Blog Plugins

[shawn_a]

Whats the best plugin for blogs and news posting ?

I've been evaluating them all, and I cant find one that meets blog requirements.

There seems to be nice ones that are no longer active for 3.1.

Then there is a new breed of "blog/news" hackery, using normal pages.
Which seems like the safest bet right now as far as continued support.
But I find creating pages for news to be a clumsy, bulky, slow experience

These are the requirements for a blog plugin. At least mine.

• excerpt templating, built in or custom, for listing or blog rolls.
  
• excerpt support for breaks and preview thumbs (preset thumb crops in config)
  
  
• quick posting, easy post creation, more streamlined than page creation.
  
  
• categories and/or tagging of posts
  
  
• seperate UI and datastore as to not clutter pages with news posts, or same datastore but can hide from pages view.
  
  
• selectors for posts by date, category, tag
  
  
• sort options
  

These can be handled by plugins themselves or other plugins
But are also essential important features

• search compatability
  
  
• external commenting support
  
  
• multi user support, front user or multi user plugins for example
  
• The ability to flag a normal page as news also would be a neat feature
  
• rss news feeds
  
• rss auto syndicated feeds
  
• archives, month, year selectors.
  
• Inline image uploading
  
• Post statistics, eg. Most popular, talkbacks etc.
  

So I wonder are there any existing blog frameworks that can be converted into plugins ?

Or how can we create the perfect blog plugin ?
It seems like a badass blog plugin would be something that might simply join the awesome plugins we have.
i18n search, simple pages, page excerpts, dynpages

Thoughts ?

EDITED:
I've added some features mentioned so far and clarified some of the bullet points for now.
Thanks for moving it to dev discussions, it has turned into that more than a specific blog solution discussion.

[alienee2]

Whats the best plugin for blogs and news posting ?

I've been evaluating them all, and I cant find one that meets blog requirements.

There seems to be nice ones that are no longer active for 3.1.

Then there is a new breed of "blog/news" hackery, using normal pages.
Which seems like the safest bet right now as far as continued support.
But I find creating pages for news to be a clumsy, bulky, slow experience

There are the requirements for a blog plugin. At least mine.

• excerpt templating, built in or custom, for listing or blog rolls.
  
• excerpt support for breaks and preview thumbs
  
  
• quick posting, easy post creation
  
  
• categories and or tagging of posts
  
  
• seperate UI and datastore as to not clutter pages with news posts
  
  
• selectors for posts by date, category, tag
  
  
• sort options
  

These can be handled by plugins themselves or other plugins
search compatability
external commenting support
multi user support, front user or multi user plugins for example
The ability to flag a page as news also is a neat feature
rss feeds


So I wonder are there any existing blog frameworks that can be converted into plugins ?

Or how can we create the perfect blog plugin ?
It seems like a badass blog plugin would be something that might simply join the awesome plugins we have.
i18n search, simple pages, page excerpts, dynpages

Thoughts ?

Hi Shawn,

I think the near perfect blog is done with Special Pages;
all of the things you list are easy to do with that plugin, except i haven't come up with a good way to do categories yet, but i have some ideas;
also i haven't yet solved how to handle archive and most popular;

-marc

[mvlcek]

I think the near perfect blog is done with Special Pages;
all of the things you list are easy to do with that plugin, except i haven't come up with a good way to do categories yet, but i have some ideas;

What are your requirements regarding categories?
Can't they be done with tags? You can tags with a leading _: those will not be displayed in the tag cloud, but can be used for searching.

[Angryboy]

I thought shawn's whole point was that he doesn't want to do this with regular pages, and wants a standalone plugin to do all of the functions? Some people are okay with making the 'normal page' concession (most of the users who use Special Pages), but I understand why some simply won't. Basically, what shawn would want would be a version of the Special Pages plugin that didn't show the pages on the normal 'View All Pages' tab, that has the ability to automatically archive posts of a certain page type and perhaps saves the pages in a separate subdirectory (e.g. data/specialpages) since the special pages plugin does virtually everything else on his list.

Though I have to say, isn't page caching and breadcrumb trailing easier by virtue of the items being pages? For instance, if the special pages were saved to a new subdirectory of /data, would you be able to call these functions with respect to those pages? Furthermore, would you be able to hierarch them properly so that they'd show up in the regular and i18n breadcrumb trail? It's little details like this that make me see it as more beneficial to simply stick to pages (but as I said, I understand why others wouldn't want to).

[mikeh]

I recently wrote a blog plugin for my clients that pretty much covers everything you have outlined here..
In addition it has an "Auto-RSS Feed" importer that can run on a cron job or manually.

One thing it lacks is sorting & "quick posting, easy post creation".

Can you please elaborate on "quick posting, easy post creation" ?

Also can you elaborate on "excerpt templating, built in or custom, for listing or blog rolls." ?

[shawn_a]

Sure, and I will ammend other things to the requirements that people post here. Ill do that later for whats already been posted so far.

