WordPress can now finally make sense as a full content management system for your site. OnePress allows you to completely build your site using our widgetized layout system, placing widgets anywhere. The OnePress layout selector makes it a cinch to choose the layout for your site and lets you do so on a per page basis. Read more »
Pimped Out WordPress
December 23, 2008
Getting started in pimping out your WordPress site is smooth as butter once you get hooked up with OnePress Community. OnePress throws in all kinds of widgets and functionality that will make your site look fresh and professional while keeping it running fast. Read more »
Adding onto the Tabbed Content Widget
December 3, 2008
Because we can’t anticipate every single way that you might want to use the tabbed content widget, we have made it extremely extensible with the option of User Function as a tab’s content type. By choosing this type, you can enter the name of a callback function you wish to use to determine the content for that tab in the widget.
Setting up the callback function for custom output in the tabbed content widget is quite simple. First, make sure you choose a unique function that will not create any conflicts. When working in OnePress, I always prefix a function name with “op_” to be on the safe side. After creating, fill the function with the functionality you wish, returning an array consisting of both name and content as keys.
function op_extra_tab(){
$content = 'The content I want to display as a string';
return array(
'name' => 'My extra tab',
'content'=> $content
);
}
Featured Post Progression Explained
November 21, 2008
Not all posts are created equal. In fact, some posts are of much importance to the subject of your blog and you, as the author, may wish to display those posts with more prominence. As products of this desire, the OnePress framework includes a number of widgets that focus on the presentation of featured posts. By using some simple tagging logic and widget placement, posts can appear throughout your site as featured posts and be given their proper place in the spotlight.
The tag logic is simple–posts tagged “feature” appear in the Featured Posts Carousel and posts tagged “featurette” appear in the Featurette Tabs widget. The rest is auto-magical. But I would like to explain, in today’s tip, the underlying logic behind that widget magic.
Obviously, when you have a post that you would like to have displayed as features, it makes sense to tag them both “feature” and “featurette.” The differentiation between the tags exists as you may not want some posts to be shown in the large feature carousel and, by that same reasoning, some don’t need to be displayed in the featurette tabs. However, a post with either of these tags, is considered a “featured” post.
All featured posts in OnePress are registered as such internally. As you place widgets around your site and assign certain tags to those widgets, you may encounter situations in which duplicate content could exist. For instance, your latest featured post is tagged “feature,” which should cause it to display in the carousel on a page, and is also tagged “featurette,” causing it to display in the tabs widget on that same page. However, the OnePress featured post logic circumvents this issue through its awareness of the widgets that exist on any given page and by only allowing a featured post to display once.
Once a post has been added to a featured post widget in the main column, it will not be available to be displayed elsewhere.
As your site is rendered through OnePress, each featured post is registered as it is added to a widget. The rendering begins with the “main” column. As widgets are rendered in their sequential order, posts that are used in those widgets are made unavailable to the widgets that follow.
Featured posts are added to the widget in reverse chronological order. That is, newer posts will take priority and bump older posts. This in turn, cause an aging effect for featured posts. As they get older, they will move to widgets further down the main column or into the sidebars. Newer posts will always receive the most exposure.
Immune to all of the featured post logic is the Content Body widget. This widget will always take into account the WordPress loop and does not filter out those posts used by widgets.
Tags: widgets
Shine the Spotlight on WordPress Posts with the Featured Posts Carousel
November 21, 2008
As you pour hours of energy into writing content for your site, there will be those posts which you would to receive a little more attention than others. With OnePress, you can easily feature posts by using the Featured Posts Carousel. After placing this widget on your main column (we recommend at the top) you can feed your posts into this widget using the tag “feature.”
Concerning the topic of, how it is determined which posts show in the widget, there are a number of factors that come into play, but we have made it fairly automagical. The widget takes into consideration all of the posts that have been tagged “feature.” From all of the posts tagged “feature,” the most recent posts will be displayed. If there are multiple featured posts carousels on a page, it will only display the same post once.
One way you can refine the posts that show up in a featured posts carousel is by selecting an extra tag in the widget’s options. When you edit the widget, you will see a drop down selector displaying the tags available to choose from. Once selected and saved, only posts with “feature” and the extra tag will show up in that carousel. This is incredibly helpful if you have a featured posts carousel widget on your “fall” tag page that you only want to show posts tagged “fall”. For this example, we are going to edit the widget extra class to be “photo,” which will display the features in a gallery style.
Featured Posts Carousel Options
Posts to be used as features in the carousel desire an extra step when being created. This is due to the fact that the featured posts carousel uses an image to represent the post’s content. Assigning the image is easy since OnePress leverages the WordPress media uploader. Just attach the image to the post as you normally would and upon closing the uploader window, you will see the “Image Selection” post meta box populate with the picture you just uploaded. Now just select “Feature” as the type you are going to assign the image for and click the image you just uploaded. Now this will be the image that appears in the feature carousel for this post! We recommend images that are at least 800 pixels wide and 200 pixels tall for use in the featured posts carousel. If it’s a little too big, don’t worry, the widget will only show what it needs.
Choosing the Feature Image
Next, make sure you have the appropriate text as the post’s excerpt, because that is what will be used to give the user a preview for your post.
Edit your post's excerpt to be suitable for the widget
Here is what the post will look like in the feature carousel:
What your feature will look like rendered in the widget
The widget will support up to four posts, rotating through them at a pace perfect to give your readers a chance to comfortably take in all of your features. Controls are also available for jumping between the features quickly.
