Showing off your series « Unfolding Neurons

Showing off your series

24 Apr, 2008 Neurotic Plugins, Organize Series, Talkin Tech, WordPress

Tags: latest series, Organize Series, plugins, tutorial, usage help, WordPress

This entry is part 9 of 10 in the series Organize Series Usage Tips

One of the things that the Organize Series WordPress plugin does well is provide multiple ways for you to promote and “show off” the various series you’ve written. Since some of those possibilities aren’t easily visible to the new user this next few posts in the series will give you a list of all the different ways you can publicize your serial work.

Latest Series - <?php latest_series(); ?>

This template tag is one of the few features of Organize Series that is not automatically enabled right out of the box on fresh Organize Series installs. However, it is a powerful function that provides an easy way for you to promote the latest series you’ve published (or are in the midst of writing).

How to use it:

To use the latest_series() tag you need to be familiar with editing your theme files. There are some great pointers for this here, here, and here. The latest_series() template tag can be placed wherever you want - inside or outside of the WordPress loop. What will happen is that when the page is generated the latest_series template tag will be replaced by what you have included in the Latest Series Template in the Series Options Page. So you can control the output via the series options. By default, the latest_series tag will display the series icon for the latest series.

So let’s take a look at actually using this tag. Let’s say you want to insert the latest series information in your sidebar and you want it to display the series icon, a description of the series, and let’s throw in a list of the posts in that series as well. First, we need to set up the “Latest Series Template” via the series options page. It will look like this:

Notice that I’ve used the following %tokens%: %series_icon_linked% - which gets replaced with the series icon for the latest series (if there is one); %series_description% - which gets replaced with the series description for the latest series (if there is one); and %post_title_list% - which gets replaced with the list of posts in the series (according to the “Series Post List Template” on the Series options page. I’ve also styled it using xhtml and css. If you are familiar with xhtml or css your options are virtually limitless for the actual output of the Latest Series Template tag. Note that you can also control the size (width) of the series icon via the “Series Icons Options” also on the series options page.

Now that you’ve got the Latest Series output customized on your series options page you’ve got to insert code somewhere in your theme. There’s actually TWO ways to do this. The easy way is if your theme is widget enabled you can simply use the super-duper Latest Series Widget that I’ve included with Organize Series! The slightly harder way is to simply insert “<?php latest_series(); ?>” wherever you want the latest series stuff to show up.

For instance, most implementations of this information will be in the sidebar of your blog. In my case I simply followed the style of my sidebar (<ul> and <li>) and inserted the code appropriately in it’s own block - like this:

Notice how the entire “latest series” block is surrounded by the conditional “<?php if (function_exists(’latest_series’))…” statement. This is good coding practice to follow whenever you use template tags from plugins so if you have to disable a plugin or are testing things you won’t disable your blog too. Note as well, that this code is based off of how my theme’s sidebar is structured. When inserting “<?php latest_series(); ?> on your own blog you’ll want to follow the html structure in your theme.

Finally, here’s how the latest series block looks on my blog using the above procedure: