Module: Blog

[MaryMatlow]

@kongondo Yesss! It worked, but only when I disabled scheduled post and comments. Is there a way to enable them?

Also, would like to carry over the house styles to the blog.  Ignore this!!

Thank you so much.

[kongondo]

OK, we are getting somewhere. In my previous testing I had one or two issues with comments but was never able to replicate the issue further. I suggest the following:

1. Do a cleanup (but do no uninstall Blog)
2. Make sure you have both Comments field and Schedule Pages modules installed
3. Run Blog install wizard
4. Enjoy your new Blog...hopefully 

Edited January 8, 2017 by kongondo

[MaryMatlow]

Fantastic @kongondo it works. Thanks a ton. Will bug you more if I run into issues.

Cheers!!

[kongondo]

Glad it worked .

[MaryMatlow]

Hi @kongondo, here I'm again. The blog works fine and I'm able to style it according to my needs, but somehow on the "posts" homepage I'm not getting the summary view of the posts. I get the full post and a link to the next post at the bottom. How do I get summary posts to work? Thanks.

[kongondo]

Hi @MaryMatlow,

Please read the docs, here (WIP), especially, this section, but for your specific question, this topic . Please note that some newer and amended methods have not yet found their way into the docs, e.g. the method renderRelatedPosts(). However, these are all in this (long, I know) thread but probably best to take a peek at MarkupBlog class itself for all render methods before we get the docs up to speed again.

[MaryMatlow]

Hi @kongondo,

I've very busy this past week and haven't had the time look at the documentation. Will do it this weekend and try it out and report back. Thank you very much for your help.

[MaryMatlow]

HI @kongondo,

So here's the progress. I've a summary page with blog posts listed, and have a full-length blog post page. On the blog-post template I've added an image field, and that image is the splash image to go across the top of the post, below which the post would be rendered. See screenshot:

 

Quote

 

 

The thing I want to do is include this image as part of the summary post list, as in here:

 

Quote

 

Any idea how can I achieve it. Thanks for your help.

[kongondo]

@MaryMatlow,

Have a look at this, this and this post plus the ensuing discussions.

[MaryMatlow]

@kongondo I can't seem to get the featured image to work. Ive added image to blog_image field and am calling it on posts template like this:

<?php
    //CALL THE MODULE - MarkupBlog
    $blog = $modules->get("MarkupBlog");
    //main content
    $featured = array('tag'=>'thumb', 'width'=>550, 'position'=>'above');
    $content .= $blog->renderPosts("limit=7", true, $featured);

    //include the main/common markup
    require_once("blog-main.inc");

There are images in the blog_body field also but none of the images are being rendered.

[kongondo]

@MaryMatlow,

Seems you missed the third link in my post above . The array indices were changed to 

'post_image_tag' => 'whatever',

etc..Please see the whole list there or within the module code itself

 

Edited January 18, 2017 by kongondo

[MaryMatlow]

Hi @kongondo, Thanks for your great module and you patient help with it. The blog page and summary page work fine. On the summary page with the array options we can turn off the comment count in the headline, how can i do the same on the blog post also. I'm using your default blog-post template to render single post.

Thanks for your help.

[kongondo]

Hi @MaryMatlow,

Same way, really. renderPosts() takes 3 arguments, the third of which is $options. Since you need to pass in the 3rd argument, in blog-post.php, line #56, you also have to specify the second argument like so:

$options = array('post_comments'=>0);
$content = $blog->renderPosts($page, false, $options) . $blog->postAuthor() . $renderComments . $blog->renderNextPrevPosts($page);

The 'false' is the second argument. The post will be rendered in full since what that says is that $small = false.

[MaryMatlow]

Thanks @kongondo, that's perfect. The blog works beautifully. But now I'm getting a fatal error with the BlogPublishDate module:

Compile Error: Cannot redeclare class BlogPublishDate (line 23 of /xx/xxxxxxxxx/html/site/modules/Blog/BlogPublishDate.module) 

Not sure where this has come from.

[kongondo]

That's coming from ProcessWire's file compiler; it is not a bug on Blog's side. Try clearing your file compiler cache to see if it solves the issue.  

[MaryMatlow]

Thank you @kongondo, clearing the cache solved the issue. And your Blog works like a charm. Thank you, Thank you!!!

[MaryMatlow]

Hi @kongondo i want to render just one category post on homepage but would like to disable pagination with it. Is there an options array to do that? I couldn't find it.

