News Manager (updated)

[Carlos]

Support thread for News Manager (updated) [after version 2.2.4]
Original author: Rogier Koppejan (roog)
Updated and currently maintained by: Carlos Navarro

Current stable version: 3.6

Download (Extend):
http://get-simple.info/extend/plugin/new...dated/541/
Installation instructions, usage and useful links:
http://newsmanager.c1b.org/

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What's new in 3.6
http://www.cyberiada.org/cnb/news-manager-h/

What's new in 3.5
http://www.cyberiada.org/cnb/news-manager-g/

Changes in 3.4.1
http://get-simple.info/forums/showthread...6#pid59326

What's new in 3.4
http://get-simple.info/forums/showthread...2#pid57912

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What's new in 3.3
http://get-simple.info/forums/showthread...7#pid55407

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What's new in 3.2
Info: Changes, new setting, fixes

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What's new in 3.1
Info: Changes, new settings, fixes, upgrading

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What's new in 3.0

Changes
- last word in excerpts is no longer truncated by default
- single posts' title is inserted in the <title> tag by default, for better SEO
- Sitemap supported again (GS 3.3.x) - posts are inserted in sitemap.xml (this can be disabled)
- numbered page navigation by default
- upgrade check for the correct plugin version in Extend
- new strings (and some changes) in language files

News Manager 2.x users, see upgrade notes

New features
- featured images/post thumbnails (custom size, optional cropping, alt attribute and link to post)
- optional "read more" link after the post excerpt
- "go back" link can be changed or disabled
- optional post titles without link (for single post pages or all news pages)
- optional yearly archives (instead of monthly)
- extra Save post and Save settings buttons in admin sidebar (like in GS)
- hidden/internal tags (if they begin with an underscore, "_")
- tags can now have blank spaces and most non-alphanumeric, non-English characters
Special options (as custom or gsconfig settings/texts):
- custom date format for the sidebar archives
- post images: title attribute, default image, custom CSS class...
- optional placeholder text in search input box (HTML5)
- optional force lowercase tags
- custom settings depending of newspage type
- custom frontend texts (including date formats)
- template tags and conditionals for use in templates or components
- support for post authors (basic)
- optional rich excerpts ("more" cutoff by <hr>)
- post layout customization (change some html tags, reorder/hide fields)
- custom tag separator (front-end)
- optional components to insert custom code after posts (for external comments, share buttons...)
- tag page pagination
- template selection (overriding the newspage's template)
- custom navigation: prev/next and/or numbered, or old-style (older/newer posts); also can be disabled
- custom URL parameters/prefixes
- single post URLs without the /post/ prefix (fancy URLs, only if news is not index)
- custom (URL) pagination index start
- ...
See documentation for new settings and advanced options

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GitHub repository (development version):
https://github.com/cnb/News_Manager-getsimplecms

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Changelog for first version released after 2.2.4
version 2.2.5
- Support for slug transliteration
- Fixed frontend links for html validation
- Fixes a couple issues with javascript-disabled browsers
- Fixes problems with empty titles (or "almost empty", or with no transliteratable chars)

[Oleg06]

create an additional field for a picture in the announcements

[yojoe]

Well bra_vo :]
Are you going to further continue development ?

[bhwebco]

Just installed to test and noticed the Published date is completely blank on the post page. It shows in the admin but not on the news page its self

[Carlos]

@bhwebco

Windows host? WAMP/XAMPP?

[kazu]

I want <read more> tag produced by PHP echo or function. excerpt tag !

[bhwebco]

@bhwebco

Windows host? WAMP/XAMPP?

Its a test install off Xampp about to load to a live server and see what happens. Starting to wonder if these local test servers dont screw things up more than they need to.

[Carlos]

(previously posted here)

If you use News Manager in a Windows environment (WAMP, XAMPP...) your post dates will not be displayed properly by default.
It seems it's because of NM's default date format:

Code:

"DATE_FORMAT"         =>  "%b %e, %Y"

As we can read here http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.strftime.php the %e parameter is not supported by Windows' implementation of the strftime function.

To fix this, edit your language file (news_manager/lang/en_US.php or other) and change that line (it's near the end of the file) to something like e.g.:

Code:

"DATE_FORMAT"         =>  "%b %#d, %Y"

or something different like:

Code:

"DATE_FORMAT"         => "%Y.%m.%d - %H:%M"

(See all % parameters you can use in the php.net link above.)

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I intend to change the way the date format is defined, in a future version. I don't like having it in the language file.

[Oleg06]

create an additional field for a picture in the announcements

[bhwebco]

I should have just tested everything on a live server, this testing server has proved to be more trouble than its worth. Uploading took care of the issue

[Carlos]

@bhwebco
Or you can change the date format when testing in Windows.
(BTW these problems happen not only with News Manager, but with other plugins like I18N Search, GS Blog, ...)

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create an additional field for a picture in the announcements

Thanks Oleg. It's in the to-do list (in my mind), maybe for 2.3.x

[Carlos]

Well bra_vo :]
Are you going to further continue development ?

For now I only wanted to fix some issues, without big changes or additions.

After that, I may add some stuff I have in mind, but little by little.

[Carlos]

I want <read more> tag produced by PHP echo or function. excerpt tag !

I also want it. Not only in News Manager, but in other plugins like GS Blog, Special Pages, or the GetSimple CMS itself.

