Search

< Back to Administrative Tasks

Topic Types

By default, you have two types of topics in WSN Links: regular and reciprocal. In some other WSN scripts you have just one default type, regular. Suppose you wish to create another group.

Go to Admin Panel -> Topics -> Topic Types. This type manager will guide you through adding and editing your types. You give it the display name you want and the template code you want, and it automatically creates and inserts the right template code. If you want to have the types appear separately from each other, select not to mix topic types at the bottom of the page -- if you want them mixed together and will distinguish them in some other visual way, select to mix them.

Sometimes you want to display different content in the topic bit or the topic details page depending on what type it is. Do this with template conditionals:
<IF {LINKTYPE} is regular>regular stuff<ELSE IF {LINKTYPE} is recip>reciprocal stuff<ELSE>other stuff</IF>

For these conditionals, you'll need to use the official type name rather than the display name. You can find the official name (which is usually just the lowercased display name with spaces and special characters removed) in the advanced area at the bottom of the type manager page.

Using Only One Topic Type

Sometimes, people don't want to use multiple topic types. The best way to handle this is to simply switch off topic types at Admin -> Settings -> Switches. This will make everything be considered a regular topic with no prompt for the type.