PodHawk

…to PodHawk.

PodHawk is a content management system specially designed for audio and video podcasters. It is no longer under active development. I can provide some email support to existing users, but suggest that new podcasters use an alternative platform such as WordPress.
Photo of a red-tailed hawk by Vicki’s Nature/flickr

This module displays a pagination string i.e.a clickable list of page numbers like this:

1 2 3 4 5 ........15

The number of pages shown depends on the request which the user has made. For example, a request for index.php might produce 15 pages of posts; a request for posts in category “music” might produce only 3 pages; and a request for a single post (eg id=5) will require only one page.

The module takes no user-defined parameters.

This module displays a “sorry I can’t find any posts” message when the user requests eg an empty category, or a post id which does not exist.

This module is ‘included’ by common_head.tpl. It inserts some Javascript in the head section of the webpage which tests whether the user’s browsers has an installed Flash plugin. If no Flash plugin is installed, any Flash-based audio player on the web-page is replaced with HTML5 tags, so that the browser displays its default audio player.

See this posting for more information about PodHawk support for HTML5 audio and video playback.

This module takes no user-defined parameters.

This module creates the ‘head’ section of the webpage HTML, including the page title, open graph tags (if you are using the Facebook plugin), calls to cascading style sheets, jQuery and other javascript needed to display the webpage properly etc.

It takes no user-defined parameters, and you are unlikely to want to edit it.

This module places HTML and/or Javascript on the webpage in order to show an audio or video player on the webpage. It takes no user-defined parameters, and you are unlikely to want to edit it.

It is used inside the postings loop.

This module places some Javascript used by the Disqus commenting system at the foot of the webpage. If you are not using the Disqus commenting system, the module has no effect.

This template module places a form to submit comments, and a list of the comments already made, below the text of a posting. Normally, it is called only when the web page contains a single posting; however, the index.tpl template could easily be modified to include comments on pages with more than one post.

The module does not take any parameters to modify its behaviour.

Introduction

PodHawk has eight built-in themes, which determine the appearance of your PodHawk website. You select which theme you want to use on the backend settings page.

In addition, there is a repository of additional themes which you can download. Simply unzip the download package, and place the contents in the folder podhawk/custom/themes in your site. The name of the new theme will appear automatically in the dropdown list in the settings page.

You can modify any of the themes, or create a completely new theme if you wish.

Smarty

PodHawk uses version 2 of the Smarty template engine to make its web pages. If you intend to modify an existing theme or create a new one, you will need to have a basic understanding of how Smarty templates operate. Read the first two parts of the Smarty manual (Introduction, and Smarty for Template Designers). The later stuff on Smarty for Developers is for advanced users only.

In PodHawk, all the html code needed to put your postings on the web page is in template files. The html can be edited freely without the need to alter any of the underlying php. The Smarty template files are written as html with additional Smarty variables and functions. These are contained in curly braces {ldelim}like this{rdelim}. Smarty variables all begin with a dollar sign. Some of them are simple values e.g $next_page; but more often Smarty variables are arrays. You can access the different levels of the arrays by separating them with a period sign e.g. $settings.url contains the url of your web site. There are powerful conditional (“if….”) and looping (“foreach…”) functions in Smarty which make it possible to control the detail of what appears on your web page.

If you open up one of the PodHawk theme folders (podhawk/custom/themes), you will see that it contains several different sorts of file:

• some Smarty template files, with the file termination .tpl.
• a configuration file, with the file termination .conf.
• one or more cascading style sheets (css), which tell the web browser how you want the web page to be displayed, what colours and fonts you want to use etc.
• a couple of flash objects, with the file termination .swf. These are the classic LoudBlog Flash players for the theme.
• an images folder. This contains images used directly by the templates (eg background images, icons). The images which you load to use in your postings are not here, but in the images folder in the root of your PodHawk installation.
• a lang folder which contains the language translation files.

Modular templates

The main template file is index.tpl. If you open it (in a text editor, never in a word processor), you will see that it ‘includes ‘ other template files. In other words, it is constructed of modules. It is possible to move these modules around in the template, or to remove them or to add new modules.

