# Gossamer Links Help

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Build Help

The Build menu allows you to create HTML pages from your Gossamer Links directory, and control the appearance of those pages. Separate HTML pages are created for each category and index (such as the "What's New", "What's Cool" and "Top Rated" indexes). The "HTML Pages" options provide you with three different ways of creating HTML pages: "Build Changed", "Build All", and "Build Staggered". Clicking the "Dynamic" link in your admin panel allows you to view your directory without performing a build; for very large directories, this can actually be better, as page.cgi is very fast, and works well under mod_perl. The "Templates" options let you edit the templates from which the directory's HTML pages are created. The "Diffs" section provides listings of the changes that have been made to Gossamer Forum's templates as the program has been updated.

To generate your HTML pages you have three options:

- Build Changed: Clicking the "Build Changed" link creates the "What's New", "What's Cool", "Top Rated" and home pages. Next, it will create only those categories and pages of links that have changed since the last time the pages were built.
- Build All: Clicking "Build All" will create all of the HTML pages in your database.
- Build Staggered: Clicking "Build Staggered" will create all of the HTML pages in your database, but will perform the build incrementally, performing a series of small builds one at a time in order to avoid resource allocation problems in large databases.

All the pages in Gossamer Links are controlled through the use of templates. You can manage your templates from within the build menu.

- User Templates: Clicking "User Templates" allows you to edit the templates that create your database's HTML pages. By altering these templates, you can customize the appearances and functions of the HTML pages that make up your directory. Multiple template sets can be saved; you can update and modify one template set while displaying another to your users, allowing you to perform upgrades without inconveniencing or confusing users, as well as offering your users multiple directory interfaces. To view a list of all tags that can be used in a specific template, add the following tag to the desired template:
  <%GT::Template::dump%>
  Open the page built by the template (you may have to refresh it as well), and a list of all tags that can be used in that template will be displayed. For more information on customizing your Gossamer Links directory using the template menus, as well as a complete list of all Gossamer Links user template, see "Templates" in the "Customizing Gossamer Links" section of the Gossamer Links manual.
- User Language: If you are using Gossamer Links on a site that is not written in English, you can change the user-viewable language here at the “User Language” option. This feature greatly simplifies the translation of a Gossamer Links application in a foreign language by giving all Descriptions a code that is used throughout the program. Change it once and all the changes will be applied to all applications throughout the program where the code is used.
- Template Globals: Clicking "Template Globals" allows you to edit Gossamer Links's globals. Globals are HTML tags which can be used in all templates. By editing and adding globals, you can configure frequently used tags to be quickly and easily inserted into any template you wish.

Working With Templates
The Gossamer Links template system is very easy to work with. Basically, when a user does something like views a category, the program gets the appropriate template (category.html in this case) and parses it. It then displays the output to the user. Gossamer Links will print out exactly what's in the template, but replace anything found in between <% and %> tags with the appropriate values. You can also include other template files within other templates, allowing you to maintain seperate header and footer files that will be displayed on most pages. Please see the GT::Template documentation for more information on the syntax as well as "Templates" in the "Customizing Gossamer Links" section of the Gossamer Links manual.

FileMan
FileMan is a web-based File Manager that allows you to manage your directory without using FTP, and is bundled with Gossamer Links. FileMan contains its own separate help documentation. Note: It is recommended that FileMan only be used by those familiar with editing text files. Additional information about FileMan can be found in the "FileMan Forum" and the Gossamer Threads site.

Diffs
The Diffs menus provide detailed descriptions of how Gossamer Links's templates have been updated since the program's creation. The 2.0.3-2.0.4 menu, for example, will list all of the HTML that was added to Gossamer Forum when version 2.0.4 was released, as well as all of the HTML that was removed in that version from version 2.0.3. HTML that was added is indicated by a plus (+) symbol; HTML that was removed is indicated by a minus (-) symbol. The "Extra Template Diffs" show template updates for the additional template sets (av, mint, simple, snap, yahoo).

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