Plugin Disable vs. Delete

[BVBAccelerate]

I have a site currently under development at http://ambeta1.info/conference/. It was just upgraded to OCS 2.3.1.0.

Looking at the sidebar, there are certain things that I don't think our users will ever need such as the information block or the navigation block. I'd like to remove them from the site entirely (all conferences) however I notice that the only way to affect these blocks is to go in as conference manager and change the System Plugins. Now I ran into a couple of unexpected things here so before I started deleting / changing things I wanted to get some advice.

Since these plugins are listed under a specific conference I figured I'd be able to enable or disable them for each conference. Now I find out that I can't enable / disable I can only delete. It also looks like the deleting deletes entire from the file system, meaning it is site wide, and not for the specific conference even though that is how I am accessing the administration of them. So if I do delete it they will not have a chance to get it back if they would ever want to.

So, what I'm wondering is why are these located under specific conference instances if they are unable to be enabled / disabled for them and can only be deleted entirely? Is there some way to enable or disable that I'm not seeing? Is it a easy re-install if I decide to delete them but they end up being wanted?

Hopefully someone can shed some light on this for me

[jmacgreg]

Hi BVBAccelerate,

You can disable the blocks on a per-conference basis by visiting, for each conference, Conference Site Management -> Step 4. Changes here will be reflected at the Scheduled Conference level as well.

However, if you do delete a block (or any) plugin, it's easy to reinstall: just download the plugin files (either by re-downloading OCS entirely, or by downloading the files from http://github.com/pkp/ocs) and either upload manually to the correct directory (one of the dirs in plugins/) or use the Install a New Plugin function at the bottom of the plugin page (note that the plugin must be in tar.gz format).

Cheers,
James

[BVBAccelerate]

Thanks for the info James.

You can disable the blocks on a per-conference basis by visiting, for each conference, Conference Site Management -> Step 4. Changes here will be reflected at the Scheduled Conference level as well.

Can someone please give me directions on how to get to Step 4 of Conference Site Management?

I can't find it. If I go to my user home then click on my Conference Manager role for a conference it takes me to a page with the Conference Site Management heading. It lists out all of the scheduled conferences along with the general management. I can click on Website Management from there and then Step 4 is Conference Style, which doesn't seem to refer to what I'm talking about. I can click on Setup for a scheduled conference but then there are only 3 steps.

If anyone could point this out to me I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

[jmacgreg]

Hi BVBAccelerate,

Which version of OCS are you using? In 2.1.2/2.3+ you should be able to go to Conference Management -> Website Management -> Step 4: Conference Style.

Cheers,
James

[BVBAccelerate]

I'm using 2.3.2. I was just misunderstanding. I was thinking on the level of a scheduled conference rather than on the level of a conference.

Thanks for your help!