News Manager Addons plugin

[Carlos]

Several users have asked for enhancements in News Manager sidebar functions to add dates, excerpts, etc. to the recent posts list.

The News Manager Addons plugin provides additional functions/template tags to extend News Manager, so that you can customize it a bit (currently, only the sidebar latest posts)

Download (Extend)

Example - Recent posts with excerpts (different length to those in settings)
In your sidebar component, replace nm_list_recent() by:

PHP Code:

nm_set_custom_excerpt(123);
nm_custom_list_recent('
  <a href="{{ post_link }}">{{ post_title }}</a><br />
  {{ post_excerpt }}
'); 


Some of the available sidebar functions/template tags are:

nm_custom_list_recent($template)
nm_custom_display_recent($template)
nm_set_custom_date($dateformat)
nm_set_custom_excerpt($excerptlength)
nm_set_custom_maxposts($maxposts)
nm_list_recent_with_date($dateformat, $before=false)
nm_list_recent_by_tag($tag, $numposts=0)

$template is a string (HTML code) where these tokens can be used:

{{ post_link }} - absolute URL of post
{{ post_title }} - post title
{{ post_date }} - post date/time
{{ post_excerpt }} - post excerpt
{{ post_slug }} - post id
{{ post_number }} - number of post as displayed (0, 1, 2, ...)
[...]

More info here:
http://www.cyberiada.org/cnb/news-manage...ns-plugin/

(Sorry for the poor docs, I'll update them...)

[Carlos]

Is anyone using (or has tried) this complementary plugin? Opinions, suggestions?
(even about the name, with which I'm not convinced at all...)

[Connie]

Carlos,

I will give it a try as I am working on a new site and in the moment I just use

Code:

<?php nm_list_recent(); ?>

but I am sure we will need more functionality, my first next step will be to add tags because they have 2 categories ...

so I expect we will need "show recent 5 with date with that tag" or "list recent 5 with date with the other tag"

cheers, Connie

[Oleg06]

in News Manager Addons plugin this tag breaks all

Code:

<?php nm_set_custom_max_posts(5); ?>

this does not show anything

Code:

<?php nm_set_custom_date('%d/%m/%Y'); ?>

These tags work well

Code:

<?php nm_set_custom_excerpt(123); ?>
<?php nm_custom_list_recent('
  <a href="{{ post_link }}">{{ post_title }}</a><br />
  {{ post_excerpt }}
'); ?>
<?php nm_custom_display_recent('
   <div class="my-recent">
      <h4><a href="{{ post_link }}">{{ post_title }}</a></h4>
      <span class="my_excerpt">{{ post_excerpt }}</span>
   </div>
'); ?>

since I'm a complete zero in php, maybe I did not understand something

updated http://without-db.ru/news/obnovlenie-new...getsimple/

[Carlos]

in News Manager Addons plugin this tag breaks all

Code:

<?php nm_set_custom_max_posts(5); ?>

this does not show anything

It's nm_set_custom_maxposts, without the underscore. I may change the name (or add an alias) to avoid confusion.

Anyway: all this is a bit experimental... I may change the functions to work a different way, or use components, ...
But I wanted people to have right now some way to customize the sidebar with dates and excerpts.
(I may add something like this to NM in the future, I just haven't decided how. I don't want to bloat roog's original creation.)

[Oleg06]

Thanks, works

Code:

<?php nm_set_custom_maxposts(2); ?>

[datiswous]

I thought it would be nice to have some sort of calendar view of the posts, categorising posts by date using month, week or year view. Maybe add support for future posts/events later.

This is probably out of range of the original functionally of this plugin, but I thought a calendar plugin is partly in the same group as a blog/news manager.

[Carlos]

Listing future posts with similar functions is already on my to-do list, I'll do it some day.

I had also thought about calendar-type archives, but that would take more time and I have other priorities, sorry.

Categorizing by week or year requires making changes in the News Manager plugin itself. For now, I only have yearly archives (instead of monthly) in my to-do list.

Thank you for your suggestions.

[Carlos]

I've fixed a typo in the documentation: the correct token is {{ post_number }}, not {{ post_count }}.

[Carlos]

News Manager Addons 0.4 beta available.
Updated to support the post images feature in News Manager 2.5 (currently in beta)

New tokens are:

{{ post_image_url }} - full URL of the post thumbnail/image
{{ post_image }} - html code for the thumbnail/image URL (<img src="...)

If you want to override the default settings for displaying post images, you can change it (before using nm_custom_display, etc.) with function nm_set_custom_image($width=null, $height=null, $crop=null, $default=null).

Example:

Code:

<?php nm_set_custom_image(100, 100); ?>
<?php nm_custom_display_recent('
   <div class="my_recent_post">
      <h4><a href="{{ post_link }}">{{ post_title }}</a></h4>
      <div class="my_image">{{ post_image }}</div>
      <span class="my_excerpt">{{ post_excerpt }}</span>
   </div>
'); ?>

Cropped 200 (width) x 150 (height) images:

Code:

nm_set_custom_image(200, 150, 1);

No cropping + default image in data/uploads (for posts that don't have one):

Code:

nm_set_custom_image(200, 150, 1, 'image1.jpg');

(last parameter could also be the full image URL, 'http://....')

