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WordPress Asides, ColdForged-style

UPDATE: I’ve changed templates since this was written. This stuff is still effective, it’s just not displayed here.

As you can see, I’ve gotten my “asides” in place here. Note that you’ll have to go to the main page to see them. I used to maintain something I called the “sideblog” that was over in the sidebar and had links to things I found interesting but that didn’t merit a full post. I’ve missed my sideblog but have also been contemplating something more integral. Matt’s asides are more of what I had in mind as people are able to comment on his asides, but the thing that I don’t like about them is that his tend to gather up between posts, such that you often have to scroll down to get to the meat. I wanted my asides to be more “quick takes” that are almost ephemeral, they don’t take up a lot of room, and they’re definitely subservient to the main content (as rich as it is ).

The solution that I’ve come up with accomplishes my goals. Now I can post to a separate category cunningly called “Asides”. These posts are not included in the posts that are displayed on the main page, or in the “Last Five Entries” in the sidebar, or in the “More Recent Entries” at the bottom of the index. They appear in groups of 3 (if there are enough, a condition that only exists now as I haven’t generated 9 asides to fill all the spaces) between main posts. As I add asides, they redistribute themselves between the posts so that the 3 most recent appear at the top of the index, the next three appear between the first and second posts and so on. People can comment on these asides and see how many comments exist on the aside. Going to the comments also shows that you can view the archives of asides. There’s even an RSS feed for people that want to subscribe to the nutty asides.

So, how was this done?

Fairly straightforward but with some customization of plugins. I started off with Scott Reilly’s Customizable Post Listings plugin. This is a plugin that makes it pretty easy to generate lists of posts in various ways. However, it didn’t have quite the functionality that I needed for a couple of things — I wanted to replace my plugin with his, so I needed it to be able to do the things I needed for my “Last Five Entries”, my “More Recent Entries”, and my Asides. Here are the things I added:

Most importantly was the ability to exclude categories in post listings. This way I can leave my Asides posts out of the “Most Recent” lists. I want those lists reserved for “real” posts like this one. I have to be able to support multiple exclusions as well — my “Currently Reading” section is a separate exclusion all its own — so that required a bit of adjustment of the code.
To support the lists I already had, I needed some additional format specifiers. I added specifiers for providing links to the category archives of posts and links to the comments section using the “fancy comments” text (ie. “No Comments”, “1 Comment”, “2 Comments”, etc.).
For the asides I needed the ability to display the number of comments as a link to the comments sections.
For the way I wanted to do asides, I needed to know the number of posts actually generated in the list. That way, I can accurately offset into the asides posts for the subsequent asides lists.
In addition to these changes I wanted a way to track the most viewed post. Hence, I added a call to increment a new field in the posts table upon command, and now we can order by that field as well as have a format specifier to show the number of views of that post. It’s up to the user when to determine a post is “viewed”… insert it in the main loop and anytime the home page is looked at the posts on that page are determined to be “viewed”. I’m currently only defining a post as being viewed when the single entry page is viewed.

Installing the plugin

Scott may work some of this functionality into his plugin, but until then those of you wishing to have similar functionality can use my version of his plugin. Install as usual — unzip, stick file in your wp-content/plugins directory, activate from the WordPress control panel. Now, to get the view count functionality — and bear in mind that this is optional… if you never use the view_count orderby list type or try to use the %post_view_count% format specifier you’ll never have problems — you’ll need to update the database. Run the following MySQL command against your database.

ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD post_view_count INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL

Now it’s up to you to decide how you want to have your posts tracked. Wherever you view a post you’re welcome to have that tracked… from within your index, from only the single post view page, it’s totally up to you. Insert the following code in the loop wherever you wish. The only requirement is that the global variable $post be available.

<?php c2c_increment_post_view_count();?>

This simply increments the view count for the current post.

Getting a list of asides

An important note about asides. If you’re dealing with one category of exclusions, that’s pretty simple. WordPress supports one category of exclusions pretty handily with one simple change to the main index.php. Simply insert a line in the following location of the main index.php at your blog’s root. Note that it is the “$cat =…” line that we added.