I've asked about this here:
http://get-simple.info/forums/showthread.php?tid=3989

[Carlos]

News Manager 2.2.6 (available for download in Extend and GitHub)

- Support for GetSimple 3.1+ script queueing
- Supports GetSimple 3.1+ GSNOCDN setting. Local copy of jQuery validate script
- Fixed backend links, html validation
- Disabled Sitemap update if GetSimple version is higher than 3.0 (doesn't work since 3.1)
- Fixed (non-critical) path traversal issues

[PiN]

Hi, I have a question regarding version 2.2.6 if you can do it manually "Read more", ie that when you insert eg ### appear on the news on the "Read more..."? It does not fit me to use the default shortcut on the home page because I'm using HTML. Thank you.

[Carlos]

No, you can't do that with 2.2.6. It works just like 2.2.4: you can choose between full post or excerpt without html tags.

[PiN]

It's a pity that I really cared for because otherwise this plugin hest little bit functional. If you want to have only a shortcut on the home page can not be html - that can not accommodate such an image, and news without picture looks something poorly. Manually adjustable read more by a tag that is much improved.

[datiswous]

Hi, I have a question regarding version 2.2.6 if you can do it manually "Read more", ie that when you insert eg ### appear on the news on the "Read more..."? It does not fit me to use the default shortcut on the home page because I'm using HTML. Thank you.

You might be able to do that with the Spoiler plugin (combined with the full post): http://get-simple.info/extend/plugin/spo...lugin/147/ (doesn't work properly to hide a l18n-gallery, if that's what you want).

Sorry if this has nothing to do with what you want.

[vincenzo]

Hi, in order to show recent post with a specified tag, I have added this function to inc/sidebar.php.
You can specify a tag and an alternative number of recentpost.
Can be useful for the next update?

PHP Code:

function nm_list_recent_by_tag($tag,$nmrecentposts=0) {
  global $NMRECENTPOSTS;

  if ($nmrecentposts <= 0 )
    $nmrecentposts = $NMRECENTPOSTS;
  
  if (trim($tag)==='') {
     return;
  }
  
  $posts = nm_get_posts();
  if (!empty($posts)) {
    echo '<ul>';
    $posts = array_slice($posts, 0, $recentposts, true);
    foreach ($posts as $post) {
      $pos = strpos($post->tags,$tag);
      if ($pos !== false) {
        $url = nm_get_url('post') . $post->slug;
          $title = strip_tags(strip_decode($post->title));
        echo "<li><a href=\"$url\">$title</a></li>";
      }
    }
    echo '</ul>';
  }
} 


[Carlos]

@PiN
As I said in post #13 I'm also interested in having full html excerpts with a more tag. It's in my to-do list, I'll try to implement this once I research how to avoid breaking html code (leaving unclosed tags...)

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@vincenzo

Instead of inserting the function in a template file, it would be better to have it in the theme's functions.php file.
Or even better, in a small plugin that only contains this function. This way it would be available even if you select another theme.

Thank you for sharing it. I'll consider including it (with some slight change) in the next release.
Anyone else thinks it would be nice to have this? Better as an addon plugin?

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Per a request I've posted a quick hack for News Manager that adds new classes .nm_post_1, .nm_post_2, etc. and nm_post_last to posts in the main page.

Does anyone think it would be nice to have this in NM? Optional maybe? Suggestions?

(I intend to add some way to do custom post templates in the future, anyway... also in the to-do list)

[PiN]

Thank you, Carlos. I can not wait for the new version. Regards,

[Carlos]

I'm not sure I'll do this for the next one.

But I may prepare some temporary patch for those so interested.

I intended to have the more tag with one of these:

<!--more-->
or:
<a name="more"></a>

that would not be visible for users browsing the site.
<!--more--> would not be visible in the wysiwyg editor either (unless I find some way to highlight it or something)

[PiN]

Well, in some scripts / systems are often used instead of more eg ### or something similar though <!--more--> it was that good It's nice how you can come up with something - I think a lot of people happy by the same set when I wanted to be more, because the html machine will not run well

[bhwebco]

I havent experimented with this news manager alot but I do love how clean it is and it seems pretty straight forward. I have a GS blog plugin installed right now but it doesnt really seem to be in any active development so am planning to install this one again and just go with it.

I was just wondering. I do need some form of category system. Would the Tags be able to serve that purpose? Also would the i8n search plugin be able to include its posts inside the main search to avoid separate search bars? Would also like to be able to add a Meta description to posting options. The meta description one is actually a pretty big deal an probably a key reason why i settled on the GS blog but have hit a couple bugs in it already and want to just deploy this one instead.

[Carlos]

News Manager is very straightforward, maybe too simple for your needs.

Tags could serve as categories, but very basic, e.g. you wouldn't have pagination in these pseudo-category pages.

I18N Search is a great plugin that allows including non-page items like posts (see Custom Item Indexing in I18N Search - Custom Indexing), but someone has to develop a plugin or script for this. I'll give this a try some day.

I don't think GS Blog is not being developed, though its author may not be visiting the forums lately. If it has bugs I suggest you also report them in its GitHub repository.

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@Oleg06 or anyone interested in having a 'featured image' for posts...

Let's say the code for the picture is something like:

PHP Code:

<div class="nm_post_image"><a href="[POST-TITLE]"><img src="[POST-IMAGE]" /></a></div> 


What do you think would be the best place to insert this code? Before, or after the <h3>? After the date? ...

Currently News Manager uses this structure when displaying posts:

PHP Code:

<div class="nm_post">
  <h3 class="nm_post_title"><a href="[POST-TITLE]">[POST-TITLE]</a></h3>
  <p class="nm_post_date">Published on [POST-DATE]</p>
  <div class="nm_post_content"><p>
    [POST-CONTENT]
  </p></div>
  <p class="nm_post_meta"><b>Tags:</b> [POST-TAGS]</p>
</div> 


Of course it would be better to have custom post templates, but I'd like to know what default format to use.