Second, I want to render posts from two categories on separate templates with different options. For example, when a news article is rendered I do not want author, comments etc but for the blog post I want to keep all that. The full single post uses the blog-post.php template by default. How can i make the news item to use let's say news-item.php?

Thanks.

 

[kongondo]

On 03/02/2017 at 5:05 PM, MaryMatlow said:

i want to render just one category post on homepage but would like to disable pagination with it. Is there an options array to do that? I couldn't find it.

I am not sure I understand this one. Not sure if you want 1 post from 1 category or several posts from 1 category. Irrespective, pagination only kicks in when you grab a limited number of items and the results returned are a PageArray. 

If what you mean is:

1. Render only 1 post from a given category: Here the trick is to return a Page rather than a PageArray. So, we use a get(). findOne() (if you are using PW 3.X) should also work.

$content = '';
// render a single blog post on Blog Home Page
//$singlePost = $pages->get(11335);// grab by ID
$singlePost = $pages->get('template=blog-post, sort=random, blog_categories=News Article, limit=1');// grab a random post
$content .= $blog->renderPosts($singlePost);

2. Render several posts from only 1 category. In this case, this will return an array. So, to avoid pagination, we need to grab ALL the available post, i.e. no limit (careful with this one if you have lots of posts!).

$content = '';
// render ALL blog posts from a single category on Blog Home Page
$oneCategoryPosts = $pages->find('template=blog-post, blog_categories=News Article');
$content .= $blog->renderPosts($oneCategoryPosts);
// these will also work; passing in a selector
#$selector = "template=blog-post, blog_categories=News Article";
#$content .= $blog->renderPosts($selector);

 

On 03/02/2017 at 5:05 PM, MaryMatlow said:

Second, I want to render posts from two categories on separate templates with different options. For example, when a news article is rendered I do not want author, comments etc but for the blog post I want to keep all that. The full single post uses the blog-post.php template by default. How can i make the news item to use let's say news-item.php?

No need to create a different template for blog posts classified as 'News Article'. Instead, we include some extra logic in the template file blog-post.php. See example below.

// get the category 'News Article'
$newsArticle = $pages->get('template=blog-category, name=news-article');

// special render for blog posts that are classified under 'News Article'
if($page->blog_categories->has($newsArticle)) {
    $options = array('post_categories'=>1, 'post_tags' => 0);// options ONLY for news articles 
    $renderAuthor = '';// don't render blog post author for news articles
    $renderComments = '';// ditto comments
}

// normal blog post
else {
    #$options = array();// if you wish, options for all other blog posts go in here
    $renderAuthor = $blog->postAuthor();// render authors for normal blog posts
    $renderComments = $blog->renderComments($page->blog_comments);// ditto comments
}

$content = $blog->renderPosts($page, false, $options) . $renderAuthor . $renderComments . $blog->renderNextPrevPosts($page);

 

Edited February 4, 2017 by kongondo

[MaryMatlow]

Hey @kongondo, thanks for your detailed response. Regarding, the homepage i should have explained that I need only the latest news article to display, and since there are going to be several news articles the pagination will appear by default, and i don't want to show it. Now I could hide it by using a CSS rule but thought there should be a more elegant solution.

The code for separating options for blog and news articles worked perfectly. Thanks.

I thought I had worked out the rendering of blog and news articles separately but it doesn't seem to work. This is the code I'm using for display of news articles category, but all categories are being displayed:

$posts = $pages->find("template=blog-post, blog_categories='News', limit=10");//grab some posts
                $options = array('post_count' => 1, 'post_comments' => 2, 'post_small_image' => '1', 'post_small_image_width' => '740',);
                $posts = '';
                $posts .= $page->image;
                //render a limited number of summarised posts that belong to this category
                $posts .= $page->blog_body . $blog->renderPosts($posts, true, $options);
                    echo $posts;

Also, no featured image or images within the blog body are showing in any of the posts, summary view or single post view. On the previous site where I used the same code I had no problem with images. Appreciate your help.

[kongondo]

4 hours ago, MaryMatlow said:

Regarding, the homepage i should have explained that I need only the latest news article to display,

I already answered how to do this . If you don't want pagination, then, in your case, grab only 1 item.

