Description
Uses forum discussions to create news system (with comments) to put on the pages. Also can create RSS feeds.
In more details - each new forum thread from selected forum categories is used to create new news item (first post makes the body). Several parameters allow customization.
If RSS feed is created a link will also be put into the document head (feed info should appear in browsers automatically) and below the news items.
Attributes
| attribute | required | allowed values | default | description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| category | yes | semicolon-separated integers | none | numerical IDs of the forum categories (look at the URL address); multiple categories can be used to create news |
| feed | no | alphanumeric | none | if present - RSS feed will be created with the filename equal to its value |
| feedTitle | no | string | "sitename feed" | title of the feed |
| limit | no | number | 20 | how many items should be displayed |
| offset | no | number | 0 | how many items to omit from the beginning? |
| fixRelativeLinks | no | true | none | fixes links for forum posts if you're using categories from external forums, e.g. Wikidot News / Changelog etc. |
Category IDs can be found when looking at the URL address of the page which lists the threads in the category. It looks like this:
http://community.wikidot.com/forum/c-12/bugs-and-problems
So in this case the category ID is 12.
Item format
A custom format for displaying news items can be chosen. To specify a custom format one should use module invocation:
[[module FrontForum category="..."]]
<custom format>
[[/module]]
where the inner <custom format> element is any block of text following the wiki-syntax, where special variables can be used:
| variable | aliases | description |
|---|---|---|
| %%title%% | title of the news item | |
| %%linked_title%% | %%title_linked%% | title of the news item linking to the original forum thread |
| %%link%% | URL pointing to the original forum thread | |
| %%author%% | prints author of the thread | |
| %%date%% | prints posting date | |
| %%date|format%% | prints posting date with a custom format. Most tokens from php's strftime are accepted. You may find the howto contributed by community useful. | |
| %%comments%% | number of comments = number of threads posts - 1 | |
| %%category%% | forum category where the thread belongs (linked) | |
| %%description%% | %%short%%, %%summary%% | short summary of the item |
| %%content%% | %%text%%, %%long%%, %%body%% | full content of the item (post) |
The default format is:
+ %%linked_title%%
by %%author%% %%date|%O ago (%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z)%%
%%content%%
%%comments%% | category: %%category%%
Examples
The news from the main Wikidot site use the following code to produce both the news on the main site and a feed:
[[module FrontForum category="8" feed="news" feedTitle="Wikidot site news"]]
++ %%linked_title%%
%%date|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z (%O ago)%%
%%content%%
%%comments%% | category: %%category%%
[[/module]]
You should change the category and feedTitle parameters of course to match your own Site.
