Blogging?
Blogging for my members? I heard you can do it from one of my friends, but i'm not sure where the code is or how to set it up? Is it even possible?
Blogging?
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Blogging for my members? I heard you can do it from one of my friends...
How would it be set up? Would each member have his/her own blog by which they can post stuff? So, other members cannot make a blog post for other members?
The above is possible, but it will require a bit of help from your members for initiating their personal blog.
— Blog ~ Life's Handbook ~ Wikidot Design & Development
Read my comment below about per-user blogs. That's a more complicated topic.
Wikidot blogs aren't user friendly to set up yet (they're working on that), but they are extremely customizable (See wiihd.net and fortunz.com for how I've set up my wikidot blogs), and once you set up one once, it's not that complicated thereafter.
The basis of a wikidot blog is the ListPages module. It will allow you to take as much or as little as you want from every page in a particular category or categories and present that at one location.
Example:
[[module ListPages category="blog"]]
%%linked_title%%
%%content{1}%%
----
[[/module]]
That will take everything from the first division in every page in the blog category (eg blog:1, blog:2) and out put it on a single page.
[[module ListPages category="blog" perPage="10"]]
%%linked_title%%
%%content{1}%%
----
[[/module]]
By adding perPage, you paginate the blog. It presents ten posts, and the puts a little "next" link at the bottom to see the next 10 posts.
The second basis of a wikidot blog is a template. Live Templates (scroll down about half-way) allow very powerful customizations of categories and reduce how much you have to repeatedly type in each post. They allow you to attach information such as the creator of the page, the date of creation, and it allows you to change the format of all pages in a category at once.
So you would create a page called blog:_template to store the live template, and then create a divider above which is the page format for all pages in that category, and below which you can create preset divisions and pre-entered text or instructions.
Posted by %%author%% on %%date%%
+ %%linked_title%%
%%content{1}%%
%%content{2}%%
%%content{3}%%
========
[!-- this is a comment, it does not appear on the page output, it only appears to someone editing the page
You could put instructions here to have them put their entire post in this section. The contents of this section are %%content{1}%% --]
====
[[!-- This section is %%content{2}%%. stuff placed here won't appear on the ListPages output since it is only set
to output %%content{1}%%. It might be a good place for users to place extra stuff that would crowd the blog page,
but that some users might want to see, like pictures relating to the blog entry. Your average blog will have one image
per post showing on the main page, and then invite you to click through for more if there are more. --]]
[[gallery]]
[!-- the gallery module will show all pictures uploaded to that page --]
====
[!-- This section is %%content{3}%% you could opt to place a comments section here so users can talk about the post--]
[[module Comments]]
When a user goes to create a new page in the blog category (for example, blog:1), all they will see is:
[!-- this is a comment, it does not appear on the page output, it only appears to someone editing the page
You could put instructions here to have them put their entire post in this section. The contents of this section are %%content{1}%% --]
[[image meridingahorse.jpg]]
I rode a horse today. Click thru for more pictures.
====
[[!-- This section is %%content{2}%%. stuff placed here won't appear on the ListPages output since it is only set
to output %%content{1}%%. It might be a good place for users to place extra stuff that would crowd the blog page,
but that some users might want to see, like pictures relating to the blog entry. Your average blog will have one image
per post showing on the main page, and then invite you to click through for more if there are more. --]]
[[gallery]]
[!-- the gallery module will show all pictures uploaded to that page --]
====
[!-- This section is %%content{3}%% you could opt to place a comments section here so users can talk about the post--]
[[module Comments]]
If they added the content above--I rode a horse today--their post would show up as
Today (This was the title they chose, and it's linked to the full post)
(this is an image of the poster riding a horse—use your imagination)
I rode a horse today, click thru for more pictures.
If the reader of the main blog page clicked through, they would see the same thing plus below they would see a gallery of the horse riding if the user uploaded more images to that page (because of the [[gallery]] module placed in %%content{2}%%). They would also see the date of the post and user who created it (this can be added to the ListPages output as well).
Later, if you wanted to, you could revisit blog:_template, and move the elements above the first divider around, and they would move not only for all future posts, but for past ones as well. You could move the author and date to below content{1} or to the bottom of the page all together. You could add an adsense ad block that would be on every page in that category. But any changes you make below the first divider only apply to later posts.
That took longer than I thought it would. Read the ListPages and Template information for more customizations.
I love the theme.
Go on working !
I'm trying to set it up where each member can have his/her personal blog if they wish. The blogs would be personal, only to be edited by the person who created the blog. And of course I would edit it if I found something I didn't want on my webstie…
Best you can do is the honor system as far each member's blog being their own to edit. If you make a category editable by a member, you'll make it editable by all members. You could have each of them make their own wiki and blog from there, and then host their RSS on your site, but I doubt that's really what you're after.
Wikidot members have created a request to make custom group permissions—which would allow what you're asking. You can rate that wish up here. Rating it up lets wikidot know you want it too.
