In Series
In Series is unsupported as of WordPress 2.4, because spending all my time updating and testing the plugin just to work with new WordPress releases isn’t very fulfilling, and leaves little time to work on new plugin features. There have been reports of minor breakage in WordPress 2.6, and complete failure in WordPress 2.7. I have no plans to install these or future releases for testing, and no burning desire to un-break in my plugin whatever API damage that the WordPress developers have incurred.
Quick links
3.1.0 Beta 5 Available
If you’re interested in the bleeding edge, or would like to see what’s coming up in the next release, you can check out 3.1.0 Beta 5.
What is In Series?
In Series is a plugin that lets you write series of posts in WordPress, without having to deal with the hassle of manually writing up tables of contents or “next” and “previous” links in each post. It adds a new set of controls to the post editing screen, allowing you to add the post to a series (new or existing), re-order the post within a series it’s already in, or remove the post from a series entirely. In Series uses this information to automatically render all sorts of things — navigational <link> tags, tables of contents, previous- and next-in-series links, and more. The plugin also adds a new “Series” configuration sub-tab (under the “Options” tab in the admin pages), providing a highly-flexible mechanism for controlling how In Series renders content within your posts. You can see In Series in action on the screenshots page. Best of all, you don’t have to edit any theme files or PHP to get In Series configured and working!
What requirements does In Series have?
In Series requires WordPress 1.5.2 or later, including WordPress 2.3. There may be PHP or MySQL requirements as well — In Series is tested with PHP 5.2.4, and MySQL 5.0.44. It should work with PHP 4.3.0 and MySQL 4; if you have trouble running In Series with these or later versions of PHP or MySQL, feel free to file a bug, and I will investigate.
History
In Series was originally developed by Scott Merill, who handed development off in late 2006. Initially, the plugin was template-tag based — that is, you had to edit the PHP of your theme’s pages in order for the series information to show up. Posts were added to series by using special key names (series_name and series_order) in the post editor’s “custom fields” area. Later versions in the 2.x series added the graphical series editing control, and “edit-less” insertion of series links into posts. Version 3.0 of In Series is a complete rewrite of the original plugin, utilizing its own database tables for the storage of series data. In Series currently maintains forwards-compatibility (you can upgrade old data to new versions), but not backwards-compatibility (you can’t downgrade to old versions).
Translatons
Translators wanted!
If you are multi-lingual and would like to help translate In Series, please contact me. A POT for 3.0 is available for anyone interested.
Available translations
To install a translation, simply put the proper .mo file in the /wp-content/plugins/in-series/ directory. The .mo file’s name must match the value of WPLANG in the wp-config.php file. For example, define ('WPLANG', 'en_US'); in wp-config.php would require a file named in_series-en_US.mo.
| Version | Language | Translator |
|---|---|---|
| 3.0.6-3.0.12 | be_BY | Фат Коўлест (”Fat Cowlest”) |
| cs_CZ | Vladimir Petruj | |
| da_DK | Michael Grove | |
| de_DE | Julia Löcherbach | |
| el | George Valsamis | |
| es_ES | Fernando Tellado | |
| fa_IR | Roozbeh Taassob | |
| fr | Ellaurenzovfoot | |
| it_IT | Gianni Diurno | |
| pl_PL | Kane_F | |
| pt_BR | Bernardo Bauer | |
| ru_RU | Egor | |
| zh_CN | My Digital Life | |
| zh_TW | My Digital Life |
If you find any errors or omissions in the translations, please let me know.
Releases
Presently, In Series releases will appear at the unified release page. However, software releases may be broken down as sub-pages in the future.
Latest News
For the latest news on development, check out the In Series category archive.
117 Responses to “In Series”
Posted: Oct 18th, 2007 at 12:27
Thank you for the excellent plugin.
Posted: Oct 18th, 2007 at 12:33
My pleasure. Be sure to let me know if anything’s difficult, buggy, or missing. ;)
Posted: Oct 21st, 2007 at 22:45
Nice plugin but I would love to see pages support as well as posts. I have a sort of travel diary consisting of about 20 pages and this plugin would make maintenance a lot easier.
