The Backchannel Application¶ ↑

This application was created for the CSC 517 Spr 2014 Ruby on Rails Project.

Team Members¶ ↑

• Rachel Lloyd (rjlloyd)

• William Morrow (wemorrow)

• Mitchell Neville (mdnevill)

Testing Framework¶ ↑

Test::Unit is used for unit testing, while RSpec is used for integration and functional tests.

Starting URL¶ ↑

152.1.13.231:5801/

To Run the Application¶ ↑

For a fresh install, run: %bundle install %rake db:seed

Then start the server: %rails server -p 5801

On First Startup¶ ↑

Seeds¶ ↑

The application seeded with a few users and categories. The super_admin account (username: [email protected] password: ‘super_admin’) is created along

with an admin account (username: [email protected] password: 'admin'). Two
other users (Mitchell and Marty) are created as well.

Managing Users and Categories¶ ↑

The categories Science and History are created initially as approved, while
Biology is left unapproved to demonstrate this capability. As an admin, you may
navigate to Manage Users using the top right dropdown menu button after log in.
From here, you may view, delete, or promote users to admin status. Regular users are
denied access to viewing users.

You may also navigate to Categories from the top menu, to display, approve, or
delete categories. Users may request new categories, but they must be approved
before use. If you wish to deny a category approval, it is simply deleted. Regular
users have access to the Categories index, so that they can check the status of their
proposed categories.

Searching¶ ↑

You may search from the top search input area. You may select to search by
category name, user name, or post content from the drop down box next to the
search input.

Other Notes¶ ↑

• The super administrator account cannot be deleted and is seeded in the database during

deployment. The account information is: email: [email protected] password: ‘super_admin’

• Signed in users may propose categories, which are to be approved by an administrator.

Administrators may choose to deny a proposal, which essentially is deleting the category from the list of categories.

• The search bar, links to posts and categories, and user management links are all

included in the layout’s navigation bar. You may choose to refine your search by selecting a search criteria option from the dropdown list beside the search form.

• When using the search bar, searching by category looks for an exact match of the category

name. If you wish, you may also view all categories and view posts associated with that specific category.