Every detail of how your web site looks can be changed. Here are a few of the easiest things you can do when you are just getting started. Make sure you are logged in as admin on your site.
Change Header Image
The image at the top of the page can quickly be swapped out for one of your own, or any number of pre-loaded stock images.
Open two browser tabs on your site, one with
mysite.example/template/header and one with
mysite.example/files.
At the top of the header template page, click edit.
Take a moment to examine the header template. It is not very complex. You will see an
img tag that has a file name in it.
On the other browser tab, either upload a file, or use one of the pre-loaded images. Click and copy the file name. Then paste it between the
img tags in the header template in your other tab. Be careful to preserve the surrounding quotes. If you make a mistake, you can always click the edit link at the very top of the page to reload the current header template, or use the history feature to go back.
You can also not have any image in the header, and just specify a plain color. You can also change the size of the lettering, it's color, shadow, and other details. You can refer to the
full tag reference for more help. Feel free to experiment, because you can always use the history feature if you need to roll back any changes.
Setup Your Site Front Page
You can edit your front page, or any page, to look any way you want, with images, video, text, comment sections, chat rooms, or even live feeds from other sites.
Even a
multi-column responsive layout can be created with some of the advanced tags. See the
format tag reference for more details.
Add Feeds
Using the
[items] tag, you can easily add a live RSS/Atom feed to any page, which can include complex filters and multiple sources. Here is an example:
[items disp=100 max=200 show_time=1 show_author=1 show_domain=1 default_img="orange sunset.jpg"]
feed:http://rss.feed.example/path/to/feed
feed:http://more.feed.example/path/to/more
[/items]
The items tag is fully documented in the
format tag reference.
On any page that has an items tag, it is easy to add an item manually with just a URL. Put
?add on the end of the URL in the address bar and a text-entry box will appear that you can paste one or more links into. The link(s) will be automatically scanned for title, description, and image, and then inserted into the items tag upon success.
The default user home page at
/users/username has an items tag that can be used to post whatever links you want to share, and there is a reader page setup at
/users/username/reader that is useful for privately screening feeds for articles. If a user does not have a home page, it can be manually created by going to
mysite.example/admin/users/username and clicking the button that says Create User Home.
Change Site Rules
The rules template appears by default in any place where a user submits text content, such as when editing a page, or posting a new topic or reply in the forum.
On the admin page, click the Template link, and then the Rules link, or go to directly to
yourhostname.example/template/rules. Then edit this page as needed.
You may also want to edit the
upload template, and the
comments template.
Bandwidth Throttling
If you are sharing an internet connection, or are otherwise concerned about bandwidth use, keep in mind that Super Simple Server has a full-featured bandwidth throttle, which includes many advanced features such as group-based throttling, scheduling, and charting.
You can access the server bandwidth controls via your admin control area, or go directly to
yourhostname.example/admin/bandwidth. There are bandwidth charts as well as a page to free-form edit the bandwidth throttle. More documentation is available on the
bandwidth reference page.
Further Customizing
Check out the
full list of templates, and also the
format reference to help guide you. Remember, every site also has a default forum at
yourhostname.example/forum as well as a default chat room at
yourhostname.example/chat.
Refer to the
managing guide for other important information about how to control users and moderate content on your site.