Posted: Oct 21st, 2007 at 22:56
Hey Kees,
Offhand, it doesn’t make sense to me to do a serial with pages. If you could provide a link with an example, it might help me to better wrap my head around what you’re trying to do. Once I understand it, I’ll be in a better position to say whether I can (and am willing to) implement it. :)
Posted: Oct 22nd, 2007 at 03:54
I just got news of this. Funny thing is earlier today I was wondering how to do “sub-posts” to continue an article, “as a series” so to speak, being a novitiate, of course I didn’t get to finding a result, then whammo!! along comes a link to your “series” plugin… haven’t tried yet, am about too though, and I’m thinking it should do the job. Thx for the plug-in, and all the best.
Posted: Oct 22nd, 2007 at 04:06
@David
Be sure to let me know if anything doesn’t work out for you. I’m aiming for the best out-of-the-box experience possible, so I’m interested in any warts or sharp edges that I might have missed. ;)
Posted: Oct 22nd, 2007 at 16:32
I do want to use this plugin, but after some testing, I can add to a series, but I can not remove any items from it. This is a big problem, and I’m probably going to have to disable the plugin until this is fixed.
Unless I’m doing something wrong…
Is anyone else having trouble removing items from a series?
Posted: Oct 22nd, 2007 at 16:38
I should also note that I am using the latest beta, and have followed the instructions precisely, and I have been using the side bar on the write page to manage the series.
So, to the author of this plugin, please let me know if there is any way I can help, as I’m assuming that this bug is not appearing for you.
The remove selection simply doesn’t do anything for either items in the series, it is almost like it just does not do anything.
Thanks.
Posted: Oct 22nd, 2007 at 16:40
@James
That’s a known issue in 3.1 Beta 1; it’s fixed in SVN. This should not be an issue with 3.0.7 (current stable).
I hope to release Beta 2 in the nearish future (I’m toying with late tonight/early tomorrow, but no promises ;). The current 3.1 SVN passes all its automated tests, except for a few insignificant whitespace issues with WordPress 2.0 and 1.5.
Posted: Oct 22nd, 2007 at 16:47
I tried assigning an item in a series to another series, and it did, but the new series does not function correctly, and it would not remove the previous series it was associated with. When trying to remove that item from either/or/both of those series, it would fail.
I am using WordPress 2.3
Posted: Oct 22nd, 2007 at 16:49
Thanks for the update Quandary.
Posted: Oct 22nd, 2007 at 17:11
If you go to http://www.halfje-bruin.nl/reizen/oeganda-2007/ you see an index page for sub-pages. On each sub-page I’ve added my own “previous” , “index” and “next” links but using the method of your plugin could simplify this.
Posted: Oct 23rd, 2007 at 01:23
thank you for a nice plugin! but ummm…
is there a way to make all series in 1 post?
Example,
I write a new post call, “My Videos” and so I can have all my video series under the same post title instead of showing multiple posts of the same title again and again…
Sorry if it confusing you…
Posted: Oct 23rd, 2007 at 01:47
@Zinh
Well, two thoughts. One, you shouldn’t have “the same title again and again” — each entry in the series should have its own, distinctive name. For example, a series called “Digital Camera Showdown” could have posts titled “Cannon PowerShot A10″, “Nikon D40X”, and so on. The posts are grouped by the series, so there’s no need to keep repeating the name.
Second, In Series does not provide any way to have multiple pieces of content under a single post slug, but that functionality is built into WordPress (see the <!--nextpage--> feature). However, this is not considered very reader-friendly. I’d prefer to implement page-style hierarchy before single-post multiplexing, in any case, since the former makes for very friendly/readable URLs. ;)
Posted: Oct 23rd, 2007 at 08:25
This really is an excellent and useful plugin. Thanks so much for putting it together.
Posted: Oct 25th, 2007 at 13:11
We are having problems with multiple authors trying to link posts. When trying to link a post to a series which is made (initiated) by an other author the series does not show up. Is there a remedy for this?
