategories> | <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>">Permalink</a>

Now your footer is exposed. Just add the MT Tags that you want in the footer. Now you're ready to add the "Toast This!" to the footer. Just add this after the "Permalink" statement:

<a href="http://www.winelifetoday.com/submit.php?url=<$MTEntryPermalink$>" ><strong>Toast This!</strong></a>

Wordpress Remote Vote

juicecowboy — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 17:42:04 CDT

WordPress Bloggers:

We advise you to make a backup of your Index.php file before making any modifications. This edit is minor, but with computers, we've given up guessing when and what could go wrong.
Simply follow these step-by-step instructions. These instructions are for putting the link on your main (Index.php) page, but can be adjusted to suit your needs.

Log into your Wordpress account and go to the Presentation-Theme Editor menu.
Select the Main Index Template (index.php) link from the page list.
Locate the line that contains your "Comments:". It should look something like this:
<p class="postmetadata"><?php edit_post_link('Edit',''); ?> <br /><strong>Comments:</strong> <?php comments_popup_link('Be the first to comment', '1 Comment', '% Comments'); ?></p>
Just before the Comments: add the following code:
<a href="http://www.winelifetoday.com/submit.php?url=<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="Add this story to Wine Life Today."><strong>Toast This!</strong></a>
Click the "Update File" button, reload your main page and you should see the "Toast This!" link beside your Comments: field.

Community Tools

juicecowboy — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 15:14:42 CDT

Finally there are the community tools. The community tools include links to Tag Cloud, Top Stories, Top Users, and RSS Feeds.

Article Actions

juicecowboy — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 15:11:49 CDT

On the right side there are a couple of navigation elements. First is the main article actions (seen on the right here). These article actions are the heart and soul of the community. This navigation gets you to:

Newsroom - for reviewing articles and adding Toasts to try to promote them to the front page
Submit Article - for, you guessed it, the "Submit Article" wizard
Sneak Peek - Gets you to the sneak peek section

All these pages are explained here

Tutorial/Help

juicecowboy — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 15:09:14 CDT

Wine Life Today Features and Functions

This page is here to give you some information on how the site works and what the various buttons do.

User Navigation

juicecowboy — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 15:06:46 CDT

First, all the pages display your user navigation:

You can use this toolbar or the side toolbar to get to your profile and edit it. Your profile shows you several things:

Your personal stats
The Friends you've added
The RSS feed of the stories you've submitted
List of people who have added you as a Friend

From here you can navigate to:

"Sent News" - news that you've submitted to the Newsroom
"Published News" - news that you've submitted that has made it to the front page at one time or another
"Unpublished news" - news that you've voted on that hasn't been published yet

NOTE: during the public BETA period the information in your profile is limited. We will be adding more features over time!

How To Join the Community Manual

juicecowboy — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 11:29:33 CDT

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Terms and Conditions

juicecowboy — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 11:21:01 CDT

· Description of Service. Wine Life Today is a free, online application from Wine Life Today (the "Service"). You understand and agree that the Service is provided on an AS IS and AS AVAILABLE basis. Wine Life Today disclaims all responsibility and liability for the availability, timeliness, security or reliability of the Service. Wine Life Today also reserves the right to modify, suspend or discontinue the Service with or without notice at any time and without any liability to you.
· Personal Use. The Service is made available to you for your personal use only. Due to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (which is available at http://www.ftc.gov/ogc/coppa1.htm), you must be at least thirteen (13) years of age to use this Service. You must provide current, accurate identification, contact, and other information that may be required as part of the registration process and/or continued use of the Service. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your Service password and account, and are responsible for all activities that occur thereunder. Wine Life Today reserves the right to refuse service to anyone at any time without notice for any reason.
· Proper Use. You agree that you are responsible for your own communications and for any consequences thereof. Your use of the Service is subject to your acceptance of and compliance with the Agreement. You agree that you will use the Service in compliance with all applicable local, state, national, and international laws, rules and regulations, including any laws regarding the transmission of technical data exported from your country of residence. You shall not, shall not agree to, and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to: (i) use the Service to upload, transmit or otherwise distribute any content that is unlawful, defamatory, harassing, abusive, fraudulent, obscene, contains viruses, or is otherwise objectionable as reasonably determined by Wine Life Today; (ii) upload, transmit or otherwise distribute content that infringes upon another party's intellectual property rights or other proprietary, contractual or fiduciary rights or obligations; (iii) prevent others from using the Service; (iv) use the Service for any fraudulent or inappropriate purpose; or (v) act in any way that violates the Program Policies, as may be revised from time to time. Violation of any of the foregoing may result in immediate termination of this Agreement, and may subject you to state and federal penalties and other legal consequences. Wine Life Today reserves the right, but shall have no obligation, to investigate your use of the Service in order to determine whether a violation of the Agreement has occurred or to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request.
· Your Intellectual Property Rights Wine Life Today does not claim any ownership in any of the content, including any text, data, information, images, photographs, music, sound, video, or other material, that you upload, transmit or store in your Wine Life Today account. We will not use any of your content for any purpose except to provide you with the Service.
· Representations and Warranties. You represent and warrant that (a) all of the information provided by you to Wine Life Today to participate in the Services is correct and current; and (b) you have all necessary right, power and authority to enter into this Agreement and to perform the acts required of you hereunder.
· Privacy. As a condition to using the Service, you agree to the terms of the Wine Life Today Privacy Policy as it may be updated from time to time. Wine Life Today understands that privacy is important to you. You do, however, agree that Wine Life Today may monitor, edit or disclose your personal information, including the content of your emails, if required to do so in order to comply with any valid legal process or governmental request (such as a search warrant, subpoena, statute, or court order), or as otherwise provided in these Terms of Use and the Wine Life Today Privacy Policy. By using Wine Life Today, you consent to any such transfer of information outside of your country.
· Advertisements. As consideration for using the Service, you agree and understand that Wine Life Today may display ads and other information adjacent to and related to the content of the news articles. Wine Life Today serves relevant ads using a completely automated process that enables Wine Life Today to effectively target dynamically changing content.
· Account Inactivity. After a period of inactivity, Wine Life Today reserves the right to disable or terminate a user's account. If an account has been deactivated for inactivity, the email address associated with that account may be given to another user without notice to you or such other party. For more information on how Wine Life Today deals with account inactivity, please consult the Program Policies.
· Termination; Cancellation. You may cancel your use of the Services and/or terminate this Agreement with or without cause at any time by providing notice to Wine Life Today, however a terminated account may continue to exist for up to ten business days before such cancellation takes effect. Wine Life Today may at any time and for any reason terminate the Services, terminate this Agreement, or suspend or terminate your account. In the event of termination, your account will be disabled and you may not be granted access to your account or any files or other content contained in your account although residual copies of information may remain in our system. Wine Life Today will notify you via email of any such termination or cancellation, which shall be effective immediately upon Wine Life Today's delivery of such notice.
· Indemnification. You agree to hold harmless and indemnify Wine Life Today, and its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, and employees from and against any third party claim arising from or in any way related to your use of the Service, including any liability or expense arising from all claims, losses, damages (actual and consequential), suits, judgments, litigation costs and attorneys' fees, of every kind and nature. In such a case, Wine Life Today will provide you with written notice of such claim, suit or action.