[Carlos]

News Manager Addons 0.5 beta available.

New function/template tag nm_list_recent_by_tag
Displays a list of recent posts that have a given tag. (original idea by @vincenzo; code rewritten from scratch)

Examples:

Code:

<?php nm_list_recent_by_tag('beer'); ?>

Shows n latest posts with tag beer (n as defined in News Manager settings)

Code:

<?php nm_list_recent_by_tag('wine', 5); ?>

Shows 5 latest posts with tag wine

[shawn_a]

Wouldn't it make more sense to get recent posts then filter by tag ?
filter(list_recent(),tag);

or somethng not so specific as nm_list_recent_by_tag, seems overly non modular. Or does this functionality already exist and this is an abstract function?

What if I want combinations of tags also ?

[Carlos]

It's a temporary thing (that's why I've added to this complementary plugin, not to NM itself) that Connie and others need.

I may add the functionality to existing nm_list_recent (that doesn't have parameters, so I can make use of this while keeping backwards compatibility), like:

nm_list_recent($tag='', $max=0) // $max = number of posts; 0 = use value in settings

As for combination of tags, I had thought about this, but as noone has ever asked for this I intended to leave this for the future. It could be comma-separated tags in the 1st parameter (for OR, and another separator for AND... still haven't thought about this)

[shawn_a]

ahh, forgot what I was looking at for a second.

I guess someone could splice the results togather, but it probably be better if the function accepted a string or array as tag argument. with another boolean arg for and or OR.
And if you want to do and and or then well sol.

lol

[Riianna]

With this great plugin i can "make" news site with featuret slider .
Can u add post sorting by votes ( thumbs or something ) with ranking number, like most votes is on top with number 1 etc etc?

[Carlos]

Can u add post sorting by votes ( thumbs or something ) with ranking number, like most votes is on top with number 1 etc etc?

Are you suggesting that some voting system is implemented in News Manager? Or do you know of any external script or service that could be used for this?

[Connie]

It's a temporary thing (that's why I've added to this complementary plugin, not to NM itself) that Connie and others need.

Carlos, it works great, see here below the image:

http://www.kunstundnatur-steinfurth.de/kulturhaus/

gracias, thanks!

Connie

[maksyun]

Where to download News Manager Addons 0.4 beta? I want to use {{ post_image }}

[Carlos]

You can download the latest 0.5 beta here:
https://raw.github.com/cnb/News_Manager_...addons.php

I'll update the docs (link in first post in this thread) to include {{post_image}}, etc. some day, after releasing News Manager 2.5

[Riianna]

Can u add post sorting by votes ( thumbs or something ) with ranking number, like most votes is on top with number 1 etc etc?

Are you suggesting that some voting system is implemented in News Manager? Or do you know of any external script or service that could be used for this?

Yes, thumb up/down or something like that.

[Carlos]

News Manager Addons 0.6 beta available.

New function/template tag nm_search_with_placeholder(): replacement for nm_search(), shows a placeholder text in the search input box.

It supports News Manager's 2.5 SEARCH_PLACEHOLDER language string, but the placeholder text can also be passed as a parameter, like:

Code:

<?php nm_search_with_placeholder('Type words here...'); ?>

[Carlos]

News Manager Addons 0.7 beta available.

New second (optional) parameter in function nm_custom_display_recent (and nm_custom_list_recent) that lets you filter by tag.

Example:

Code:

<?php nm_custom_display_recent('
   <div class="my_recent_post">
      <h4><a href="{{ post_link }}">{{ post_title }}</a></h4>
      <span class="my_date">{{ post_date }}</span>
      <span class="my_excerpt">{{ post_excerpt }}</span>
   </div>
', 'books'); ?>

will display the latest posts with tag books (using the sample layout given as first parameter).

[Carlos]

News Manager Addons 0.8 beta available.

- new {{post_content}} token/placeholder for template strings
- added functions/template tags nm_custom_list_future and nm_custom_display_future (equivalent to nm_custom_list_recent and nm_custom_display_recent, but showing only scheduled posts, in ascending date order).

---

[update] version 0.8.1 beta - small fix in function nm_search_with_placeholder

---

[update] version 0.8.2 beta - another small fix, bad tag in function nm_search_with_placeholder - @D.O.

[Carlos]

Anyone using NM Addons to display post images? (in sidebar or whatever)

If so, note that image support works with NM 2.5 beta 10, but may not work properly with the next NM 2.5 beta release, as there have been some changes.

I'll update NM Addons soon.

[Riianna]

I´m using latest News Manger and Addons plugin.. images not show in "sidebar".