Page summary or excerpt, ability to set the preview to a specific section of text, or first n characters, and filtering media elements. Blogs typically do this by allowing uses to insert a break where preview ends. And also a thumbnail for preview pics. And filtering images and stuff out.

Quick posting, a fast light weight way to post news, few clicks.

[mikeh]

or first n characters

Would this work for excerpts:

• Image upload box to upload a image (or link to one) to be used as the thumbnail (If empty, no thumbnail)
  
• Excerpt button below WYSIWYG editor (post content). Upon clicking the button, a excerpt field displays allowing to specify custom excerpt.
  
• If no excerpt was provided, an auto excerpt of the first 250(or so) characters or text. Would be stripped down of all HTML
  

For the quick post:

• "Quick Button" on main blog manager screen (above posts list). Upon clicking the button, a form will display with small wyiwyg editor(for content) and title filed.
  

[shawn_a]

or first n characters

Would this work for excerpts:

• Image upload box to upload a image (or link to one) to be used as the thumbnail (If empty, no thumbnail)
  
• Excerpt button below WYSIWYG editor (post content). Upon clicking the button, a excerpt field displays allowing to specify custom excerpt.
  
• If no excerpt was provided, an auto excerpt of the first 250(or so) characters or text. Would be stripped down of all HTML
  

For the quick post:

• "Quick Button" on main blog manager screen (above posts list). Upon clicking the button, a form will display with small wyiwyg editor(for content) and title filed.
  

Yeah what ive been thinking, but none of this "page options" stuff a custom pages page
Create new page - (normal pages)
Create new post/blog/news - streamlines news post

And if this awesome blog plugin was on git would be awesome as well.

[n00dles101]

Hey Guys,

my new plugin 'theMatrix' should do everything your looking for here. I suppose you could describe it sort of like an XML database.

The basic functionality is:

o - create your tables
o - add your fields
o - add your data
o - query your data and output.

At the moment its supports the following fields:

o - text, normal text box
o - textlong, full width Text Box
o - slug, combines a title/slug box
o - Checkbox, Checkbox.
o - pages, a dropdown of the current Pages.
o - templates, a dropdown of the current templates
o - dropdown, a dropdown from another table.
o - datepicker, a date picker field.
o - datetimepicker, a date and time picker.
o - image, an image selector field
o - textarea, a plain textarea
o - codeeditor, a codemirror textarea
o - texteditor, a CKEditor enabled textarea.

Its still pretty much beta at the moment, but it works.
I've a demo site up here: http://matrix.digimute.com

I'll also be releasing my shortcodes plugin which when used with theMatrix allows you to easily add extra functionaily to your content easily. e.g video/code blocks/images etc.

Everything on the site is just plain old GS with the Matrix/shortcodes doing everything else.

So for example the simple News on the right hand side consists of a table "news"
with the following fields.

publishdate - datepicker
title - textlong
content - texteditor

the code to render the front page news items is :

Code:

function doNews(){
    global $returnArray;
    $newsitems=getSchemaTable('news',"SELECT id,publishdate,title,content FROM returnArray ORDER BY publishdate DESC LIMIT 2");
    
    echo '<h3 class="color-4 p2">Recent News</h3>';
    foreach ($newsitems as $news){
        $dateformat=date('d,M',$news['publishdate']);
        $dateparts=explode(',',$dateformat);
        echo '<div class="wrapper p2">';
        echo '    <time class="tdate-1 fleft" datetime="'.date('d-m-y',$news['publishdate']).'"><strong>'.$dateparts[0].'</strong>'.$dateparts[1].'</time>';
        echo '    <div class="extra-wrap">';
        echo '        <h5>'.$news['title'].'</h5>';
        echo $news['content'].' <a href="#">more</a>';
        echo '    </div>';
        echo '</div>';
    }
}

As you can see we can use SQL queries on the array to return data.

The system allows you to create hidden tables which you can then use in your own plugins.

Its up on Git if want to take a look: https://github.com/n00dles/DM_Matrix

If any one wants to contribute please let me know, would love to get a version out soon....

mike....

[shawn_a]

Will check out the matrix today.

Thanks

[shawn_a]

I thought shawn's whole point was that he doesn't want to do this with regular pages, and wants a standalone plugin to do all of the functions? Some people are okay with making the 'normal page' concession (most of the users who use Special Pages), but I understand why some simply won't. Basically, what shawn would want would be a version of the Special Pages plugin that didn't show the pages on the normal 'View All Pages' tab, that has the ability to automatically archive posts of a certain page type and perhaps saves the pages in a separate subdirectory (e.g. data/specialpages) since the special pages plugin does virtually everything else on his list.

Though I have to say, isn't page caching and breadcrumb trailing easier by virtue of the items being pages? For instance, if the special pages were saved to a new subdirectory of /data, would you be able to call these functions with respect to those pages? Furthermore, would you be able to hierarch them properly so that they'd show up in the regular and i18n breadcrumb trail? It's little details like this that make me see it as more beneficial to simply stick to pages (but as I said, I understand why others wouldn't want to).