Posted: Oct 25th, 2007 at 13:30
@Erik
I hate to say it, but the remedy is going to be in In Series 3.2, or possibly later (the feature got cut from 3.1 already). In Series currently prevents authors from trampling on each other’s series (accidentally or otherwise), and at the same time permits two (or more) authors to have the same series name (e.g., Alice can have a “Programming” series, and Bob can have a completely separate/independent “Programming” series). There are stubs in the code, and even a table, for dealing with multiple-author series posts — however, the UI and internal permission-checking logic has not been written.
Posted: Oct 25th, 2007 at 23:36
@Quandary
thanks for your quick reply! I do not want multiple authors to be able to create series with the same name. Do you think it is a quick hack to disable this in the code? I’ll have a look at the code tomorrow. Thanks for the otherwise fine plugin :)
Posted: Oct 26th, 2007 at 01:15
@Erik
It should be — check in-series-internal.php:658-734 (for 3.0.7; 867-894 in the 3.1 branch); removing the owner_id check from the SQL on line 682 (875) should do the trick (a series with the same name by any author will cause $exists to be set, and thus bypass the code for creating the new series).
Posted: Oct 26th, 2007 at 09:42
@Quandary
thanks for the info. However, I had to make can_alter_series always return true for it to work. Now it works like a charm. Keep up the good work! And if I might give you a tip: a widget to display all series would be marvelous :)
Posted: Oct 26th, 2007 at 12:16
@Erik
Yes; if you always return true from can_alter_series, all authors will (theoretically) be able to see/edit all other series — all the plumbing should be there to do that, but I haven’t tested it. It does not prevent two series with the same name from being created (that’s what the SQL edit does). If you trust all your authors not to trample on each other’s posts, then the combined hack should work, but I cannot guarantee that you will be able to upgrade to newer versions of In Series, especially when it gains native support for this.
Also, a series listing widget was introduced in 3.1 Beta 1. ;)
Posted: Oct 27th, 2007 at 12:52
Is there a possibillity to hide the series for home page? Also I want the series to be displayed at the bottom of the post, not after the title. Thanks!
Posted: Oct 27th, 2007 at 13:10
@swimro
Having different layouts for multi-page views (e.g., the home page) is possible in the late 2.x versions of In Series, and will be available again in 3.1 (the feature was cut from 3.0, because it was too much to handle on top of a rewrite). If you’re adventerous, you can try 3.1 Beta 2 (though I would not recommend it for any hugely important sites ;).
To display the table of contents at the bottom of the post for In Series 3.0.x, just set the “Post layout” field to “%content <div class=’series_toc’>%toc</div> <div class=’series_links’>%prev %next</div>” (without the outside quotes).
Posted: Oct 28th, 2007 at 00:32
Hey,guy! You have done a good job. I like it though i have come up with it the first time…Just want to write a series…
Posted: Oct 28th, 2007 at 05:43
hi there. I just translated the in series plugin to brazilian portuguese.
http://www.bernabauer.com/in-series-traduzido/
Posted: Oct 28th, 2007 at 12:37
@Bernabauer
Great! Unfortunately, the link you provided 404’s for me. Are you sure it’s up, and at that location? :)
Posted: Oct 28th, 2007 at 15:11
Hi I’m using v3.0.7 of In Series and WP v2.3.1 but when I try to activate the plugin I get a message that it could not be activated because it would cause a fatal error. Any idea what the problem is?
Posted: Oct 28th, 2007 at 15:28
@Keith
I’ve kicked off the tests, and I’ll see if anything falls out, but I’m fairly confident that In Series 3.0.7 will work just fine with WordPress 2.3.1 (I know that In Series 3.1 worked fine with WordPress 2.3.1 RC1). I need more information (specifically, what that fatal error was, and what line it was on) in order to diagnose your problem.
Posted: Oct 28th, 2007 at 16:31
@Keith
In Series 3.0.7 passes all of its tests vs. WordPress 2.3.1 (this includes activation of the plugin). I have manually verified that I can activate In Series 3.0.7 on WordPress 2.3.1 as well.
I’d recommend getting in touch with me via e-mail.
