[Tutorial] I18N News Plugin (Version 3)

[Angryboy]

GetSimple has a range of news plugins available for use, each of which have their own unique quirks, strengths and weaknesses. The most potent one on Extend at the moment I believe is I18N News, although strictly there isn't a plugin with that name on the repository. I18N News refers to the use of Mvlcek's various I18N-branded plugins as a news module, because they are so flexible that they can be used for a great many other purposes far and beyond the scope of news.

They are not the most user-friendly plugins to use for this purpose initially, hence many choose to just use the pre-packaged plugins that are there, which is understandable. But with a tutorial that eases you into their use, you should have no problems whatsoever manipulating these tools into an incredibly powerful asset to your site.

I give you the I18N News Plugin Series!

I18N News [Version 1] (uses i18n and i18n Search)
I18N News [Version 2] (uses i18n and i18n Search)
I18N News [Version 3] *new!* (uses i18n, i18n Search and i18n Special Pages)

[mvlcek]

Thought that I'd write up a tutorial on the way that I use Mvlcek's news plugin.

http://www.dbzvortex.net.tc/misc/2011-05...ws-plugin/

~~note~~
Wasn't sure where to post this, since it isn't a script or component, but it is a tip on the usage of a plugin. Didn't think Mvlcek would appreciate me highjacking his topic, so I simply put it here.

Great description!

Some comments to make it even easier:

• If you do not have to migrate news from another system, you can also use order:created (creation date is supplied by I18N Custom fields plugin)
  
• If you add categories as tags/keywords, you can have multiple categories and you can search for them, e.g. Business news with tags:news,Business. You would need to remove the "news" for displaying though.
  
• what do you think about ditching the excerpt and write is as first paragraph of the news content. I could provide an option to the I18N Search plugin to display the first paragraph instead a number of words.
  

[Angryboy]

Thank you! It really made me smile that you read it (and were the first to!)

First Point: I'll add that to the article as well. Forgotten all about that! xD

Second Point: I do that for my own site, but thought it might confuse some people (because I couldn't word it properly).

Third Point: Perhaps that could be added as an option (and a particularly useful one at that), but I think it may be better to integrate your CustomFields plugin with the Search Plugin, so that other variables that you have defined can be echoed on the page (e.g. if you have an avatar defined, it gets shown with the results, or if you have an excerpt then it replaces the word-count feature). I say this because sometimes the first paragraph isn't really the first paragraph - the first p tags sometimes just encompass the first line of the rest of a page depending on how its written, and the line may be nonsensical without the rest of another paragraph to help contextualise it.

So for a point of ease - definitely make the first paragraph an option. If you want to increase the utility of i18n Search even more, try and see if integrating it with i18n CustomFields is feasible. If you manage to do that, I'd virtually be an evangellical Mvlcekian and Ccaglian.

[ccagle8]

great post Angryboy - it's great to see this type of passion and development around GS. (the both of you, of course)

[Angryboy]

Once again, thank you This is an awesome CMS with a fruitful community, so I'd like to to my bit to help.

Also added that bit in mvlcek said about order:creation and fixed the way some of the coding was displayed on the page.

[sal]

Article is down, used all your bandwidth? Ouch.

[Angryboy]

Nope, worse. Things went bellend up because I breached an apparent term of service. Never was informed of which one it is or even have a way to contact the service about how to rectify the error, so I'm rebuilding my site elsewhere.

I'll be re-hosting the article on my personal one, so the link will be reposted once that's done.

[Angryboy]

Article is up now!

http://spritingonawhim.tk/articles/getsi...ews-plugin

[Angryboy]

I've made a second version of the article now to accomodate for Mvlcek's 2.XX incarnation(s) of the i18n Search plugin.

http://spritingonawhim.net.tc/articles/g...-plugin-2/

[andyash]

http://spritingonawhim.tk/articles/gets…ews-plugin
http://spritingonawhim.net.tc/articles/g...-plugin-2/

Images are not working in your articles.

[Angryboy]

Ah thanks for checking that. I'd forgotten that because the links for the images across the site broke that my articles had been affected. I'll get to fixing the others, but this article's images (for Version 2) have been fixed. Thanks again!

[Angryboy]

Version 3 of the I18N News System tutorial has arrived!

http://spritingonawhim.net.tc/articles/g...3/?lang=en

[akd]

Version 3 of the I18N News System tutorial has arrived!

http://spritingonawhim.net.tc/articles/g...3/?lang=en

Links to tutorial all dead Please reupload or give us hope to learn from yr experience....

[datiswous]

Maybe this helps:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://spri...3/?lang=en

I don't know if it's still relevant since the plugin(s) might have changed over time. Also, mvlcek has been updating his docs over time:
http://mvlcek.bplaced.net/get-simple/search-news