/* Don't remove this line. */
$cat ="-27";
require('./wp-blog-header.php');
include(ABSPATH . '/wp-header.php');

That tells WordPress to leave out all posts in the category whose ID is 27 from the main processing loop. It’s only when you want more that one category excluded that you’ll have trouble. To do that you have to modify WP itself. It’s not hard, but some people may be skittish. First, change that line to be a space-delimited list of categories preceded with dashes that you want excluded, like so:

/* Don't remove this line. */
$cat ="-27 -28";
require('./wp-blog-header.php');
include(ABSPATH . '/wp-header.php');

Now, edit your $ROOT/wp-includes/classes.php.

You’re looking for the following code:

$q['cat'] = ''.urldecode($q['cat']).'';
$q['cat'] = addslashes_gpc($q['cat']);
if (stristr($q['cat'],'-')) {
        // Note: if we have a negative, we ignore all the positives. It must
        // always mean 'everything /except/ this one'. We should be able to do
        // multiple negatives but we don't
        $eq = '!=';
        $andor = 'AND';
        $q['cat'] = explode('-',$q['cat']);
        $q['cat'] = intval($q['cat'][1]);
} else {
        $eq = '=';
        $andor = 'OR';
}
$join = " LEFT JOIN $wpdb->post2cat ON ($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->post2cat.post_id) ";
$cat_array = explode(' ',$q['cat']);
$whichcat .= ' AND (category_id '.$eq.' '.intval($cat_array[0]);
$whichcat .= get_category_children($cat_array[0], ' '.$andor.' category_id '.$eq.' ');
for ($i = 1; $i < (count($cat_array)); $i = $i + 1) {
        $whichcat .= ' '.$andor.' category_id '.$eq.' '.intval($cat_array[$i]);
        $whichcat .= get_category_children($cat_array[$i], ' '.$andor.' category_id '.$eq.' ');
}
$whichcat .= ')';
if ($eq == '!=') {
        $q['cat'] = '-'.$q['cat']; // Put back the knowledge that we are excluding a category.
}

and we’re going to change it to this:

$q['cat'] = ''.urldecode($q['cat']).'';
$q['cat'] = addslashes_gpc($q['cat']);
if (stristr($q['cat'],'-')) {
        // Note: if we have a negative, we ignore all the positives. It must
        // always mean 'everything /except/ this one'. We should be able to do
        // multiple negatives but we don't
        $eq = '!=';
        $andor = 'AND';
} else {
        $eq = '=';
        $andor = 'OR';
}
$join = " LEFT JOIN $wpdb->post2cat ON ($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->post2cat.post_id) ";
$cat_array = explode(' ',$q['cat']);
$whichcat .= ' AND (category_id '.$eq.' '.abs(intval($cat_array[0]));
$whichcat .= get_category_children($cat_array[0], ' '.$andor.' category_id '.$eq.' ');
for ($i = 1; $i < (count($cat_array)); $i = $i + 1) {
        $whichcat .= ' '.$andor.' category_id '.$eq.' '.abs(intval($cat_array[$i]));
        $whichcat .= get_category_children($cat_array[$i], ' '.$andor.' category_id '.$eq.' ');
}
$whichcat .= ')';

My asides are interspersed between main posts only on the index. Therefore, my list function invocation is in the main loop, right before any actual post output. Note that I keep track of the return value so as to be able to automatically increment through the asides. That way, for instance, if I ever choose to have a different number of posts on my front page the asides will be correctly handled as opposed to hard-coding any numbers in. The $asides_offset variable controls this and starts at zero before the invocation. Each time through the loop it is incremented by the number of posts actually processed and then passed as the offset parameter into the function. 27 is the category ID for my asides, so that is the only category I want in this list.

