Documentation

Web2x Publishing Software

Web2express.org

Content:

Summary

Intended Users

Current Features

Feature Wish List

Download

Installation

Quick Start Guide

Summary

Web2x Publishing software is an easy-to-use self-publishing platform for publishing information to the current HTML web layer as well as the emerging semantic web layer. It is built on top of the popular open source blogger software called WordPress. Using Web2x Publishing, users can publish specific types of information such as product and experiment in HTML and in RDF at the same time. Information published this way can be searched by both regular and semantic search engines, and thus will become more widely accessible. Web2x implements ontologies for semantic publishing that are being developed by open communities such as W3C.

Intended Users

Researchers: Any researcher or laboratory doing research and development can use this self-publishing tool to publish individual experiments, projects, protocols, and researcher information as web pages and semantic data objects (RDF file).

Product providers: Any product providers, either manufacturers or distributors, can use this self-publishing tool to publish their web site information, particularly product catalog, as web pages and semantic objects.

Current Features

1. Add a semantic dimension to existing company web site. One can publish all the usual web pages in semantic data format, including products, services, licensing opportunity, technology, news, events, and company information.
2. Semantically publish any experiment and related information by writing specific types of posts and pages, including Experiment, Project, Protocol, Publication.
3. Automatically pre-fill the editor with template corresponding to the semantic post or page.
4. Automatically save semantic post and page to RDF file. As a result, each specific post or page is presented in two forms: HTML and RDF.
5. Provide RDF link on each HTML page for the published semantic data.
6. Create a site map, which is dynamically generated each time when the page is viewed and thus always up-to-date.
7. Create product catalog page listing all products.

Web2x is built on top of WordPress, which has many useful features, including:

1. Organize published information in categories, and archive information by month and day.
2. Allow readers to provide comments to the published information, an effective way to interact with everyone in the community.
3. User account and privilege control.
4. Hundreds of themes to choose from.
5. Optimized for search engines.
6. RSS feed available.

Feature Wish-List

1. Make user-published semantic data (e.g. project, protocol, researcher, and product) available as URI for user to choose from when writing new post or page.
2. Convert template-based input to form-based input, i.e. use GUI widgets for every property of specific types of post or page.
3. Develop additional semantic objects (e.g. Proposal) and implement corresponding post or page support.
4. When displaying a semantic post or page, reformat it to make it more readable, such as a title or short description for user-defined URI resources.
5. Develop a theme best suited for experiment and product self-publishing. Better organization of projects, experiments under projects, protocols, researchers, and products. Ideally, provide a theme builder for users to pick and choose menus for both left and right sidebars.
6. Generate sitemap in other format such as Google sitemap.
7. Automatically inform search engine when a post is published or edited.  A list of search engine can be picked from admin option page (use ping services). May provide daily update for search engines.

Download

Latest version: v0.2

Developed and tested for WordPress v2.1.

Download at https://sourceforge.net/projects/web2x/.

Installation

Install WordPress:

1. Download the most recent stable WordPress from http://wordpress.org/download/, .tar.gz file for Linux server and .zip file for Windows. Alternatively, check out latest code from source code control http://wordpress.org/download/svn.

2. Install WordPress by following the 5-minute instructions at http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress. Notes: Extract or upload files into the apache htdocs/ directory or equivalent (e.g. public-html directory on a shared web hosting server). The default WordPress directory is called wordpress/, but you can rename it to anything you prefer, e.g. publish/. When creating database on shared web hosting server, check to see if a prefix is added to your database and user names, and if yes, make sure to set the complete names with prefix in the wp-config.php file. Install script wp-admin/install.php won’t work if database tables already exist.

3. Assuming installation directory publish/, test WordPress at http://mydomain.com/publish/ and configure WordPress at http://mydomain.com/publish/wp-admin/. See some useful configurations in section below.

Install Web2x Plugin:

1. Download web2x plugin (including RAP API) from https://sourceforge.net/projects/web2x/.

2. Assuming wordpress installation directory publish/, copy the web2x.zip or web2x.tar.gz file to publish/wp-content/plugins and extract it there. The plugin directory will be created as web2x/. Alternative, download the latest code from source code control to publish/wp-content/plugins as web2x/.

