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1 Mar 31, 2007 19:36    

My b2evolution Version: 1.9.2

I want to remove the Deprecate button in the Full Posts display.

As I have mentioned previously in other threads, I am setting up a blogging situation for university classes, where I am finding that the first showings to the professors, who will be attempting to get their students to use it in their classrooms (not computer classes), almost all are very confused by that button. And the few students who have ventured into the computer lab thought it was some way to insult a post....

How can I remove that Deprecate button safely? I will want to comment it out, I'm sure, but I want to do it appropriately in all the files I should, in a fashion that doesn't wreck other processes. I am just a hacker, when it comes to php, but a hacker should know his limits.

Edited to add: I have perhaps solved this problem (maybe it was an imaginary problem) by simply changing the appropriate labels and alt text... in the

/conf/_icons.php and in /inc/MODEL/items/_item.class.php

I made the button to now read: "Make this post a draft." I made the image alt text to read "Hold."

It's a good feature... that I didn't want to lose... just that the term Deprecate was quite confusing.

2 Mar 31, 2007 21:22

But it doesn't make it a draft so why label it that way? Seems to me since you're in a university your bloggers are of a mindset to learn stuff, so couldn't you make educating what that button does be like a thing? Or change the title & text to imply "delete from public view", which is closer to what it actually does.

Oh and it seems like you've given permissions to each blogger to post and edit posts in the same blog. Not sure if you know it or not, but b2evolution assumes a collaborative nature, meaning if we both have permission to edit and delete posts from blog #5 we can edit and/or delete each other's material.

3 Mar 31, 2007 22:36

Edb, in an ideal world...yes university students might be expected to be inclined to learn something, but this is 2007 with a different type of person than from years past. Also, this project is being done for students in various non-scientific disciplines (using the blog as a class exercise can be quite an effective tool in a wide range of classes ). They might be art history students or studying sociology or religion. Students in the (real) sciences like chemistry or biology are more inclined to learn new abstractions... but for those in the "gentle" studies we have to be always going for greater and greater simplicity. Many are very, very frightened of computers.

Each blogger will have their own blog (or blogs), but will not be able to make changes in other students' blogs (that would be too much power), although the professor and student assistants will have full access (for editing and commenting) to every blog. Each student will be getting their own personal b2evolution installation, so that they can have multiple blogs, a blog for different classes or blogs for projects within a class, with each installation hopefully serving that student through several years of study. Computing power, bandwidth and storage capacity is not a problem at this very large university (the same as most others), so such an approach (while perhaps wasteful of resources in other situations) is quite feasible.

And yes, you are correct. A better label (that more appropriately describes what the deprecate function is) would be better. I will give that some thought and come up with something more descriptive, but still palatable for neophytes.


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