Plugin / Blog-in-Blog

Installation

How to install the plugin and get it working.

Briefly:

1. Upload the blog-in-blog directory to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory (or install via wordpress plugins admin menu)
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Add a shotcode such as [blog_in_blog category_slug='my-category-slug' num=5] to a new PAGE (not post) on your site.
4. Optionally, use the admin page to select which category(ies) to hide from the home page.
5. Therefore, any posts with the chosen category are shown only on your new page and not on the home page, so if you use WordPress as a CMS, you now have a blog within a blog.

NOTE: Don’t copy any code from here and paste into the visual editor, as you will be copying some HTML too, and you may not want that. Use the HTML editor to paste you shortcode and make sure it is not wrapped in extra HTML.

How it works:

1. Add the shortcode in the body of a new PAGE (not post) to select a number of posts within a specified category. This page with the shortcode becomes your ‘blog in blog’ page (you can of course call it what you will). i.e:

   [blog_in_blog category_slug='my-category-slug' num=10]
   

   Yuo must specify the category_slug . Optionally specify a number of posts, defaults to 10. There are lots of other parameters you can use (see below).

2. You can hide the pagination of the posts.

   [blog_in_blog category_slug='my-category-slug' num=10 pagination=off]
   

3. You can optionally hide specified (multiple) categories from the normal home page and RSS feeds. (There is an admin page for you to do this)

4. You can optionally specify a template to use for an instance of the blog-in-blog shortcode.

   [blog_in_blog category_slug='my-category-slug' num=5 template="myfile.tpl"]
   

   This template must exist in the wp-content/uploads directory or the wp-content/plugins/blog-in-blog directory.

5. You can customize some of the look and feel elements of the post display, including your own css style for the pagination, on the blog-in-blog admin page.

Tips

1. The category list in the blog-in-blog admin page ONLY shows categories with posts. You need to create some content first!
2. You can specify the name of the template in the shortcode (applies to that shortcode instance only). First we look in the database for a user template, then we always look in wp-content/uploads/ (or wherever you have set your uploads folder) for your template file first before looking in wp-content/plugins/blog-in-blog (your template will probably be lost when the plugin is upgraded).
3. Using the blog-in-blog shortcode on a page which is designated as a static shortcode will work, BUT pagination will not work as you expect it. I know this, but have not been able to fix yet. It is all to do with the way that WordPress builds it’s URLs on the fly, and that is very complex!

What shortcode options are there?

NOTE: Don’t copy any code from here and paste into the visual editor, as you may be copying some HTML too, and you may not want that. Use the HTML editor to paste you shortcode and make sure it is not wrapped in extra HTML.

As a minimum you need the following shortcode:

    [blog_in_blog category_slug='my-category-slug']

or to save you typing [blog_in_blog] every time…

    [bib category_slug='my-category-slug']

All shortcode paramaters:

These shortcode parameters can be combined in any way you like (except post_id) to target specific posts:

• category_id=<integer> The ID of the category you wish to show
• category_slug=<category_slug> The slug of the category you wish to show
• custom_post_type=<post_type> Posts with a custom post type that you want to show
• tag_slug=<tag_slug> Posts of this tag slug will be shown. You can do OR (slug1,slug2,slug3) and AND (slug1+slug2+slug3)
• author=<author id> Posts from this author, identified by a numeric author id.
• author_name=<author user_nicename> Posts from this author, identified by their user nicename.
• post_id=<a post id> If specified only shows a single post. All other selection or sort parameters are ignored.

These parameters affect the pagination display:

• num=<integer> Number of posts per page. Defaults to 10 if not set
• pagination=<on or off> Defaults to on.

These parameters affect the order of the posts:

• order_by=<a valid option> Defaults to date. Valid options are those supported by Template Tag query_posts() so things like date, title, rand (for random). Overidden by custom_order_by
• custom_order_by=<custom field> Name a custom field to order by. If the field contains dates, they must be entered YYYY-MM-DD or sorting by date will not work. If you want the dates to show in the template and be formated, you can select the custom field to be formatted using the default date format in WordPress. If set, overides order_by.
• sort=<sort direction> Sort (the direction to sort the order by field) can be one of the following values (brackets show direction):
  • Oldest first: sort=oldest (ASC)
  • Newest first: sort=newest (DESC).
  • Ascending: sort=ascending (ASC)
  • Descending: sort=descending (DESC)
  • Ascending: sort=ASC
  • Descending: sort=DESC
  • Default is always newest (DESC) first.

These parameters affect the look of your posts.

• template=<template_name> Specify a template name. First we assume that this is a named template in the database. Then we look for a file in the following locations, in the order shown:
  1. Uploads directory: WP_CONTENT_DIR/uploads/<your filename> (or whever your uploads directory is)
  2. Plugin directiry: WP_CONTENT_DIR/plugins/blog-in-blog/<your filename>
• thumbnail_size=<size> For use with `%post_thumbnail% template tag. Where is one of:
  • thumbnail
  • medium
  • large
  • NxN – Optionally specify a height/width. The longest side of the image will be as specified. (i.e. 134×134 or 182×182)

What template tags are available?

• %post_title% – The title of the post.
• %post_permalink% – The post permalink.
• %post_id% – The post id.
• %post_author% – The post author.
• %post_author_avatar% – The post author’s avatar (uses wordpress avatar functionality).
• %post_categories% – The categories that the post belongs to.
• %post_content% – The content of the post.
• %post_excerpt% – The excerpt of the post. Either the excerpt if specifically defined or the <!--more--> tag in your content, or the default wordpress excerpt, in that order.
• %post_comments% – A comments link.
• %post_thumbnail% – The thumbnail of the wordpress featured image for the post. Will supply a full <img> tag.
• %post_tags% – A list of tags assigned to the post. Will have a link to the wordpress tag space for your site. Delimited by the text delimiter in your blog-in-blog options.
• %post_date% – The date of the post as defined by the format string in the admin page.
• %post_day% – The day of the month as 2 digits, i.e. 09 or 31.
• %post_dw% – The day of the week short, i.e. Mon.
• %post_dow% – The day of the week long, i.e. Monday.
• %post_mon% – The month short, i.e. Jan.
• %post_month% – The month long, i.e. January.
• %post_m% – The month numeric leading zero, i.e. 01.
• %post_n% – The month numeric, i.e. 1.
• %post_year% – The year in 4 digits, i.e. 2009.
• %post_yr% – The year in 2 digits, i.e. 09.
• %...% – All custom fields attached to a post can be used in the template. Simply place your custom field name between percent (%) marks,