3. Go to WordPress admin page for plugins, activate the web2x plugin. Then go to Write menu to verify new submenus for semantic publishing objects including project, experiment, product, etc.

Useful configurations:

1. On Admin>Options>Write panel, set post editor lines = 30.

2. Enable permalink: On Admin>Options>Permalinks panel, choose option "Date and name based". File .htaccess should be created automatically, e.g. in publish/ directory. Your apache server must also use mod_rewrite and allow override. If not, ask your admin to configure it in httpd.conf file. See http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks for details.

3. Create site map: On Admin>Options>Web2x panel, click Create Sitemap link. Go to home page and click “Sitemap” link on the sidebar to view site map. Web2express.org will be automatically notified about the site map so that your web site will be optimally indexed by search engines. Check the Admin>Options>Web2x panel again. If the notification status is “failed”, you should email the sitemap URL to postmap.AT.web2express.org.

4. On Admin>Blogroll, edit the links to point to useful resources you like to have.

5. Copy biz2/ directory in web2x to publish/wp-content/themes/. Go to Admin>Presentation menu and choose biz2 theme. You may edit the theme to replace site specific links.

6. If you want to use the default, you may customize it as follows:

On Admin>Presentation>Theme Editor panel, edit the Sidebar file:

· Reverse the order of archives and categories

· Insert code to add a calendar under archives

<ul><?php get_calendar(); ?></ul>

· Change “Meta” to “Admin”, and insert a link for home page, e.g.

<li><a href="http://localhost/publish/" title="Web2 Express home page">Home</a></li>

· Comment out the if condition surrounding links and admin:

<?php /* If this is the frontpage if( is_home() || is_page() ) { */ ?>

<?php /*}*/ ?>

Edit footer file:

· Insert code after wordpress link:

and <a href="http://web2express.org/">Web2x Publishing</a>

· Insert code at the end:

<br />Copyright 2006 Your Name

7. If you want to use different theme, check out http://themes.wordpress.net/ for other themes and download the ones you like into wp-publish/content/themes directory. On Admin>Presentation>Themes panel, choose one of them. Edit the theme if needed.

Quick Start Guide

To publish business web pages and experiment data in semantic format

1. Login. You must have author privilege to write.
2. Click “Site Admin” on the sidebar and then click “Write”.
3. Click the specific content type on the submenu, e.g. [product], [project], [experiment], etc.
4. The editor will appear pre-filled with an appropriate template. Provide a title in the title filed. Write information and data under appropriate headers. Note that it’s not necessary to provide information for every header.
5. Select one or more categories on the right sidebar. You may add a new category right here.
6. Click “Publish” when finish.
7. Click “View site” at the top to view the published content. Depending on the site configuration, the new post may not be shown immediately. Click appropriate link on the right sidebar, such as category and archive.
8. If you need to make any change, click “edit” link at the bottom of the post, make changes in the editor and then click “Publish”.

The following semantic content types are supported:

• [Product]: product information
• [Service]: service information
• [Licensing]: licensing opportunity information
• [Technology]: technology information
• [Job]: new job opening
• [News]: company news item and press release
• [Event]: events the company plans to attend
• [Info]: general web page
• [Person]: for employee and researcher, etc.
• [Group]: work unit like department or research group
• [Organization]: like company information
• [Project]: Project information.
• [Experiment]: Information and data from a single experiment.
• [Protocol]: Established experimental procedures that can be reused in similar experiments.
• [Publication]: A traditional publication like journal article. It serves as a wrapper and identifier for anything you have published in traditional ways. If you have the content, dump the whole thing here. Otherwise, provide the original source of the publication such as a URL of the publication.

To publish regular blog

You can publish unstructured information as regular blog.

1. Login. You must have author privilege to write.
2. Click “Site Admin” on the sidebar and then click “Write”.
3. Use the default “Write Post” editor to compose a blog.
4. Click “Publish” when finish.

For all other WordPress features, see WordPress user documentation.