Some of the module files are .tpl files in your theme folder. Most of them however are in a separate folder “common_templates”, where they can be accessed by any of the themes. (Where index.tpl has statements like {ldelim}include file=“common:posting_categories.tpl”{rdelim}, it is calling a module from the common_templates folder). Template files in the common_template folder all have names which start “common_” eg “common_head.tpl”. This is simply to stop Smarty from confusing them with files in the theme folder.

index.tpl contains a posting loop. This begins with

{ldelim}foreach from=$postingdata key=key item=posting name=postings_loop{rdelim}

and ends with

{ldelim}/foreach{rdelim}

The posting loop takes each of the postings to be displayed on the page and places information about it – such as the title, the author, the text of the posting and any tags attached to the posting – on the web page. Most of the modules within the posting loop have a name which begins “posting_” eg “posting_title.tpl”.

If your theme contains a sidebar, index.tpl will “include” a file called “sidebar.tpl” (or two files “sidebar_left.tpl” and “sidebar_right.tpl” if there are two sidebars in your theme). sidebar.tpl in turn “includes” modules, generally from the common_templates folder, with names that begin with “sidebar_” eg sidebar_authors.tpl.

In many cases, it is possible to pass parameters to modules, which affect how they behave or what information they place on the webpage. For example:

{literal}{include file=‘common:sidebar_tagcloud.tpl’ number=5}{/literal}

places a tagcloud in the sidebar. The “number” parameter tells the module how many tags (starting with the most important) to display.

For fuller descriptions of the modules available in the common_templates folder, click the links below.

Modules to use inside the posting loop:
{include file=common:sidebar_posts_from_cat_tag.tpl type=tag name=tpl_posting alpha=true}

Modules to use in a sidebar
{include file=common:sidebar_posts_from_cat_tag.tpl type=tag name=tpl_sidebar alpha=true}

Modules outside the posting loop and the sidebar
{include file=common:sidebar_posts_from_cat_tag.tpl type=tag name=tpl_independent alpha=true}

Other postings about themes and Smarty templates
{include file=common:sidebar_posts_from_cat_tag.tpl type=tag name=Smarty alpha=true}

HTML5 is the new standard for the markup language for webpages. Most modern web browsers support at least some features of HTML5.

Before HTML5, the normal way to place an audio or video player on a webpage was to use Adobe Flash. The audio players used by PodHawk (the classic Loudblog players, the emff players and the OnePixelOut player) all use Flash.

With HTML5, however, it is possible to place an audio or video player on the webpage using HTML and tags. The player can then be styled using a normal cascading style sheet, and Javascript can be used to control the player and its appearance.

Some devices (iPhones, iPads, tablets running on the most recent versions of Android) do not support Flash. Displaying a web page player on these devices requires HTML5.

However, different browsers support different audio and video formats. Fortunately, HTML5 allows several source files to be attached to a single or tag. The browser goes down the list of files until it find one that it is able to play. So, for example, you might attach two audio files to an tag – one in mp3 format for those browsers which support mp3, and one in ogg format for browsers which support ogg but not mp3. For , you might attach a file in mp4 format and another in webm format.

The latest versions of the JW Player use a combination of Flash and HTML5. In Podhawk the player is configured to use Flash where this is available on the user’s browser, and HTML5 where Flash is not available.

PodHawk 1.83 and later include a plugin for the MediaElement audio and video player, which uses HTML5, with a fallback to Flash on older browsers.

PodHawk 1.83 and later also tests for the presence of a Flash plugin in the user’s browser. If you have chosen a Flash-based audio player, PodHawk will automatically replace it with the browser’s default HTML5 player where a Flash plugin is not detected. You can therefore continue to use your favourite Flash-based player while still allowing users without Flash to play your podcasts on the webpage.

Recording page 2 now contains an option to add further files to a posting so that HTML5 players can give a choice of files from which the browser will choose the first that it can play. This option appears only where the main file attached to the posting is in a format which HTML5 supports.

This Plugin allows you to display RSS feeds – as many as you want – on your PodHawk webpage. It works by loading a javascript-based RSS feed reader to the head section of the page. You can then add the following to your sidebar template where you want the feed items to appear:

{literal}{include file="plugins:jPaRSS/rss_reader.tpl" feedURL='http://url/of/feed' id='feed1' number='5' description='true'}{/literal}

The parameters you can pass are:

• url (required) – the url of the RSS feed you want to display eg http://www.my_podhawk_site.com/podcast.php
• id (required) – a unique id for this feed. It can be almost anything you want, but to avoid possible conflicts with other elements on your page, it is recommended that you use ‘feed1’ as the id for the first feed you want to show, ‘feed2’ for the second, and so on.
• number (optional) – the number of feed items you want to display. If you omit this parameter, the plugin will display the 4 most recent items.
• description (optional) – description=‘true’ will display the first part of the text of each feed item.
• description=‘content’ will display the full text of each feed item.
  description=‘image’ will display the first image associated with each feed item, plus a short section of the text
• description=‘false’ or omitting the ‘description’ parameter, will display no text.
• show_date (optional) – show_date=‘true’ displays the date of each feed item in the ‘preferred date format’ which you set on the backend settings page. show_date=‘false’ or omitting the date parameter will display no date.