// GET 1 post, SORTED BY created {you could also sort by '-blog_date'}
$singlePost = $pages->get('template=blog-post, sort=-created, blog_categories=News');
$out = $blog->renderPosts($singlePost);
echo $out;

 

4 hours ago, MaryMatlow said:

This is the code I'm using for display of news articles category, but all categories are being displayed:

$posts = $pages->find("template=blog-post, blog_categories='News', limit=10");//grab some posts
                $options = array('post_count' => 1, 'post_comments' => 2, 'post_small_image' => '1', 'post_small_image_width' => '740',);
                $posts = '';
                $posts .= $page->image;
                //render a limited number of summarised posts that belong to this category
                $posts .= $page->blog_body . $blog->renderPosts($posts, true, $options);
                    echo $posts;

 

I am not being rude but this is the point at which I encourage you to get that 'PHP for beginners' book  (e.g., this one) as well as revisit the PW docs. Let's walk through your code:

Line 1#: You grab some posts using find(). That returns a PageArray. You then assign it to the variable $posts.

Line #3: You are overwriting the variable $post (which contains the PageArray from Line #1), assigning it an empty string, i.e. ''.

Line #4: You are appending to the empty string $post an Object which contains the current page's image.

Line # 6: You then append to $post  other stuff.....

That's why it doesn't work as expected . I am surprised it didn't throw an error. Maybe you have debug turned off? 

[MaryMatlow]

@kongondo You are right. I'm a complete PHP novice, trying to wing my way through, copying code without understanding. Obviously that's no way to do things. It's time to teach myself the basics of PHP, and I'm determined to do that. Thanks for pointing out the resources. And thanks for all your help and patience.

[kongondo]

5 hours ago, MaryMatlow said:

It's time to teach myself the basics of PHP, and I'm determined to do that

...and we'll be here to help! Please have another go and let us know how it goes . 

[MaryMatlow]

Hi @kongondo, it's all coming together nicely. I have one Blog page and other News page (both outside the Blog page structure) and they display summary posts and news articles respectively. I'm using the Style number 3 from Blog configuration. Two issues:

1) When the post/news article opens the path is mysite/posts/blog1 or mysite/posts/news1 which is expected because I'm adding these under "Posts". Ideally I would want them to open as mysite/blog/blog1 or mysite/news/news1. Hope it makes sense. Is there a way to achieve this?

2) Clicking on "Categories" takes me to mysite/categories/news. I would want it go to mysite/news instead where all the summary news posts sit.

Thanks for your help.

[kongondo]

On 11/02/2017 at 4:21 PM, MaryMatlow said:

1) When the post/news article opens the path is mysite/posts/blog1 or mysite/posts/news1 which is expected because I'm adding these under "Posts". Ideally I would want them to open as mysite/blog/blog1 or mysite/news/news1. Hope it makes sense. Is there a way to achieve this

I am a bit confused here. Do you mean AND and not OR? I.e. do you want normal posts to open as /mysite/blog/blog1/ AND news posts to open as /mysite/news/news1? OR you are happy with either? If AND, then you will need URL rewriting as explained here (quite advanced code) or similar. If you mean OR, then just rename the page 'Posts' to whatever you need, i.e. either 'News' or 'Blog'.

On 11/02/2017 at 4:21 PM, MaryMatlow said:

2) Clicking on "Categories" takes me to mysite/categories/news. I would want it go to mysite/news instead where all the summary news posts sit.

I am not sure I understand this either. I assume you mean clicking on the sub-navigation on the right-hand side (in the demo blog template files)? If yes, that navigation is built using the method renderNav() in MarkupBlog. You might have to create your own custom navigation in that case.

[tooth-paste]

I need some help. I have read all posts and documentation but can not get it to work. I have two questions.

1. Image summary page
My blog index page works but I would like to have the image on the right side. Can I do this with CSS (img.post-featured-image{float:right})?

<div class='row'>
	<div class='col-md-12'>			
		<?php
			$blog = $modules->get("MarkupBlog");
			$options = array('width'=>280, 'alt'=>'title', 'post_small_image'=>2);
			$content = $blog->renderPosts("limit=10", true, $options);
			echo $content; 
		?>	
	</div>
</div>

2. blog-post.php 

How can I output the post that is linked to. I mean the page with the full blog-item? I use this code but it does not work.

$blog = $modules->get("MarkupBlog");
$singlePost = $pages->get('template=blog-post, sort=-created');
$out = $blog->renderPosts($singlePost);
echo $out;

Can anyone help out or give directions on how to find solutions