Sideposts widget 3.0 has been released. This version is a major plugin rework that makes more flexible to get your aside posts in the way you want.
With this version, a new templating system has been introduced. From now, the widget output comes out from templates which makes more easy to customize the widget and to create your own aside post format. This templates can be selected on every widget you create with Sideposts and templates for the same options than prior versions are provided. From now, under the ’show’ selection box, you get the list of available templates to use.
It’s really easy to create a new template and or to customize an existing one. Just take a look to the plugin templates directory to see how work the ones provided.
To make it easy to upgrade the plugin, we recommend to follow this simple steps:
Create your template and save it to a folder outside the plugin directory. (The plugin directory is fully deleted on automatic upgrades).
Create a file named ‘alkivia.ini’ in the wp-content directory, and set on it the path to your custom templates folder. This folder will be added as additional templates search location. You have an ‘alkivia.ini’ sample on the samples directory. Also, if you want to remove the bottom link to archives and the RSS icon, you have an option in the ‘alkivia.ini’ file to do it.
More information about configuring is available on our wiki.
This is a new SidePosts release which does not introduce new functionality. Just some requested changes, specially by setting some new CSS classes.
This are the small CSS classes introduced:
- A class sideposts-title to customize the post title. This is a span tag and shows like <span class=”sideposts-title”>Here the post title</span>
Some classes for the unordered post list. I mean, classes introduced to <li> tags. The classes introduced are:
- <li class=”spli-first”> for the first post in list.
- <li class=”spli-last”> for the last post in list.
- <li class=”spli”> for all other posts in the middle.
- If there is only one post to show, it uses the spli class, as there are no first and last.
Also, a small arrangement has been done when using the widget in FotoBlog mode. In this case, now the image width shown is set on the widget instead using the default WordPress sizes.
SidePosts 2.4 has been released. This new release includes some small new features to be used on any widget instance.
- When using Excerpts with thumbnails, now you can chose to set the thumbnails aligned to right. This was suggested mainly to be used with right-to-left languages. By default, thumbnails are aligned to left.
- Now, when you set up a new SidePosts widget, you can force all entries from the widget category, to be shown in the main RSS feed. By default, all entries in any SidePosts widget are removed from the main feeds.
- The “Read full post” link was removed when listing excerpts. As suggested by many users, linking to the title should be enough and is the default WordPress behavior.
- When you’re watching a single post page. This post is not shown anymore in SidePosts. This is done to prevent duplicate entries in the main blog area and the SidePosts widgets.
- When browsing a category set on a SidePosts widget, the widget will not show. This is to prevent duplicating the same archive in the main blog and the SidePosts list.
- A new option has been added to set a photo-blog in a SidePosts widget. When you select this option, the widget will show the post’s first attached image in medium size. Also, the post excerpt will be show.
Enjoy your SidePosts widgets!
One of the most demanded features for the SidePosts Widget was to have multiple instances of the plugin. Also, some people asked to have some way to have a SidePosts widget for private posts. Now, both features have been introduced and have been released as SidePosts 2.0-beta.
As it is a beta version, you will not receive any notice on your WordPress dashboard to update the plugin. I never provide this for beta versions when an stable version is available. But you can manually download, install and test it. Just have take into consideration that if you update to 2.0-beta, you cannot go back to any previous version, as the widget structure changed and gets updated when installing.
I started now to full test the widget to find and solve any bug it could have. If you test it and find any bug or want to suggest any new feature, please do it at the support forum.
The new release for SidePosts has been launched. This is SidePosts 1.5.1.
I had no time to write about 1.5 release as this introduced a bug related to the query filter that has been fixed in 1.5.1. I preferred to fix the bug and release soon, as it produced problems in some sites which use custom queries.
In the 1.5 branch a new feature has been introduced. Now, you can select to show excerpts with thumbnails, something that was asked in the support forum. When you select to show Thumbnails with excerpts, the thumbnail for the post first attached image is shown.
You can control in the widget the width for the thumbnails to prevent showing too big thumbnails. It does not resize the thumbnail, just set the display with and its proportional height.
Also some filters have been added to be used by developers. Now you have filters for date, styles and thumbnails.
Lately, new languages have been included to my SidePosts Widget for WordPress. Thanks to the work from other developers, this plugin now includes the following languages:
Also, the POT file it is included for easy translation to other languages.