$asides_offset += c2c_get_recent_posts( 
     3, '<p>&raquo; %post_content% (%comments_count_url%)', '27', 
     'date','DESC',$asides_offset);

My “Currently Reading” section on the main page is a separate case but similar to an aside. It’s not included in the main flow of posts and not included in various lists, just like the asides. For completeness’ sake, here’s that invocation. Note that 28 is the category for “Currently Reading”.

c2c_get_recent_posts( '1',"<p>%post_content% 
(%comments_count_url%)</p>",'28');

Customizable “recent posts” lists

Now for the sidebar “Five Most Recent” and the index’s “More Recent Entries” the syntax is slightly different. Here’s both of those calls, with the exclusions needed to leave out the asides and “Currently Reading” stuff. First the “Five Most Recent”. The most interesting thing about this invocation is the multiple category exclusions (the ‘-27 -28′ to exclude category numbers 27 and 28):

c2c_get_recent_posts('5',"<li>%post_URL%
%post_date%</li>",
'-27 -28','date','DESC',0,'F d,Y');

Now for the slightly fancier “More Recent Entries”. Note that I’m excluding the same categories but using some different formatting options, all from one call. In this case I want to start my posts from the last post on the index, so I utilize the existing “$posts_per_page” variable which tells WP how many posts to display on the index. It handily doubles into the amount of posts to offset for the “Most Recent Entries”.

$comment_icon = '<img src="' . get_bloginfo('template_url') . 
    '/images/comments.gif">';
c2c_get_recent_posts( 9, '<p>%post_URL%&lt;br />Posted on 
%post_date% in %post_categories_url% | '.$comment_icon.'&nbsp;
%comments_fancy_url%</p>', '-27 -28', 'date','DESC',
$posts_per_page,'F d, Y' );

The final invocation is for my “most viewed posts” list. The only thing different about this is the “order by” parameter. In this case I want to order by the “view_count” field in descending order, meaning that the most viewed post is listed first.

<?php c2c_get_recent_posts('5',"<li>%post_URL%
%post_date%</li>",'-27 -28','view_count','DESC',0,'F d,Y');?>

Hope this helps someone. Note that this post has been around for about a week in various stages, but with the code section screwups it was too ugly to post. It still isn’t perfect, but it’s better than nothing.

If you like it…

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84 Responses to “WordPress Asides, ColdForged-style”

1

ColdForged Says:
November 5th, 2004 at 9:45 pm

Sigh Now if only someone could tell me how to get good <code> sections I’d be set. That’s the best I could manage though.

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2

Mike Says:
November 16th, 2004 at 1:21 am

Good code blocks are tough. It’s part of the reason I made my wordpress layout non-fixed. But also because I haven’t had any time to mess with my blog in ages. If you find any good code block code, I’ll probably steal it from ya.

The asides are nice. I was kinda wondering what you had going there. At first I thought they might have been small tidbits related to the article before or after them but they didn’t make sense.

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3

ColdForged Says:
November 16th, 2004 at 12:02 pm

Good code blocks are tough. It’s part of the reason I made my wordpress layout non-fixed. But also because I haven’t had any time to mess with my blog in ages. If you find any good code block code, I’ll probably steal it from ya.

This is as close as I’ve come, and it’s still not quite perfect for some things. the php prefix (e.g. <?php) doesn’t take kindly to being in there and I have to diddle with the break tags (<br />) to get them to display instead of be acted upon. The only thing left is line wrapped to my maximum width. That’s trickier than it should be, since if I’m, for instance, in an inline comment and want to wrap the line I have to indent and start a new inline comment. Blech.

The asides are nice. I was kinda wondering what you had going there. At first I thought they might have been small tidbits related to the article before or after them but they didn’t make sense.

Thanks! Yeah, perhaps interspersed as they are they’re a bit confusing. I’m happy with them but am open to improvements or ideas for making them less confusing. Perhaps some “asides” designator would help.

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4

Silent Corner » Marvel On Crack Says:
November 17th, 2004 at 2:17 pm

der: Gaming — Mike @ 1:16 pm I’m starting to think I need a version of ColdForged’s asides plugin… Am I the only one that& […]

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5

Michael Says:
December 7th, 2004 at 1:32 am

I’m no programmer, but after about two hours of trial and error I got this to work under Kubrick 1.2.6 Thank you. The only problem I have found is that placing $cat=”-27″; in the specified line tosses out the setting for number of posts to show on the main page. I have put it in an taken it out. Sure enough the minute I put it in every post I have ever made gets called when you hit my main page. I am new to blogging so it is only 30 or so - but any idea on how to correct this. Everything else is per you spec.

Thanks so much!

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6

ColdForged Says:
December 7th, 2004 at 7:44 am

I’m no programmer, but after about two hours of trial and error I got this to work under Kubrick 1.2.6 Thank you.

Excellent, glad you found it useful!

The only problem I have found is that placing $cat=”-27”; in the specified line tosses out the setting for number of posts to show on the main page.

I went ahead and answered this on the Flickr page.

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7

AdamStac Says:
December 13th, 2004 at 12:48 am

Thanks ColdForged..I got this set up. I didn’t use the asides (yet), or More Recent Entries, but I used some other abilities of the plug-in. Thanks for the detailed walk-through! Very cool of you.

Keep them coming…

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8

Jamin Says:
December 19th, 2004 at 11:35 am

Hi. I’m trying to get this working, but get the following error on the top of my index page:

WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘ 3′ at line 1]
SELECT DISTINCT * FROM wp_posts LEFT JOIN wppost2cat ON (wp_posts.ID = wp_post2cat.postid) WHERE wp_posts.post_date <= ‘2004-12-19 17:29:39′ AND ( wp_posts.post_status = ‘publish’ OR wp_posts.post_status = ’sticky’ ) AND wp_posts.post_password = ‘’ AND (category_id = 15)GROUP BY wp_posts.ID ORDER BY wp_posts.post_date DESC LIMIT , 3

Then these lines inbetween posts:

» $asides_offset += c2c_get_recent_posts( 3, ‘

» %post_content% (%comments_count_url%)’, ‘27′, ‘date’,’DESC’,$asides_offset);

As of now you can see the error for yourself on dcoi.endopsychosin.com.
Any help would be appreciated, if you can find the time.

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9

Beetle Blog » Reading List Implementation Says:
February 25th, 2005 at 12:51 am

[…] Reading List ImplementationThursday, Feb 24 2005 BloggingBrentlate evening ColdForged details how to use his version of Scott Reilly’ […]

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10

trench Says:
March 1st, 2005 at 9:56 pm

ColdForged, can you tell me what this actually does? Where did you stick this (<?php c2cincrementpostviewcount();?>) in your loop? Im getting all kinds of parse errors. I really want the asides menu you have. Thats what Im trying to accomplish here.

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11

ColdForged Says:
March 1st, 2005 at 10:09 pm

You don’t actually need that post view count stuff if you’re just after the asides. The only things you really need to do are:
1. Install the plugin. (Note that there’s a newer version available than is listed here. Try this one).
2. Do the stuff with the category exclusion thing in index.php.
3. Do the “c2cgetrecent_posts” for the asides in an asides type of div in your theme’s main template.
If you’re really lost, have a look at my main template and see if it helps any.

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12

trench Says:
March 2nd, 2005 at 4:06 am

Thanks very much. going to look into this more.

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13

coldforged.org » Blog Archive » “Where the hell are my comments?” Says:
March 3rd, 2005 at 5:08 pm

[…] siding in the database. They weren’t displayed in my blog—though my customized asides plugin didn’t handle them perfectly and my comment […]

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14

Kevin Says:
March 3rd, 2005 at 11:59 pm

I get the following error in the most recent entries listing:

WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1] SELECT categorynicename FROM wpcategories WHERE cat_ID=

How might I go about fixing that?

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15

ColdForged Says:
March 4th, 2005 at 8:15 am

Kevin, is it possible that you have a post that doesn’t have a category?

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16

Kevin Says:
March 4th, 2005 at 9:16 am

All entries belong to at least one category, and that would be General if nothing else.

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17

ColdForged Says:
March 4th, 2005 at 10:03 am

All entries belong to at least one category, and that would be General if nothing else.

Ah, dammit, I was pointing to the wrong version of the plugin in the post, and it only bit 1.5 people. There was a function prototype — getcategorylink() for those interested — that changed between 1.2 and 1.5. Re-download the plugin from the link given (or here) and try again.

Sorry to temporarily diddle you .

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18

Kevin Says:
March 4th, 2005 at 1:37 pm

No problem at all. Thank you!

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19

chenu Says:
March 5th, 2005 at 1:46 am

I’m interested in implementing your system of Asides because, I don’t want the asides to be counted as a main post on the index page.

What can I do to make 2 asides appear after posts and have them auto increment. When I use the code from the plugin, the posts do not auto increment.

My index file is located here.

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20

ColdForged Says:
March 5th, 2005 at 10:53 am

chenu, take a look at my index and look for the text asides_offset. That’s the secret .

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21

chenu Says:
March 5th, 2005 at 1:07 pm

Hmm, you don’t seem to have linked to your index file. You just have empty a tags.

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22

ColdForged Says:
March 5th, 2005 at 8:13 pm

Oops. You mean this index?

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23

chenu Says:
March 5th, 2005 at 8:52 pm

Thanks a lot, I got it figured out almost completely. The only thing I need to do now is to add the line that I have under all posts under the asides. How would I add it so that it is only included once under each asides block.

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24

chenu Says:
March 5th, 2005 at 8:56 pm

Actually, I figured it out, I just put 2 instances of
%postcontent% (%commentscounturl%)’, ‘19′,’date’,'DESC’,$asidesoffset);?> one without the line code and one with.

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25

Derek Says:
March 9th, 2005 at 7:34 pm

I’m using a modified Kubrick theme, and for some reason it’s putting a line break between each of the percent tags. Why would it be doing that?

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26

ColdForged Says:
March 10th, 2005 at 9:27 am

Derek, try putting the content that you want for your asides in the excerpt and displaying the_excerpt instead of the_content. This has to do with the way WP styles the_content.

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27

Derek Says:
March 11th, 2005 at 6:49 pm

I’m pretty new at this. Can you please explain how I can do that? Sorry, I’m just figuring PHP and WP out.

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28

ColdForged Says:
March 11th, 2005 at 8:51 pm

Can you please explain how I can do that?

Sure. First, go to the Options -> Writing page and look for the “When starting a post, show:” setting under “Writing Options” and set your editing mode to the “Advanced controls.” This will allow you to see the excerpt field. Now, go back and edit your asides posts and cut the content that you had in the big text area (the “Post” section) and paste it into the “Excerpt” area, then save.

Now, go to your template editor and edit the Main Template. Find where you put the asides code and change the '%post_content%' to be '%post_excerpt%' instead. Save the template. Now you should be good to go!

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29

Ashwin Says:
March 16th, 2005 at 2:27 pm

I’ve been meaning to implement something like this on my website for a long time but never really found the time or the plugin that did it for me. Gotta thank you for doing all the hardwork for me.

I implemented all but your “Recent Entries” on my site without much hassle. Thanks once again.

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30

ColdForged Says:
March 16th, 2005 at 3:31 pm

Glad it was helpful, Ashwin, nice work.

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31

Ashwin Says:
March 17th, 2005 at 11:22 am

OK..ran into a small problem and hope you can help me fix it. Until today I had less than or equal to 3 entries for the Asides and things looked great. I added the 4th entry today and it was supposed to move the oldest entry below the first post like on your site.

However, things look good on IE, the two Asides boxes are book-ending the first post like they should, but on Firefox the DIV for the Asides is overlapping the first post.

I’ve checked the the correct DIV’s are closing in the right locations but still can’t get this to look properly in Firefox, any help you could lend would be much appreciated.

Regards

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32

ColdForged Says:
March 17th, 2005 at 11:32 am

My first recommendation is, as always when dealing with things like this, make your page validate. When faced with weird behavior, get your page to be valid XHTML first and quite often the rest will follow.

Good luck.

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33

Ashwin Says:
March 17th, 2005 at 12:57 pm

Very good advise. I went ahead and made the XHTML valid and IE still continues to work, while Firefox is stumbling.

I realize this has probably nothing to do with your plugin, but any other advise you have would be appreciated.

