CHAPTER 17 CUSTOMIZING YOUR BLOG S LAYOUT 479 Figure 17-18. The completed learning layout
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478 CHAPTER 17 CUSTOMIZING YOUR BLOG S LAYOUT Figure 17-17. Default paging links A Wider Picture For a long article, you might prefer a wider layout than normal, but still retain a sidebar to display related information. You also might want to add more structure and formatting to the story itself. Figure 17-18 shows an example of a multiple-page article with headings and images, along with a sidebar of related stories and links to resources. In this section, I will take you through the necessary changes to achieve this look. The first step is to change the appearance of the paging links described in the previous section. In the include file main-content.php, which defines The Loop that outputs the articles (see Chapter 16 for more information about The Loop), change the call to wp_link_pages. Add parameters to produce the Next Page and Previous Page links you can see in Figure 17-18. Listing 17-11 shows the changes in the code (highlighted in bold). Listing 17-11. Paging Link Code in main-content.php
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CHAPTER 17 CUSTOMIZING YOUR BLOG S LAYOUT 477 Figure 17-15. Alternate teaser link Multiple Pages for Articles Another way that WordPress can help you deal with long articles is by splitting your article into multiple pages. You can do this with the
476 CHAPTER 17 CUSTOMIZING YOUR BLOG S LAYOUT add a link with, by default, the text (more…), as shown in Figure 17-14. This link will take your reader to the single-page view of your article. This view will have the full text of your article followed by any comments and the comment form as normal. As a nice feature for the reader, the page will be scrolled to the text following the more link, ready for them to continue reading. Figure 17-14. The more link on the page You can change the text used for the link so it says something other than more by using the template tag the_content() in your template. This tag retrieves the content of your post and can take a parameter specifying the text to use in the link. Listing 17-10 shows an example of a different prompt. Listing 17-10. Alternative Teaser Prompt Passed to the_content() in main-content.php
Notice that Listing 17-10 includes an XHTML break tag,
, in the text. You can add any HTML tag valid in a link. For instance, you could include an image as part of the link. The output from this example is shown in Figure 17-15. A final point about this teaser tag is a companion tag you can use: . This tag will stop WordPress from displaying the teaser part of your article on the page after the reader clicks; that is, the text before the (more…)
CHAPTER 17 CUSTOMIZING YOUR BLOG S LAYOUT 475 Teasers and the More Tag for Lengthy Articles If you are writing lengthy articles on your blog, they tend to overpower the front page of your blog. While an article is new enough to still be on the front page, its length will push all the other articles a long way out of the visitors sight. For example, I added a 700-word article as the newest post on my sample blog. This meant that a visitor would need to scroll down through four screens before the next story was visible. If you had several such articles on your front page, it could quickly become a dozen or more screens long. Having a home page of that length is a big turnoff to visitors. They feel overwhelmed by the amount of text presented and are likely to go elsewhere. WordPress has a couple of mechanisms to deal with this. The first is a special tag you use in your post that allows you to present the first part of your article as a teaser. The rest of the article is then available by clicking on a more link. To enable this feature, simply add the (more…)
474 CHAPTER 17 CUSTOMIZING YOUR BLOG S LAYOUT You can customize the styling of the subscription management page, the wording of the form controls, and the messages that different visitors see from the plug-in administration page, shown in Figure 17-12. As you can see, this plug-in is quite powerful and could provide a great addition to your blog and your visitors experience. Figure 17-12. The Subscribe to Comments plug-in administration page A version of the theme with the changes I have described in this section can be down loaded from the Source Code area of the Apress web site (http://www.apress.com) as c3rohorses-discussion-layout.zip. This is a good starting point to developing a site with a conversation layout. A next step might be to customize the subscriber management page to match the rest of the site. If you read through the rest of this chapter, you may find more features you would like to incorporate on your site. A Learning Layout The next type of layout is one that would suit a blog that is mostly about learning. This type of layout is more likely to incorporate multiple images and other elements in a post. The post itself might span multiple pages. The layout could have links to related articles of interest to the readers. The readers might also see value in a list of related resources.
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CHAPTER 17 CUSTOMIZING YOUR BLOG S LAYOUT 473 Figure 17-10. The subscription administration page Figure 17-11. E-mail notification of a new comment
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472 CHAPTER 17 CUSTOMIZING YOUR BLOG S LAYOUT Figure 17-8. Subscribe without commenting Figure 17-9. New link to manage subscriptions If your visitors click this link, they will be presented with an administration page (styled like the WordPress administration pages) listing all the posts to which they are subscribed and allowing them to remove subscriptions, block all notifications, and change their e-mail address, as shown in Figure 17-10. When someone else comments on the story to which a reader is subscribed, the reader will receive an e-mail notification, as shown in Figure 17-11. The e-mail message details who commented and what the comment was, and includes a link taking the recipient directly to the post. Another link in the e-mail message takes the recipient to the subscription management page (see Figure 17-10).
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CHAPTER 17 CUSTOMIZING YOUR BLOG S LAYOUT 471 To install this plug-in, download the zip file, expand the archive, and upload it to your server following the instructions in the readme.txt file found in the plug-in package. Put the plug-in file subscribe-to-comments.php in wp-content/plugins and the user administration file wp-subscription-manager.phpin your main WordPress directory. Go to the plug-ins administration page and activate the plug-in. That s all you need to do. WordPress automatically calls the plug-in when the comments are displayed. The plug-in adds a check box to the standard comment form, giving your reader the ability to sign up to be notified when follow-up comments are posted. Figure 17-7 shows this in action. Figure 17-7. The Subscribe to Comments plug-in in action By default, this plug-in allows your visitors to subscribe only when they leave their own comments. If you prefer, you can allow them to subscribe without leaving a comment. Simply add a call to the plug-in s template tag show_manual_subscription_formin the comments.php theme file (full instructions are in the readme.html file; see step 5 of the installation section). The resultant comment form will have a section named Subscribe Without Commenting, as shown in Figure 17-8. Once your readers have subscribed to the comments on a story, the plug-in recognizes them (via a cookie) when they subsequently revisit the same post. This time, a Manage your subscriptions link is presented, as shown in Figure 17-9.
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470 CHAPTER 17 CUSTOMIZING YOUR BLOG S LAYOUT post, include the two sidebar building blocks. When you are viewing a single page, the main content should be full width and the sidebars will not be output. This results in the view shown in Figure 17-6. Figure 17-6. Single-post view without sidebars Subscribe to Comments For a scenario of a reader who is solely interested in your article and the discussion stemming from it, an extension can help to keep that reader involved. An appropriate plug-in is one named Subscribe to Comments, created by Mark Jaquith, originally by Jennifer at ScriptyGoddess (http://www.scriptygoddess.com/archives/2004/06/03/wp-subscribe-to-comments/). You can download this plug-in from http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/. The Subscribe to Comments plug-in allows your readers to subscribe to the comments of a post. This will appeal to those readers who enjoy the conversation aspect of your blog and want to know whenever someone else has posted a comment.
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