Running Weblogs with Slash

Chapter 3. Basic Administration

While site users only see the front end of Slash, administrators and Authors have a special interface called backSlash, which controls everything from posting Stories to managing Authors. The first order of business on any new site is to create new Author accounts and modify the default configuration to fit the site’s true goals. This chapter describes the web interface for managing Authors and variables. Subsequent chapters describe the rest of the Slash administrative interface, but the following functions provide the most basic level of control over the operation of the server.

The Admin Menu

Any logged-in Author will see a special row of links below the main title banner on any page. This is the Admin menu. If the heart of Slash administration is the backSlash interface, its nerve center is the Admin menu. It holds the keys to unlock the remote administration features provided by the admin.pl applet.