Fred Atkinson wrote:
It would be really nice if the Webmaster could put his/her own site
logo on the various administration screens (and the newsite.pl,
list.pl, etc.) in Ringlink.
Since you mention list.pl, let me start to say that Ringlink already
_does_ allow a _ringmaster_ to submit a URL to a _ring_ logo. (You
said webmaster and site logo, but I assume that you meant ringmaster
and ring logo.) To do so, you select
Ring admin -> Customize -> Appearance
On that page you can also customize the colours to be used for your
webring.
Unlike the customized colours, the ring logo is only displayed on the
list pages (list.pl, next5.pl and prev5.pl), i.e. the pages that are
displayed to people who _navigate_ your ring.
So, can't the program be changed so that a possible ring logo is also
displayed on the admin pages? Of course it _can_ be done, but there
are a few reasons for the current solution:
- There is not enough room for a ring logo considering the current
default layout of the admin pages.
- The publicly visible list pages are the most important.
- By selecting a ring specific colour scheme, you can still achieve a
feeling of ring identity (sort of...).
It should also be noted that system owners often wish to customize the
admin pages to reflect a particular webring service. One way to do
that, as mentioned by Pete, is to add a _system_ logo by customizing
admin.html.
To summarize my current view, I think that a Ringlink ringmaster has
two overall options: Either s/he can choose to host their ring(s) at
someone elses ring service, and stick with the limitations as regards
ring customization. It should be noted that the current customization
possibilities, that a ringmaster has with Ringlink, still offers
rather good opportunities compared to some of the alternatives.
The other option, for the more 'particular' ringmasters, is to install
Ringlink themselves and run it as a one ring system. The latter gives
you extensive additional customization possibilities, for instance by
editing the template files.
Perhaps the ringmaster might be able to upload a logo for his ring
to be displayed on any screen that is ring specific (as a second
suggestion).
Yes, that's another thing. Ringlink presupposes that possible ring
logos are stored at the ringmasters' web sites.
Ringlink provides a distributed approach for running webrings. To the
extent the users allow other ringmasters to run their webrings on
their systems, it's typically offered as a free service without ads.
For that reason, the Ringlink program is designed to limit the load on
the web sites where the program is running, and, accordingly, I'm
disinclined to add an image upload feature.
Having some programming experience myself, I'd think that this
would be a relatively minor change of code.
I agree on that, and the code changes required to implement your
suggestions are not the reasons for my 'resistance'. ;-)
/ Gunnar