Example – the main BBC News feed:

{include file=plugins:jPaRSS/rss_reader.tpl feedURL=http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml id=feed1 number=5 description=image}

This plugin requires PodHawk 1.8 or later.

A growing number of plugins are available for PodHawk. Up to Podhawk 1.82, available plugins were part of the standard PodHawk installation. From PodHawk 1.83, plugins are no longer included in the install package; instead you can download the plugins you want from this site.

Plugins live in the folder podhawk/custom/plugins. To install a new plugin, simply download the required zip file from this site, unzip it and upload the contents to the plugins folder of your site.

Admin users can use the backend Plugins page (Manage > Plugins) to manage the plugins on your site.

When a new plugin is first uploaded to the plugins folder, it will appear in the lower part of the Plugins page, “not installed plugins”. In this context, “not installed” simply means that you have not chosen to create a database entry for the plugin. To install, simply click on “install now” beside the name of the plugin to install.

The plugin will then appear in the top part of the Plugins page. However, before it wil work, it needs to be “enabled” (activated), and in many cases you will need to configure it ie tell it exactly how you want it to work and/or give it information that it needs. You do this by clicking “edit status and settings” beside the name of the plugin you want to enable or configure.

You will then be taken to the relevant plugin page. This contains a brief description of what the plugin does, and details of the version and author. There is a set of radio buttons for enabling/disabling the plugin. The plugin will not work until you have enabled it.

Then there is a set of radio button for setting the run-order of the plugin. There are five run-order levels, 1 to 5. By default the run order is set to 3. PodHawk will run plugins with a low run-order first, and with a high run-order later. Sometimes, you get unexpected results when two or more plugins access the same event calls in the system; these can sometimes be solved by adjusting the run-order of the plugins concerned.

Then for most, though not all, plugins there is a section where you can set the various parameters which the plugin needs. There are explanations of the options in the right hand column. When you add or change parameters, don’t forget to click “save” at the bottom of the page.

The following plugins are currently available:

{include file=common:sidebar_posts_from_cat_tag.tpl type=tag name=plugin_pages alpha=true}

The Utilities page is accessed (admin users only) via Manage > Utilities.

The contents of the page will vary depending on your PHP installation, and the type of database which you have:

• check for updates. Your PodHawk installation will read the contents of an XML file on the PodHawk website, and tell you whether a newer version of PodHawk is available. (The ‘Check for Updates’ button will not appear if PodHawk cannot find a PHP method for reading remote files).
• Database. This section tells you what type of database your PodHawk installation uses, and whether it communicates with it via the PHP PDO Extension (default) or ADODB_lite (if PDO is not available).
• If you have a MySQL database and PHP is able to run shell commands on your server, there is a facility for creating a backup of the database. This will be sent to you as an e-mail attachment; or if your server cannot send emails, it will be placed in the ‘audio’ folder for you to download using FTP. If you have a Windows server, or if PHP shell commands are disabled, the backup button will not appear. If your server administrator has given you access to PHPMyAdmin, you can use that programme to make a backup of a MySQL database.
• If you have an SQLite database, there is a facility for making the database readable by an external SQLite management tool. (Normally, only PodHawk can read the database). There is also a button for creating a backup copy of the database and sending it to you as an e-mail attachment.
• There is a facility for clearing all the caches in your PodHawk installation – the caches where Smarty stores web pages and compiled templates, as well as PodHawk’s own cache folders. Sometimes, clearing caches can resolve problems with your webpages.
• If you have a Unix/Linux server and PHP on your server runs as an Apache module, you will not normally be able to access or remove the cache folders in your PodHawk installation with your FTP programme. Clicking the “Make Cache Directories Removable” button will change the permissions on your cache folders to ‘0777’. Normally, the only time you would want to do this is if you wish to delete PodHawk entirely.
• The Utilities page shows you the last 10 entries in the PodHawk log files (the error log and the events log). These give you information about any errors recorded by the PodHawk programme, and about events such as logins to the backend pages. Note that these are the log files which PodHawk itself generates, not the Apache logs or other system logs on your server. Speak to your server administrator if you need access to these.
• Finally, the page allows you to cancel all cookies which allow access to the backend pages. (These are the cookies set when an admin user or author checks the “remember me” button on the login page). If you do this, all authors/admin users will need to enter their username and password the next time they want to log in.