Posted: Oct 31st, 2007 at 09:11
Hello,
Great plugin,
but when I activate it, my blog uses around 50 query’s more than before!…
And, is there an option to sort the articles in the table on publish date?
Posted: Oct 31st, 2007 at 10:45
@Pim
Nope — you must add the posts to (or reorder them within) the series to make them be in the order that you want them to appear. This functionality is completely independent of the order in which the posts were written (i.e., post ID), the publish/edit dates, or any other factor. Is there a problem with adding the posts in the order you want them? What’s the use-case you’re having trouble with?
As far as stress goes: I have not profiled In Series. You should only see that level of additional queries if you have series actively displaying on the page in question.
Posted: Nov 2nd, 2007 at 08:14
how to remove the inseries from the archives page ? it shows TOC and links
Posted: Nov 2nd, 2007 at 09:17
To display the table of contents at the bottom of the post for In Series 3.0.x, just set the “Post layout” field to “%content <div class=’series_toc’>%toc</div> <div class=’series_links’>%prev %next</div>” (without the outside quotes).
Many thanks for this “patch”, it works. Could it be possible to have this as an explicit option in future versions?
Also, many thanks for the excellent plug-in!
Posted: Nov 2nd, 2007 at 15:26
@Dusko
Already done; 3.1 (currently at Beta 2 at the time of writing) has a basic configuration mode, in addition to the advanced configuration mode found in 3.0. The 2.x series had “explicit” options as well, but they weren’t flexible enough for everyone.
Posted: Nov 2nd, 2007 at 15:31
@nothing
For In Series 3.0, ToC and links will always show up, in all views. 3.1 Beta 2 allows seperate layouts for single-view (i.e., viewing the post at its permalink) and multi-view (viewing the post on the home page, archives, etc.) modes.
[Edited to add…]
You could blank out the “post layout” value for the In Series configuration, and implement the functionality you describe using template tags, if you’re really desperate to get this behavior with In Series 3.0. However, I don’t in general recommend hacking up themes to add template tags for a variety of reasons:
However, using the template tags provides the ultimate level of control for how the series links show up on your blog.
Posted: Nov 4th, 2007 at 04:13
Hi Quandary the problem was a faulty WP installation - In Series works perfectly and it’s a great plugin, thanks very much!
Posted: Nov 4th, 2007 at 04:25
@Keith
Glad to hear that you were able to resolve the problem. Doubly so to hear that it was caused by something other than In Series. ;)
Posted: Nov 4th, 2007 at 12:12
[Note: this post was originally eaten by Akismet; I de-spammed it a bit late. -Q]
Hello!
I think InSeries is a good plugin but I’ve got some problems with it:
Look at this blog entry, which is being published in the middle of a series.
First of all it would be nice, if I could show the table of contents below the two graphics and the italic text.
How about including an option that the toc can be shown at an individual position which can be referred by something like (!– series_toc –) (with “normal” HTML-brackets) and if this mark is being missed, the toc will be shown where it is shown now.
Second I’ve noticed that I haven’t the option to define, that I don’t want to use the css class called series_links.
At third I think it looks a little bit weird (look at the link) at the bottom. I think if the class called series_links is not referred it shouldn’t look this way.
Bye, Jens
Posted: Nov 4th, 2007 at 12:30
Could it be, that my comment in which I stated some problems has been not published?
Posted: Nov 4th, 2007 at 12:42
Hm. Perhaps I only previewed it, so I’ll try it again:
First of all: I like your plugin, since I have some post series which can automatically connected now.
But I’ve got some questions/proposals:
Look at this page (this is an entry in the middle of a series).
First of all I would like it, when I can insert the toc at a position where I want it. In the moment it’s being published directly at the beginning of the posting, but I would like to have the toc shown at another position (in the example after the two graphics and the italic text).
How about using some special token code like (!–series_toc–) (with normal HTML-brackets). At the position where this code has been published the toc will be shown. If you forget this code the toc will be shown where it is shown now without having this option.
Second I would like to have the option to define it, if I want to use the css class called series_links. I’ve found no option for this class. I think this is the reason why the series links are looking so weird at my page.
