Site terms

While Telligent Community ships out of the box with default terminology, you can customize the terminology used in your community to meet your needs. You can:

• Modify default terms
• Delete default terms
• Add new terms
• Import terms

For example, Telligent Community uses the "friend" concept so users can distinguish certain community members from the rest of the community, follow their activity, and communicate with them more directly than with unfriended users. However, you may want to change the term friend to something like associate or colleague. The site terms functionality allows you to make that change.

This article tells you:

• How site terms work
• How to modify a site term
• How to add a site term
• How to delete a site term
• How to import site terms

How site terms work

Site terms are used in conjunction with resource files, which are XML files containing { key, value } pairs for a specific language (the English version of which is located in web/Languages/en-US). Using resource files for strings is an easy way to allow your site to run different language versions with minimal work (namely, updating these resource files for each supported language).

Resource files typically contain the exact text to be used when requested. In some resource values, however, we make use of site terms to allow a further level of indirection (where the first level is the resource file itself).

Site terms contain three parts:

1. Token name - The identifier given to the term so it can be referenced inside a resource file. Each name must be unique for any given language.

2. Original value - The default value for the site term.

3. Replaced value - The value currently overriding the original value. (If no replaced value is specified, the original value is used.)

A site term takes the form of:

where the tokenname is replaced with one of the available site terms loaded for the community. For example, if you wanted to display the string "Welcome to my group," you could have an entry like this:

The problem with this approach comes if or when you want to universally change part of a phrase, such as changing "group" in the above example to "room." You would have to manually update this resource value (and all other resource values that make use of the word "group"). If you want to update that phrase again at a later time, you would have to repeat the process.

Alternatively, you could have used this as your value:

The difference here is that you are using the value ${group_lowercase} instead of the literal word "group." When this resource is requested, the ${group_lowercase} value is replaced with whatever literal text you have currently defined for this site term. In the future, if you want to change this value again, you would not have to modify your resource files, only the site term.

If you are viewing a non-English language, you may see a warning that no site terms exists. All non-English languages, by default, have no default site terms loaded.

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Modify an existing site term

For the site terms already defined out of the box (friends and groups) or for any site terms you've defined yourself, you can modify the term used throughout the site (except within configurable widgets which require manual modification):

1. Navigate to Control Panel Dashboard > System Administration > Site Administration >Site Content > Site Terms. The list of terms displays in the center of the page.

2. Click Edit for the term you want to modify. In the dialog window that displays, you can enter the Replacement Term.

3. Click Save to close the dialog window. The change displays in the term list.

   While the term value was changed, the token name remains static. Telligent Community will continue to use the default token. Your Web site will not reflect the changed terminology if the term is part of a configurable widget.

   To change the term in the configurable widget, you have to manually configure the widget to reflect the new terminology.

   If you want to revert to an original term (e.g., from associate to friend) click Reset for the modified term, or click Reset All to return all modified terms to the original terminology.

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Add a new site term

If you want to enable new site terms that can be easily replace with alternate terms without directly editing the resources.xml file:

1. Navigate to Control Panel Dashboard > System Administration > Site Administration >Site Content > Site Terms. The list of terms displays in the center of the page.

2. Click Add New Term at the bottom of the page. A dialog window displays in which you can add the new site term.

3. Enter a new token name (and record this for later use) in the Token Name field. For example, you could specify "forums_uppercase" as the token name.

4. Enter the term you are replacing in the Original Term field. For example, if you want to use the term "Discussions" instead of Forums, specify the Original Term as "Forums". Note: This field is required.

5. In the Replacement Term field, enter the new term to be used. For example, specify "Discussions" to replace all instances of "Forums" with "Discussions."

6. Click Save. The new term displays in the list.

7. Now edit your resources.xml file(s) to replace the original term with the token name. For example, within the resources.xml file, search for "Forums" and replace all of those references from "Forums" to "${forums_uppercase}" (the token name you specified in step 3 above).
   
   If at any time you want to change the site term again, you can just specify the appropriate replacement terms and the change is made across the site (except in configurable widgets).

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Delete a site term

To delete a site term:

1. Navigate to Control Panel Dashboard > System Administration > Site Administration >Site Content > Site Terms. The list of terms displays in the center of the page.

2. Click Delete next to the term you want to remove from the site term list. A confirmation dialog displays.

3. Click OK to delete the term.

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Import site terms

For the import functionality to be available, you must have more than one language enabled in the languages.xml file. When you import site terms, they will be localized for the language used by your site.

To import site terms:

1. Navigate to Control Panel Dashboard > System Administration > Site Administration >Site Content > Site Terms. The list of terms displays in the center of the page.

2. Select the language to import from the Selected Language drop-down list at the top of the page. (Note: You will not have any choices besides U.S. English unless other language pack(s) are installed.)

3. Click Import. The terms will be localized for your Web site's language and added to the list of existing terms. All existing terms will be retained and will not be overwritten by the import process.