The “categories and tags” page is accessed through Manage > Categories. Only admin users can access the page.

PodHawk allows you to classify your posts in two ways – categories and tags. You need to define categories in advance (on the categories and tags page). You can make up new tags when you create or edit a posting.

Recording page 2 allows you to allocate a posting to up to four different categories, using drop-down lists of the categories which you have already defined. Recording page 2 also allows you to attach tags (as many as you like) to a posting. When you start typing in the tags input box on Recording page 2, PodHawk will prompt you with the names of tags which you have used on other postings. You can select one or more of these; or you can create a new tag simply by typing it. Use spaces to separate tags. If your tag contains a space, replace the space with an underscore (_); PodHawk will remove the underscore when it displays the tag on the webpage.

Use the “categories and tags” page to create new categories, or to amend or delete existing categories. On each line there is a tick-box “hide” (PodHawk 1.83 and later). Hidden categories are not displayed to your users on your web page. You might for example want to allocate posts to a category so that you can find them quickly (on the Search for Postings page), without this being visible to your users. Or you might want to use the Multiple Themes plugin (PodHawk 1.83 and later) to associate a category with a theme, again without this being visible to users.

The “categories and tags “ page also allows you to attach a tag to all posts in a given category; and to undertake some basic management of your tags – to delete tags, to amend them or to associate particular tags with a particular category.

Cookies are small text files which a website sends to a user’s browser. they can contain information about choices which the user has made on the website, which links she/he has clicked etc. EU law now requires websites to tell users about their use of cookies and seek their consent.

PodHawk web pages (ie the “frontend”) webpages of your site do not set cookies in users’ browsers. However, if you add, for example, Google ads or Google analytics to your site, these may set cookies (eg when a user clicks an advertising link) and you may need to tell users about this.

The PodHawk backend (admin) pages will set a cookie if a user clicks the “remember me” box on the login page. This cookie identifies the user, and allows access to the backend pages without logging in every time. This cookie expires after a week – after this time, the user will need to login again.

In addition, the backend pages set cookies to allow PodHawk to retrieve the right session data from the database. This data includes information about which user is logged in, and choices which the user has made (eg search criteria for posts or images). These session cookies die at the end of the user’s session (after 20 minutes of no activity).

The install programme similarly uses session cookies to remember choices which the user has made.

PodHawk contains an Image Manager which you can use to upload and manage images to use in your posts.

To access the Images manager, click Manage > Images (if you are an admin user) or Navigation > Images (if you are a non-admin user). The Images Manager requires the PHP GD extension (which is normally installed by default); in addition, Javascript needs to be enabled on your browser. The Manager’s opening page displays a message confirming this.

From the opening page, you can either search for an image which is already in your “images” folder, or upload one or more images from your computer. The result of a search, or the image files uploaded, are then displayed as a list. Clicking on the thumbnail image at the left of each row will display the image at full size in a lightbox, with information about the image name, its width, height and size, and the date it was uploaded.

There are then options to delete, rename or resize each image. You may need to resize your image for example to fit the column of your webpage where posts are displayed. Resizing is done in a straightforward proportionate way – you set the new width which you want (in pixels) and the image height will adjust in proportion. If you require more sophisticated editing (eg to crop the image or to adjust its colour balance) it is suggested that you use photo-editing software on your computer before you upload the image file.

You can include images in your posts in one of two ways. If you use the TinyMCE Editor, you will find a small “images” icon in the bottom right hand corner of the Tiny MCE control panel.

Clicking on the icon gives you an “insert image” popup. (if the popup does not appear, check your browser settings and allow popups from your site.) Click on “Image list” – this will give a drop-down list of all the images in your images folder. Select the one you want. Tiny MCE will then populate the box for the image URL automatically. You can then set the alignment of the image (eg to the left of the page), and how much border you want around the image (pixels), and how much blank space you want top and bottom, and on either size. If you want to alter the display size of the image, put in the dimensions you want (in pixels) in the “dimensions” boxes. When you are ready, click “insert”.