Thanks

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34

ColdForged Says:
March 17th, 2005 at 2:55 pm

You are floating your .post selector left. Remove the float: left; command from that selector and I think you’ll be where you want to be.

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35

Ashwin Says:
March 17th, 2005 at 3:16 pm

Thank you very much! That was indeed the problem, I was playing around with it quite a lot and even considering switching the theme just to make this work. But I’m all set now. SWEEEET!

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36

Derek Says:
March 17th, 2005 at 3:26 pm

I’m back. I’ve looked at my code, and I didn’t have %post_content% in there at all, just %post_excerpt%. What should I check now?

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37

ColdForged Says:
March 17th, 2005 at 3:33 pm

What is the exact format string you’re passing to the function?

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38

Derek Says:
March 17th, 2005 at 4:18 pm

Is this what you mean?

%posttitle%%postexcerpt%(%comments_count%)’, ‘18′);?>

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39

AdamStac Says:
March 20th, 2005 at 4:33 pm

Just thought that I’d tell you that you are the MAN! Great tweak and great instructions…nice!

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40

cat Says:
March 27th, 2005 at 1:51 am

hmm.. i actually got this one to work. yay, me! out of curiosity, how did you get the image to show up for the “currently reading” aside in the sidebar? i can’t get my image to show up.

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41

Denis de Bernardy Says:
March 29th, 2005 at 3:05 pm

Coldforged,

Just curious, did you find a solution to your code block problem?

If not, suggestion:

set $maxcodeline_length

filter code blocks, line by line
for each line that is too long, do truncate procedure

truncate at last code keyword before 40 chars
e.g. in:
[some long condition…] && ( cond1 || cond2 )
truncate before ‘&&’ or ‘(’ or… etc
but not before or in the middle of ‘cond1′

make it clear the indented line is tabbed

might work (but might make VB code confusing)

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42

MrHappyGoLucky Says:
April 1st, 2005 at 1:42 pm

Hrm. I’m very interested in this plugin, but for some reason my asides are still showing up as main posts and I’ve got a few empty aside blocks under some posts.

Confused!

My index is here

Lil’ help?

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43

MrHappyGoLucky Says:
April 1st, 2005 at 1:45 pm

Oh, and the hyperlinks aren’t working.

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44

ColdForged Says:
April 1st, 2005 at 5:11 pm

I’m very interested in this plugin, but for some reason my asides are still showing up as main posts

Note that the category exclusion has to go in the main index.php in your blog root, not the theme one. It’ll go right before the require('./wp-blog-header.php'); line.

I’ve got a few empty aside blocks under some posts.

That will happen until you have enough asides to fill in all of them. My best suggestion if it bugs you would be to either whip out some serious asides or reduce the number of posts displayed on the main page until you fill them out.

Oh, and the hyperlinks aren’t working.

Don’t know what you mean there.

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45

MrHappyGoLucky Says:
April 2nd, 2005 at 6:11 am

Doh, that fixed it right up. As far as filling up the asides, that’s no problem at all. I love those little fellas.

On the hyperlinks thing, what I was referring to is that if I link to something in an aside, the link won’t show up for some reason. You have to click on (more) to go to the actual post and then click the link.

I’m sure it’s something having to do with the excerpt feature or something, but I can’t seem to figure it out.

Thanks for the help!

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46

MrHappyGoLucky Says:
April 3rd, 2005 at 1:26 pm

Just a follow up. Coldforged help me figure out what was wrong with my hyperlinks not functioning. I was putting my asides in the Content section of the post instead of Excerpt.

Had I fully read the comments (I thought I did!) I would have seen this answered in comment #26. Doh!

So to recap: Be sure to post your asides in the Excerpt section of your post, not the Content section and the category exclusion codes goes in your ROOT/index.php, not your template index.php.

Thanks again CF.

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47

The Life of Me. » Archives » Spaghetti & Spam Says:
April 10th, 2005 at 10:32 am

[…] ebar. Try saying that three times fast! I have been using, yet another ColdForged plug-in, Customizable Post Listings for quite sometime now, but I’v […]

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48

April Says:
April 10th, 2005 at 1:08 pm

I tried adding the $cat =”-27″; to my index.php file, but it shows up in writting on the corner of my page. I put it exactly where you said to put it too. I also downloaded your plug-in, and for some reason it’s still not working. Hmph. I’m not a programmer, but I’m quick to learn.

