No matter what Topics a weblog covers, it will always require fresh content. In Slash terms, these are Stories. Consequently, most Authors will spend their time in the Stories list. It is always available from Stories or the relative URI /admin.pl. Authors can review submissions, edit published Stories, and even create new Stories (see the New link in the Admin menu).
The Stories list (Figure 4-1) is the default page of the Admin menu. It’s like a big map in the war room, used to review and coordinate the current site activity. As you’d expect, it is full of data. Most of the activity is centered around reading or editing Stories; an Author may decide to fix a typo in a Story title or introduction, or the administrator might decide to browse a Story that’s attracted an unusual number of comments or page reads.
Stories appear on the list in reverse chronological order--newest first, grouped by day of publication. The horizontal columns on the page are unlabeled, but they are relatively straightforward. The leftmost column holds the Story number, with no special meaning outside of the Stories list. The number is a link to the Edit Story page, used to update a Story. The Story title is a link to the normal Story display page, as seen by users. The next three columns show the credited Author, the Story Topic, and the Story Section, respectively. Only the Section is linked, and it leads to the Section homepage.
The next two columns are numeric. The first is the number of page views, and the second is the current number of posted comments, if any. The number of views should exceed the number of comments because users must normally view the page before posting a comment. Not every reader will feel the need to comment, though Stories comparing operating systems or starship captains may lead you to believe otherwise.
The final column shows the official Story posting time. This, like the Author field, can be misleading. The time does not necessarily reflect the point at which the Story was accepted, nor does it take into account the possibility that another Author has edited the Story. It simply lists the time when Slash made the Story available to the public. See Section 4.2 later in this chapter for a description of this trickery.
Within the Stories list, titles will be truncated to 50 characters plus an ellipsis (...). The Topic and Section columns will show only the first five characters. This affects only the display in the Stories list; it has no effect on the actual Story as stored in the database or displayed elsewhere. Keep these restrictions in mind when choosing Topic and Section names. “ConcertCalendar” and “ConcertReviews” will be visually indistinguishable Topics in the Stories list.
Besides its immediate pragmatic utility, the list is a helpful review of the Stories published by other Authors (or your own Stories, if you’ve forgotten everything after a marathon coding session). Is one Author posting all of the Stories this week? Has an infrequent Author posted a new Story generating a lot of interest? Are several Stories clustered around a single Topic? (This will frequently be the case when a major Topic event takes place, such as a technology conference or basketball playoffs, depending on the site. Some major events, such as a war, may trump normal coverage on any Slash site.)
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