Bye, Jens
Posted: Nov 4th, 2007 at 18:41
@Jens
(Nope, Akismet ate your first post.)
Expanding series links inside of a post’s content is not supported yet (I’ve thought about it, but I haven’t filed a feature bug). The major reason this hasn’t gotten done yet is because I want to focus on the automatic stuff first, and make sure that that’s all really solid. Remembering to put in the right tags in every post in a series could get tedious — while it’s nowhere near as tedious as manually cross-linking all the posts, it’s still not as fire-and-forget as configuring the layout once. Some people want the extra control, though, and that’s totally legitimate. I’ll get around to adding it eventually. ;)
You can completely configure the XHTML that In Series generates by going to the Options tab and the Series sub-tab in the WordPress admin interface. Look at the “Post layout” field. See how the <div> tags have classes (”series_toc” and “series_links”)? Just change them to be whatever you want them to be.
Hope that helps.
Posted: Nov 5th, 2007 at 09:56
@Quandary:
Yes, that helps. I haven’t scrolled in the little window to the right, so I saw there only series_toc.
I’ll try it later…
… and it would be great if you add the described ability in a future release. I think if it works as I’ve written yesterday it should be a good compromise of working automatic and giving you the needed control.
Bye, Jens
Posted: Nov 6th, 2007 at 12:03
I downloaded 3.1.0 Beta 2 and tried activating on my new install of wordpress 2.3.1 and I see “Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.” Not sure what it is. I also downloaded 3.0.8 and saw the same error when I tried to activate the plugin. My wordpress is a brand new install and I did not customize it other than just adding plugins.
Posted: Nov 6th, 2007 at 12:26
@Yenly
You’ll need to enable the display of PHP errors and let me know what the fatal errors are, and also provide the version of PHP that you are using. I know that both of those versions of In Series work just fine with WordPress 2.3.1 (I have the test passes to prove it ;).
Posted: Nov 8th, 2007 at 06:19
Anyone else getting this error when trying to validate your feed:
line 33, column 2884: Invalid character in a URI: ‘ ‘ (74 occurrences)
… 171; Previous in series ]]>
with the / before ‘content’ being the invalid character?
If I deactivate, the feed validates fine.
Posted: Nov 8th, 2007 at 06:57
Hi there, why does the series toc not show in the feeds/rss?
Posted: Nov 8th, 2007 at 17:03
how do I enable the display of PHP errors in wordpress?
Posted: Nov 8th, 2007 at 20:02
@Myrrh
The W3C validation service passes the RSS2 feed with no errors (but with warnings about relative URLs being in the content — that’s not the plugin’s fault). However, feedvalidator fails that same feed with the error you describe. I’m fairly confident that the W3C validator is the correct one, out of these two (the error that feedvalidator is giving is nonsensical).
Both services give a pass to the Atom feed just fine.
Posted: Nov 8th, 2007 at 20:06
@Arno Nel
This is looking like a WordPress bug. The ToC and its links show up just fine in the Atom feed, but all the tags are stripped in the RSS feed. I’m not doing anything special for RSS, and I have no idea why WordPress is stripping out the list formatting and links (in fact, it seems to strip all the tags in my local test setup).
I’ll look and see if there’s a workaround.
Posted: Nov 8th, 2007 at 20:10
@Yenly
See the FAQ entry (which references the appropriate PHP documentation).
Posted: Nov 9th, 2007 at 00:48
@Quandry
ok, dont mind switching to Atom. Not sure how tho. i currently use Feedburner pointing to http://arnonel.com/feed
can you suggest a different approach for now?
Posted: Nov 9th, 2007 at 02:14
@Arno
I don’t know if Feedburner supports reading from Atom feeds or not. You can try pointing it to your Atom feed (http://arnonel.com/feed/atom) and see if that works.
