Internet Publishing Robot Manual

The Digital Consciousness Internet Publishing Robot (the IPR) allows artists to publish images and text on the Internet

Gallery Creation and Editing

Overview
The gallery creation and editing features of the IRC use an input and processing set of programs. The input set uploads image files and other information to the Digital Consciousness server. The processing set uses php commands to insert that information into a mysql database table and to write various files so that the images are displayed in public galleries. Each artist has a unique mysql database table.

By operating the IPR an artist can add galleries and modify existing galleries. The galleries made by the IPR are among the most prominent pages on Digital Consciousness. http://digitalconsciousness.com/gallerylist.phtml.

Access to Gallery Creation and Editing
Access to these feature of the IPR is available to those registered Digital Consciousness Artists who have won the Digital Color Artist of the month award or who have otherwise been recognized for their artistic merit (the Selected Artists). The Selected Artists operate the IPR through a control panel which appears when they click on the edit link at the very bottom of their Artist's main Digital Consciousness pages.

How the IPR creates new galleries
To create a new gallery a Selected Artist clicks on the Create a New Gallery button from the control panel. This brings up the Gallery Construction page. The IPR adds a new row to the mysql database table for the Selected Artist and inserts the information input from the Gallery Construction page. The mysql database table row stores information about a particular gallery. The public, of course, sees a gallery and not just the raw information from the database.

From the Gallery Construction page, the Selected Artist should choose a name for the gallery, then, load image files and enter a title for each image. Each image must have a title. Images must be smaller than 250K in size. A 50K image of about 500 x 500 pixels is ideal for a viewer with a 17 inch monitor and an average dsl connection. Image filenames with a space won't work. Titles with spaces are okay. The maximum length of image filenames and titles is 30 characters. The images should be in a format that is recognized by popular browsers such as Explorer, Netscape and AOL. jpg or jpeg and gif image files are fine.

If an image you have input is not being displayed, make sure it is of appropriate size and file type and that there is not a space in the file name. Sometimes one may think an image is, for example, a jpg because it has a .jpg extension, but the file is actually an unsupported type. If this is the case, the image must be converted to a supported type, such as .jpg, before it can be displayed.

How the IPR edits galleries
To edit an existing gallery a Selected Artist clicks on the Edit Gallery button for the appropriate gallery from the control panel. This brings up the Gallery Editing page. The IPR sets the information in the row for the existing gallery to match that input from the Gallery Editing page.

The IPR will display the existing titles for the images in the gallery. The filenames of the images will not be displayed because the source of the image (which may have been any computer anywhere) is treated as temporary. Any or all of the images may be replaced. The titles of the existing images may also be changed. Nothing need be done to keep existing images. The name of the gallery cannot be changed. A new gallery with a different name can be created. Two galleries of the same name cannot be created.

Functions not performed by the IPR
The IPR is under constant improvement. If you are a Selected Artist and there is a publishing task that you wish the IPR to perform which it does not do, please e-mail Jon about it. He can probably either program the IPR to do it, or do it manually

Bulletin Board Publishing

Overview
The Bulletin Board is open to everyone. One can add a message on a variety of existing topics. These generally are art-related and consist of postings from many people. One may also start a new topic. This is encouraged only if there is no existing topic related to the subject and the new topic will increase the appeal of the Board.

Publishing multiple pages of text.
One may publish even a long essay on, for example, current events in an appealing format. To do so, select the title of the essay as a New Topic Name, summarize the essay in the Topic Introduction field, and add each paragraph as a new message.

How it works
The Board home page lists topic pages in hypertext. Each topic page has an introductory message followed by new messages. Periodically, the most interesting items are duplicated in more prominent places and those without sufficient content are removed.