However, that wish has been there a long time, and wikidot doesn't seem keen on implementing it. So I created a new wish just now that would be easier to implement and would allow what you want.
What David says is true, but you can discourage any dishonest attempts by making an authorship line. Therefore, if the author is not that of which the blog belongs to, then you know that it isn't from the person and the particular post should be deleted.
There are two ways you can do this. One way differentiates with categories, and the other with tags. I personally recommend the tags option.
Pretty much, you want an autonumbered category, let's call it blog. This is the universal blogging category. Also, you will want each member to have his/her own page (not in the blog category). The page would have a newpage module that creates a page in the blog category.
Depending on what you prefer, I can either create a short step by step guide, or I can try to code it for you. You will probably learn more from the step by step guide.
But as David said, trust is a pretty big factor here. Hopefully, though, it shouldn't be too much of an issue.
— Blog ~ Life's Handbook ~ Wikidot Design & Development
I won't be here for a week, so I'll go ahead and post a step by step guide for this.
Step 1
Autonumber the category blog. Go to Site Manager -> Autonumbering
The blog category will be used for the actual blog posts. When you autonumber a category, every page in that category will be automatically numbered, so it would allow pages to created such as blog:1, blog:2, blog:3, etc.
Step 2
Create a live template (David describes these above). Create page blog:_template and put what you want on it. This is a basic page layout for what you might want on this page:
By: %%author%% on %%date|%B %d, %Y|agohover%%
%%content%%
[[# Comments]]
[[module Comments]]
The live template page for my personal blog is here. You can customize the layout however you want.
Step 3
Insert your ListPages module somewhere on the site (module described above). This will display recent posts or other posts depending on what you want to show. To show a summary of the eight most recent posts (paginating the rest), then insert this somewhere in your site:
[[module ListPages category="blog" date="dateCreatedDesc" perPage="8"]]
[[size 140%]]%%title_linked%%[[/size]] -- posted %%date|%B %d, %Y|agohover%% by %%author%%
%%short%%
([[[%%page_unix_name%%| read more...]]])
[[[%%page_unix_name%%#Comments| %%comments%% Comment(s)]]]
[[/module]]
I recommend reading on the ListPages module so you can customize this however you want.
Step 4
Allowing personal blogs for other members is slightly difficult. However, it can be done.
Next, you are going to want to create a personal page for each member. Put each page under the category of member. So, if you were to create a personal page for me, the page name in the URL would be member:timothy-foster. Tag each member page with the member username ONLY. So for my page, it would have one tag, timothy-foster (with tags, the hyphens or underscores are important).
Now create another live template page for the member category under the page member:_template. Put this code on the page:
%%content%%
[[module ListPages category="blog" date="dateCreatedDesc" perPage="8" tags="="]]
[[size 140%]]%%title_linked%%[[/size]] -- posted %%date|%B %d, %Y|agohover%% by %%author%%
%%short%%
([[[%%page_unix_name%%| read more...]]])
[[[%%page_unix_name%%#Comments| %%comments%% Comment(s)]]]
[[/module]]
[[collapsible show="Add Post" hide="Add Post"]]
[[module NewPage category="blog" tags="%%tags%%" button="Add Post"]]
[[/collapsible]]
Step 5
Polish anything that needs polishing. If something doesn't work, be sure to inform the community.
This nifty setup can be used for various things. When someone makes a post, it appears on their personal page as well as on the universal module. People can send messages through the blog posts by adding the username of the receiver to the list of tags of their post (this seems redundant because of the PM system Wikidot has, but oh well).
The only problem is someone can go and add a post under someone else's name. But with authorship showing, it is really hard to "cheat" someone's name.
EDIT: Just tested it in the sandbox, and it seems to work fine if you do it right.
Hope this helps, and good luck!
— Blog ~ Life's Handbook ~ Wikidot Design & Development
I have just followed the instructions for one of my sites where I was thinking of including a blog and it works well. A good, clear set of instructions which are easy to follow.
If I may make one very (and probably not really necessary) minor tweak to clarify things: step 4 (allowing members to post blogs) is optional and will not apply to everyone, so I would perhaps title it Step 4 (Optional) or something like that and at the end of step 3 add a final step if the site owner wants the add post button:
[[collapsible show="Add Post" hide="Add Post"]]
[[module NewPage category="blog" button="Add Post"]]
[[/collapsible]]
Rob
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - member of the Wikidot first line support team.
Strathview ~ Wikidot-based wikis, websites & intranets and online database development
community groups, villages, charities, business and government.
Ok it seems to work. It will let me post in it, and i think it will let the public (and by public I mean members of the site) too, right?
YOu should have a look at http://packages.wikidot.com/package:7 one of the completed packages to be copied onto your wiki…
Fixed and usable sets of pahes for some pre-setup usages…
Service is my success. My webtips:www.blender.org (Open source), Wikidot-Handbook.
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