I still haven’t figured out why the tags are getting stripped, but I’m working on it. :)
[Update]
Yeah, it’s a WordPress bug. Here’s how it breaks down:
the_contentto render the post into the feed (this works).the_contentorthe_excerpt_rssto render the post into the feed.the_excerpt_rss.the_excerpt_rsscallsget_the_excerpt, which in turn callsapply_filterson the “get_the_excerpt” tag.wp_trim_excerptis hooked into the “get_the_excerpt” tag. This function strips out the tags.the_content_rsscallsget_the_content— not the_content — and does notapply_filterson the “the_content” tag.the_content_rsscallsapply_filterson the “the_content_rss” tag, and not on the “the_content” tag.the_content_rssalso callsstrip_tagson the output by default.Posted: Nov 9th, 2007 at 05:30
What do you reckon? i wait till you find a hack? :P
Posted: Nov 9th, 2007 at 07:16
@Arno
Sorry, but I reckon that I can’t truly fix this one. The closest I could come just in the plugin itself is to de-hook
wp_trim_excerpt, which could break other things, or try and figure out some way to not generate series link output if someone is getting the excerpt (I think it would be difficult to pull this off).The closest I could come with a bugfix patch to WordPress is to fix the broken logic in RSS2 (which would fix the problem for people doing non-summarized feeds), and take out the
strip_tagscall inwp_trim_excerpt(which could have unintended consequences).Posted: Nov 9th, 2007 at 07:42
no worries, dont mind switching to atom. one thing i dont get is, http://arnonel.com/feed/atom doesnt have the series in either.
am i missing something?
Posted: Nov 9th, 2007 at 07:48
It’s not showing up because you’ve configured the Table of Contents to show up only on the post itself. This means that it will not be generated for any multi-page views — the home page, archives, categories, or the RSS/Atom feeds.
Posted: Nov 9th, 2007 at 08:17
must u uncheck “Use a different layout for multi-page views” ?
Posted: Nov 9th, 2007 at 08:32
Unchecking the box will work. However, I’d recommend switching to “basic” mode. Unless you have a specific need to be in advanced mode, there’s no need to deal with all that clutter.
In basic mode, just configure the first line to read something like “[x] I want a ToC titled [Table of Contents for %series] to appear [in all views] at the [top] of the post.”
Posted: Nov 9th, 2007 at 10:45
First, I love the plugin, thank you very much for putting it together.
Second, is there any easy way to have the “Next in series/Previous in series” links aligned to the right at the bottom of the post, instead of the left? (I have a signature image on the left and I would like the link(s) to therefore be on the right so that they are clearly separated.)
Thanks again!
Posted: Nov 9th, 2007 at 11:10
@Cathy
Yes — however you may need to know a little bit of CSS in order to pull it off. The first thing I would try is to float the <div> tag containing the links to the right. To do this, set the “Post layout” option as follows (assuming a table of contents at the start):
<div class='series_toc'>%toc</div> %content <div class='series_links' style='float:right;'>%prev %next</div>Unfortunately, this may not do exactly what you want. If this is the case, you’ll need to consult with a web designer or someone otherwise knowledgeable in CSS. There are a zillion ways to get something “to the right” which will each work, but with its own unique sets of quirks and caveats. If you can get a hold of the maintainer of the theme you use, s/he might be able to help you pick the best CSS for the job.
Posted: Nov 9th, 2007 at 13:29
Thank you for getting back to me so quickly!
I tried the code you mentioned above; however, when I clicked “update options” I got the following error: Error Page 403 (Forbidden)
Does this mean I will need to look into CSS, or did I somehow break it?
Posted: Nov 9th, 2007 at 13:42
Woah… that’s totally weird. 403 is (generally) something that your web server sends back when you don’t authenticate with it properly. I don’t think that WordPress will knowingly emit a 403 response, but I’d have to double-check the code. I poked your server, and it looks like all the files are readable (no 403s), so I assume it’s not a file permission problem — so, off the bat, I’m stumped.
Have you ever been able to save the In Series configuration options? Can you save other options?
Posted: Nov 9th, 2007 at 14:12
This was the first time I actually tried to change the options. I also tried unchecking the box for Insert tags and I got the same message. So, it would appear I can’t change any options for this plugin.
As for other options, I am able to change them for other plugins, with the exception of Spam Karma 2. However, I don’t know if the SK2 part helps.