If you are using the Textile editor or Raw HTML, the PodHawk image manager provides a simple way to write the HTML needed to place an image on your webpage. From the list of images (see above) click “Make HTML tag” on the row for the image you want. This will give a page where you can set how you want your image to display. Choose whether you want a normal image, or a thumbnail image which expands to a lightbox when clicked. There is on-page guidance to help you enter the correct details. When you are ready, click “Make HTML”. A further page will display the HTML you need in a text area. Click to highlight the HTML, copy and paste in the message area of Recording Page 2.

PodHawk uses a very simple hierarchy of permissions.

At the top are “admin users” who can do anything on the website. Only admin users are able to access the following backend pages:

• Settings
• Authors
• Categories
• Players
• Plugins
• Utilities
• PHP Information

Other users who try to access these pages will be told that they are not invited!

Authors who are not “admin users” have permissions which relate to their ability to create, edit and publish postings. (Permission to “Create” and “edit” a posting includes the ability to upload an audio or other media file to attach to the posting, and images to include in the posting, as well as to write the text to appear on the web page.) The most restricted permission level is one which allows an Author to create and edit their own postings, but not to publish them (ie to put them on air). The next level allows an Author also to publish their own postings. Authors who only have “edit own” and/or “publish own” permissions may access postings from other authors on Recording page 2, but they will be unable to make any changes.

At the next level are Authors who can edit and/or publish posts created by themselves or by any other Author, but who do not have the ability to change Settings or other aspects of the way the site works.

All Authors can access comments on the backend “Comments” page, but only Authors who have edit privileges for the post to which a comment relates are able to edit or delete that comment.

“Authors” are users who have the authority to access some or all of the backend administration pages, and to create and edit postings and put them on air.

When you first set up your PodHawk site, you – the creator of the site – are the only author. Your details are on the backend “Authors” page, which you can access from Manage > Authors in the menu on the left of the page. You will see the word “Admin” beside your name. that means that you are an Admin user with power to do anything. (Anything? Well, not quite anything. You will find that you are unable to delete yourself from the list of authors, for obvious reasons!) There is more information here about Author permissions.

As an admin user, you can create other Authors if you need to. Simply add their name, login name and email address in the blank boxes , and click “Create new author”. You will be taken to a second Authors page where you can edit the details and permissions for the new user. First, it is good to give the new user a login name which is different from his/her “nickname” or screen name. Then you should consider what permissions you want the user to have. Finally, give the Author a password so that they can access the backend pages, and click save to save your changes.

As an Admin user you can edit these details at any time, or remove users entirely.

The settings page is where you control the appearance and behaviour of your PodHawk website.

Changes to settings take effect only when you click one of the “Save all settings” buttons. This will also clear the cache of webpages.

Meta Information

Here you can choose the language for your admin pages (only English and German are available at present), and a name, slogan and description for your PodHawk site. Be careful to enter the URL of your PodHawk site correctly, and without a trailing slash, otherwise links etc on your website will not work correctly. If your PodHawk site is part of a larger site, be careful – it is the address of your PodHawk site which is needed (eg http://www.mywebsite.com/podcasts) and not the address of the main site (http://www.mywebsite.com).

PodHawk can cache your web pages and your RSS feed which makes them quicker to load. Ususally, you should choose “yes” for caching, unless you find problems with your site, when disabling caching may help you identify the problem.

For error messages, it is normally best to choose “no error messages” unless you are having problems with your site, in which case error messages may help you to find what is wrong.

Webpage Settings

Here you can choose which theme you want for your website, and which language, and the format you prefer for dates. Most of the settings in this section are self-explanatory.

Most PodHawk users want to be able to count how many times their audio and video files have been downloaded. There are settings in this section which enable you to do this. If you want to count downloads from your feed, however, you need to have a file called .htaccess in the root directory of your PodHawk site, and your Apache web server needs to have a module called mod_rewrite, and to be configured to look for and read .htaccess files. The PodHawk files which you uploaded when you set up your site contain a suitable .htaccess file, though you may not be able to find it easily with your FTP client because .htaccess is a hidden file – look for a setting that says “View hidden files”.

If iTunes is unable to download your podcasts from the RSS feed, the most common reason is that .htaccess is missing or is not being recognised. The solution is simply to disable download counting from the RSS feed.

There is more information about download counting here.

Podcast Feed

This section configures your RSS feed so that it contains all the information which iTunes needs to find and display your podcasts correctly. Take time to fill it in correctly, particularly the correct iTunes category or categories for you site, as this determines where iTunes will place your podcasts in the iTunes directory.

