After you download the HyperNews source and install it, you need to create some base articles. Open the URL: http://<your.www server>/HyperNews/edit-article.pl (replace "<your.www.server>/HyperNews" with whatever is appropriate. E.g., if you restrict article creation, use "HyperNews/SECURED" instead of "HyperNews").
In the form it provides you, enter the Title and owner, if it is not you. With 1.9B4, you can enter the text for the body or enter a URL of another document to use as the body. If you enter a URL, it may be a full http URL including the server name, or an absolute path starting with "/" (for 1.9B4.1), or a relative path. An absolute path is first looked for relative to the $hndocs directory, and if that fails, it is assumed to be relative to the server root and is fetched via http. A relative path must not climb outside of the $hndocs directory (using ".."), but it will be fetched directly via the file system, if it is found. The document is assumed to be HTML, but you need not include <HEAD> and <BODY> tags. The document must be publically readable, or at least readable by the domain of the server.
The "Directory" (was called "virtual path" or "response directory") is the name of the directory for responses and other info associated with the base article; it is relative to your $hndocs directory. For example, the directory for the HyperNews source document is /hypernews/source.
Creating an article creates a file named <directory>.html,urc such as the following one for the /hypernews/source.html document.
Title: HyperNews Source URL: http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HyperNews/get/hypernews/source.html Body: http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~liberte/hypernews/source.html UpURL: UpRel: BaseURL: http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HyperNews/get/hypernews/source.html Responses: /hypernews/source From: liberte@ncsa.uiuc.edu Name: Daniel LaLiberte UserURL: http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~liberte/ Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 19:19:48 GMT
Note that the Body field is the URL you provided for the body of the article, or one generated by HyperNews if you entered the text for the body. The URL you use to refer to this article is the same as the one in the URL field. Or within the same server, you can leave off the http://server.name, e.g. "/HyperNews/get/hypernews/source.html". (In a future version of HyperNews, these full URLs will be made relative.)
If you create another article with the same directory name, the info for the previous article will be replaced with the new info. So if you make a mistake the first time, you can correct it. Any existing responses will be preserved. Creating a base article never deletes anything; it only updates the old <directory>-body.html (if there is one) and the <directory>.html,urc file.
HyperNews substitutes full URLs for any relative URLs in the bodies of articles or responses. It really should do this in case the body document is supposed to be available independently of HyperNews. Furthermore, it makes use of any BASE tag in the document to change what it thinks the base of the relative URLs is.
With 1.9B4, you can reedit the previously saved information for a base article. You should only be able to edit the article if the configuration options for the group allow you to. Do this by using the same URL as for edit-article.pl given above, but with the path to the base article appended. For example, to edit the HyperNews source page, I would use the URL:
http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HyperNews/get/SECURED/edit-article.pl/hypernews/source.html
There is no way to delete articles yet (at least not intentionally). You can always go into the directory and manually delete things.
Please do not add test responses to this page.