Thanks for looking into this. :)
Posted: Nov 9th, 2007 at 14:22
No problem, Cathy.
This might get complicated, so I’m going to take the discussion to e-mail. Hopefully we’ll be able to get everything straightened out. :)
Posted: Nov 11th, 2007 at 07:53
Is it possible to have the toc excluded out of the automatic excerpt from WordPress?
In my blog the search function shows in the results list automatic excerpts of the found blog entries, but if they are part of a series, the excerpts are looking all the same - they show the toc.
Look at this search as an example.
Posted: Nov 11th, 2007 at 14:45
@Jens
In 3.0, it is possible, but in a work-around sort of way — you can put the table of contents at the end of the post, instead of the beginning. In 3.1, you have the added option of having a different layout for multi-post views — if you do not include the table of contents in the multi-post view, then it will not show up in the excerpt on the search pages (or any other multi-page view).
Excerpts are a thorn in my side. They’re stored separately, and the default ones are generated by calling the_content, so I can’t really tell the difference between a normal page request and an excerpt generation. I’ve had complaints before that In Series does not play nice with excerpts, but I can’t think of any good solution for the problem. I’ll keep on it, though.
Posted: Nov 11th, 2007 at 15:39
Alternately, you can set an excerpt explicitly. This will override the default excerpt generation that goes on in
wp_trim_excerpt.I had a small epiphany, and I’m testing a patch that would fix the problem on In Series’ side; it’ll be in 3.0.9 if it works.
Posted: Nov 12th, 2007 at 13:02
Is it possible to add a list of the posts in a series to a post or page that doesn’t belong to that series?
I’d like to have a page that gives details of each of the different series I’ve run, and obviously the easiest way to do that would be to have some piece of code that calls up a series I specify and lists all the posts in that series.
Posted: Nov 12th, 2007 at 18:15
That’s a definite maybe. ;)
The In Series API definitely provides you with what you need. So long as you have a post ID of a post that belongs to the series you want, or (better yet) the series ID of the series you want, you can call up each post that’s part of the series. The trick is then calling the functions and outputting the data, which requires that you be able to execute arbitrary PHP on your page. The Exec-PHP plugin should allow you to do this.
Native support for table of content pages will come eventually, but this should serve as a decent work-around until that actually happens. :)
[I should clarify: you can get all the information you need to generate a ToC-like listing for any arbitrary series. You can’t get your hands on the user-configured format/layout for the ToC though (at least, not without breaking into the internals), and you can’t use
InSeries::ToC()directly. You’ll need to callInSeries::adv_FirstInSeriesandInSeries::adv_NextInSeriesto collect all the posts, then output the data as you see fit.]Posted: Nov 13th, 2007 at 12:35
Cool I’ll give that a try. This is an excellent plugin and I think adding a feature to support this would be a worthwhile enhancement for future versions. I’m currently using the Beta, btw.
Posted: Nov 13th, 2007 at 18:46
Awesome! Be sure and let me know if you find any more warts (or, heaven forbid, full-out bugs). :)
Posted: Nov 15th, 2007 at 16:55
Thank you for the excellent plugin
Posted: Nov 15th, 2007 at 19:58
Glad you like it. Let me know if you have any problems. :)
Posted: Nov 19th, 2007 at 13:36
Hi there,
I’m trying to build an online magazine with WordPress, where each week we publish a new “issue” with new content in different categories. I was wondering how to make WordPress keep each weeks posts within their respective “issue”, and I’m not sure if this plugin would be the answer.
Do you think it’s possible to do what I’m looking for with this plugin? Maybe I’d need to hack or modify the code to adjust it to my needs?
Posted: Nov 19th, 2007 at 17:45
Hey Kevin,
I would recommend using categories to keep the articles in your issues together, and a combination of categories and tags to group your articles by topic. You could use In Series to group your issues, but it wouldn’t be very good at the job; a real category would be (IMHO) much more effective. In Series would be an excellent way to keep track of serial articles that run across multiple issues of your webzine, though.