Comments and Anti-Spam

Your options are:

• disable comments entirely. Your users will not be able to leave comments on any of your posts.
• use the classic LoudBlog system for identifying spam. This involves you entering a question to which humans know the answer but computers don’t (eg “What is the capital city of Germany?”) A user who wants to post a comment on one of your posts has to answer this question correctly before PodHawk will accept the comment. This system is crude, and security experts don’t like it, but it is generally very effective.
• use Akismet to check comments for spam. Akismet is a sophisticated anti-spam system developed for Wordpress, though users of other blogging and podcasting systems are also able to use it. You need to register with Akismet, and obtain an API key which you enter in the text box marked Akismet API key. You may need to pay a fee to Akismet if your site is commercial. Despite what it says in the note on the right-hand side of the Settings page, you no longer have to register with Wordpress.com.

• use the Disqus commenting system. There is a simple sign-up process, and Disqus is free to use. Enter the “site shortname” which you chose when you registered in the relevant text box. Disqus will completely replace the built-in PodHawk commenting system on your web pages. PodHawk will automatically load the Javascript code which Disqus needs. Disqus deals with problems of spam and possible attempts to post malicious code for you. It works well with most of the PodHawk themes, but test it first to see that you like the way it looks on your site.

Please note that, adding a ‘comments’ section below your posts requires two things:

• you must enable commenting by choosing a commenting option on the ‘Settings’ page

• you must enable commenting for each post individually when you edit the posting on Recording Page 2.

Backend Settings

In this section, you can set the default editor which you want to use on Recording Page 2.

You can also choose how many lines of data you want to display on a page in the Postings, Comments and Spam pages. The default is 15.

There is a radio button for switching on or off the Autosave feature on Recording page 2.

Finally, you can add details of your Amazon S3 account if you wish to use an Amazon S3 bucket to store some or all of your audio/video files. If you select the “yes” radio button, and enter your account details, a second “save” button will appear on Recording Page 2 for uploading files to Amazon.

Filename Settings

You can choose to have PodHawk rename every audio/video file that it places in the ‘audio’ folder. You can choose a custom part of the filename (eg ‘mypodcasts’). PodHawk will then add the date of that the file was copied, followed by a unique ID. It is recommended that you select this option. It will ensure that your file names have a consistent pattern and that you cannot accidentally overwrite an existing file by uploading one with the same name.

ID3 Tag Settings

You can choose to have PodHawk write default ID3 tags on every MP3 file that you transfer from your upload to your audio folders.

FTP Data

You can use a Java-based programme (applet) called ZUpload to upload your podcasts. The uploader will appear on Recording Page 1 if you click the “yes” radio button at the top of this section, and also fill in details of your FTP server, user-name and password and the path from the ‘FTP root’ to your ‘upload’ directory. ‘FTP root’ means the directory to which your FTP client points when you first open a connection to your site. For instance, if your FTP client points to ‘home/mysite.com’ and your upload directory is at ‘home/mysite.com/user/htdocs/upload’, then the path from the FTP root to the upload directory is ‘/user/htdocs/upload’.

There is a button at the bottom of this section to test whether you have entered the correct FTP data. PodHawk will make a trial connection, and report back (in the right-hand column) if it cannot make the connection, or if it cannot find the upload folder at the location you have entered.

If you have a Unix/Linux server on which PHP runs as an Apache module, entering your FTP details here will enable PodHawk’s ‘FTP layer’. This allows PodHawk to run without any ‘world-writable’ directories. If you have a Windows server, or if PHP runs under CGI/FastCGI, the ‘FTP layer’ is unnecessary, and you should enter your FTP details only if you want to use the ZUpload Java applet on Recording Page 1.

Comments

The “Comments” page displays comments which users have left on your web site. The list is in date order, starting with the most recent, though – as with the list of postings – you can change the sort order by clicking on the column headings. On each line there is an “Edit/delete” button which takes you to a page where you can edit the comment or delete it, or remove the audio comment file if audio comments are allowed.

If you use the Akismet anti-spam system, there is also a button which allows you to remove the comment and tell Akismet that it is spam.

You can edit or delete comments only if you are an administrator, or if you have edit privileges for the post in question.

Note that this page will display only comments posted using PodHawk’s built-in commenting system. If you use the Disqus commenting system, you can find lists of comments and facilities to edit or delete them on your Disqus account page.

Spam

If you use the Akismet anti-spam system, Akismet will sometimes label a comment as spam when in fact it isn’t. The “Spam” page lists recent spam comments and allows you to restore them to the list of comments.

If you have not selected Akismet as your anti-spam system on the Settings page, this page will display only a warning message.