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49

ColdForged Says:
April 11th, 2005 at 8:25 am

If it’s showing as text you didn’t put it in the right place. Here’s the entirety of my index.php. Note that this is the index.php that exists in your blog root, not in the theme directory.
```
<?php
/* Short and sweet */
define('WP_USE_THEMES', true);
$cat =\"-27 -28\";
require('./wp-blog-header.php');
?>
```
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Beetle Blog » Blog Archive » Reading List Implementation Says:
April 13th, 2005 at 11:08 am

[…] dpress Include Page Plugin »
```
        Reading List Implementation
	
            ColdForged details how to use his version of Scott Reilly&#8217; [...]
```
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The RummandDan show » Blog Archive » Another way to implement “Asides” Says:
April 21st, 2005 at 8:14 am

[…] was that i didnt wanted it to integrate into the frontpage of my blog posts, much like the coldforged style… I have recently published my movie coll […]

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coldforged.org » Blog Archive » I hereby give up Says:
April 22nd, 2005 at 7:34 am

[…] but we don’t : -( Maybe it was the sad-face smiley that did it, I don’t know. I’ve had a hack for multiple exclusions that I use on this site because I n […]

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Rgalgon Says:
April 25th, 2005 at 10:30 am

The asides block always displays at the top of the page no matter how I change time stamps or post afterwards.
…
< ?php if (haveposts()) : ?>
< ?php $asidesoffset = 0;?>
< ?php while (haveposts()) : thepost(); ?>
< div class=”asides”>
< ?php $asidesoffset += c2cgetrecentposts(
3, ‘
» %postcontent% (%commentscounturl%)’, ‘6′,
‘date’,'DESC’,$asidesoffset); ?>
< /div>
< div class=”post”>
…..

besides that everything is working great thanks for the guide

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ColdForged Says:
April 25th, 2005 at 10:35 am

Yes, that’s the intent of my design, Rgalgon. They are explicitly written to appear in a static place in my content instead of intermingled with the real posts.

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Rgalgon Says:
April 25th, 2005 at 12:44 pm

ah, ok then, thnks for the quick reply

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Rgalgon Says:
April 25th, 2005 at 12:49 pm

Me again, how then would I go about getting them at the top of each post like on your main page? Because where they are in the loop the div tag appears at the top of each post.

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ColdForged Says:
April 25th, 2005 at 2:55 pm

Looks like you’ve already got them there, unless I’m misunderstanding your question.

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Rgalgon Says:
April 25th, 2005 at 3:21 pm

Sorry for not being more clear. When I make new posts in the asides category how would I go about getting them to appear above different posts. Ideally I would like every ‘aside’ from when the last post was made to show up above that post, and then on a new post have a new asides section that begins to be populated by all new aside posts. For example on your main page right now in the first aside you have the frisking penguins, immensly funny book quote, etc. followed by your latest post, and then below that another asides section with different asides. How do you have different asides in different boxes? Is it based soley on timestamp of the aside posting in relationship to the post?

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ColdForged Says:
April 25th, 2005 at 3:33 pm

The way I have my index set up, I have a static asides section between each “real post” that has 3 asides in it. As I post more asides, they simply flow between those sections. In other words, the three most recent asides always appear in the first section, the next 3 appear between the first two posts, etc.

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Rgalgon Says:
April 25th, 2005 at 7:59 pm

ah, makes perfect sense now.

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Pau Says:
April 30th, 2005 at 9:31 am

I can’t seem to get the post view count to work in my blog. Can you give me a sample code which shows where and how to properly place this line?

< ?php c2c_post_view_count(); ? >

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ColdForged Says:
May 2nd, 2005 at 9:33 am

Pau asked: Can you give me a sample code which shows where and how to properly place this line?

You can see it in my single.php source file.

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Steve P. Sharpe |