Good point, I have updated the main post, ability to simple filter or hide stuff from pages view is more practical probably. This way we cover indexing, caching, sitemapping, and backups in the clear.

[shawn_a]

Looks like the matrix plugin will be an awesome backend datastore for a multitude of plugins.

And automatically provides support for all the granular data selection and storage requirements for a blog system.

Is Absynthe sql4array an actively maintained library ?
It does have a nice featureset.

[Angryboy]

...mike....

This looks fascinating...I can't wait to try it out when it is finished :-)

For someone to use The Matrix plugin, would they need to create another plugin to supplement it for their needs? (For example, creating a 'Blog' plugin to provide the page that allows blog entries to be made/edited)

Also, does this open the possibility for a forum (as a plugin) to be integrated on GetSimple's back-end (assuming that the forum's SQL functions can be translated into the ones you are using for XML)?

Edit: By the way that last comment wasn't a request - it was just a question as to whether such a feat is possible through your new plugin.

[shawn_a]

...mike....

This looks fascinating...I can't wait to try it out when it is finished :-)

For someone to use The Matrix plugin, would they need to create another plugin to supplement it for their needs? (For example, creating a 'Blog' plugin to provide the page that allows blog entries to be made/edited)

Also, does this open the possibility for a forum (as a plugin) to be integrated on GetSimple's back-end (assuming that the forum's SQL functions can be translated into the ones you are using for XML)?

Edit: By the way that last comment wasn't a request - it was just a question as to whether such a feat is possible through your new plugin.

Yes, this does not solve the blog problem. Just offers another tool to make the making of one easier.

[alienee2]

@n00dles101 -

I would be keen to help out with the Matrix in any way I can, and will take a look at the todo file!

[edit:]
Just finished setting up a product catalog with the matrix...it's working really well, this is really a breakthrough plugin, solves most everything i've been trying to achieve recently with custom content/output...

Any tips on how to get the codemirror editor to work for the 'codeeditor' field type?

for my integration, i'm setting up functions in the theme functions.php file for each output, and then calling them where needed, either on a page using dynpages+component, or in the template file (for stuff like widgets etc..)

[n00dles101]

@alienee - thanks, glad you liek it .

Codeeditor should be working, but noticed a little glitch in the CSS, will sort it out soon..
What issue are you having with it?

Were nearly ready to go with it. Just got to sort out the Delete functions and think were ready to beta test.
And then lots and lots of documentation.

Creating functions for the theme is the way I'm doing it on the demo site : http://matrix.digimute.com
The slider, boxes, footer lists and the news are done using TheMatrix.

[alienee2]

for some reason the code editor field shows up as a regular text field...
is there anything in particular i need to do as far as codemirror config goes, in the getsimple config?

let me know how i can help with the documentation; i'll study the code and setup some applications with it.

i'm in the process now of setting up an advanced template using matrix and shortcodes, and will make that available;
it will use matrix for the blog, portfolio, cycle slideshow, sidebar widgets, feature carousels, and homepage boxes; and i'll use the shortcodes for the columns, and advanced layout stuff, including toggles, and tabs.

[n00dles101]

@alienee - any help with docs would be great, put anything up on the GIT wiki for now and we'll collate it all into one...

can't wait to see the template your working on... sounds great....
let me know when you get some sort of demo up.... would love to take a look at what you've done....

[alienee2]

@alienee - any help with docs would be great, put anything up on the GIT wiki for now and we'll collate it all into one...

can't wait to see the template your working on... sounds great....
let me know when you get some sort of demo up.... would love to take a look at what you've done....

ok - i sent you a PM with the url to the dev site...

Also - i just setup a shortcode for twitter bootstrap tabs which works great, so i'm wondering if it is a good time to setup a forum thread on the shortcode plugin;

i do have a question about how to get shortcodes and ckeditor to work in harmony, because of the paragraph tags that the editor inserts around the shortcodes; is there a way to have the shortcode itself eliminate the extraneous tags?

[n00dles101]

@alienee - the $removeTagPattern regex at line 140 should be removing the surrounding <p> tags from the
shortcode, it is for me at least.

[alienee2]

@alienee - the $removeTagPattern regex at line 140 should be removing the surrounding <p> tags from the
shortcode, it is for me at least.

@n00dles101 - It does work for the most part, but with the shortcode that I posted here:
http://get-simple.info/forum/post/27063/#p27063
there are <p> tags within the tab content which are getting removed, but maybe shouldn't be, and there are some that are getting left in and then closing after divs...doesn't seem to be causing any issues with the tabs functionality though, and it's not invalidating the page.

[shawn_a]

Can we move specific plugin discussion to a new thread guys ? Thanks.

[n00dles101]

I've setup a new topic for GS Shortcodes here,

http://get-simple.info/forum/topic/3977/gs-shortcodes/

[mikeh]

Here is my blog plugin.
The thumbnails and auto-cronjob setup are part of some edits to the core I made so I removed them until version 1.1.

[shawn_a]

mikeh, this looks pretty nice.
Installing now.