Posted: Nov 20th, 2007 at 03:47
Hi,
Thanks for the response. I also thought of using categories, but over time there would be like 500 categories and that’s really heavey.
Another solution I was thinking of was using Custom Fields, which I think is less of a hassle. Then I just have to do a custom query to fetch whatever articles I need.
Thanks for your help anyway. I’ll sure be using your plugin sometime soon for other projects. :D
Posted: Nov 20th, 2007 at 08:00
If you’re going to break into code, I’d really suggest using the new taxonomy API (querying vs. postmeta gets really ugly, really fast — I speak from experience with In Series). No matter what, there are going to be a lot of magazine issues; taxonomy groupings (which are how categories and tags are implemented) are probably the correct way to go, it’s just a matter of making the presentation pretty and intuitive. ;)
Then again, if you’re publishing all your content for an issue at the same time, and you do monthly releases, your issues will automatically get grouped in the archive.
Keep in touch about how this all pans out. It’s not directly related to In Series, but it’s another interesting grouping problem. I’m interested in the final solution you settle on, and how well it works.
Posted: Nov 20th, 2007 at 09:47
Interesting.
I’m more of a designer than a coder (my love goes to CSS) but I’m learning a bit of everything. I’ve been looking at the taxonomy thing, and seen that it’s possible to add custom terms (like tags, categories, etc), so I could just add Issues along with Tags and Categories to classify my articles.
The thing is, I have no idea on how to achieve this. It would be great to have another box under the Categories box (when posting) where I can mark the Issue, but haven’t got a clue. T_T
I will come back with news about the project. Meanwhile it’s just a blank page (http://psnow.es/v2/), so I’ve got a lot of stuff to do still.
Thanks for your advice. ^_^
[Sorry; Akismet snatched this up as spam, and I just now went through the bin. -Q, 2007-11-30]
Posted: Nov 21st, 2007 at 02:10
Anyone know if there is a way to update the inseries details from Windows Live Writer? Is any willing/able to perhaps write a plugin for it to be accessible?
TIA
Molly
Posted: Nov 21st, 2007 at 08:30
Partially, in 3.1 (still in beta). You can add a new post to a series, using
<!--Series-name: your series name here-->in the content.I don’t presently support windows live writer directly; I have no idea how easy or difficult support would be (or what it entails).
Posted: Dec 23rd, 2007 at 12:21
I’m absolutely loving the In Series plugin! It’s exactly what I needed. One request for future versions, however…
Would it be possible to have the line that says “Part of the Applied Anarchy Series” enumerated? So it would say “Part Three of the Applied Anarchy Series”, for example. That would be awesome.
Thanx for all your hard work!
Posted: Dec 23rd, 2007 at 13:06
There is no line that says “Part of the [series name] series” — at least, not in the default setup. Are you referring to the heading of the ToC, or the entries of the ToC (or something that has nothing to do with the ToC at all)?
The answer, in any case, is probably going to be “no,” primarily because converting numbers to ordinals is a translation headache.
Posted: Dec 23rd, 2007 at 14:26
Ack! I totally forgot I put that in the ‘Post Layout’ section myself. I’m not used to plugins being so user formatable ;)
One more thing, though. In the TOC is it possible to list the dates of the entries as well as the titles? Some of my series span years and I’d like readers to realize that some of the info may be outdated.
Posted: Dec 23rd, 2007 at 15:12
Not right now, but it’s a piece of information that could be added and given a token like
%date. The tricky part would be if users wanted more than one date format out of In Series — supporting a single, customizable format is easy, but needing one for each control becomes progressively more tedious for the user to configure. Supporting %year, %month, %date, etc. tags would be a performance hit, since that’s more tokens that need to be searched for and replaced. The problem is tractable, but it will require some thought (bug #32).I might also be able to provide %index and %total tokens, which would allow for “Part 3 of 6″-style formatting. However, I’d have to cache that information because calculating a post’s position in a series is an expensive operation relative to the type of information it produces* (bug #31).
In any case, I need to get In Series 3.1 out the door before adding any more features. I’m not dedicating very much time to it right now, and I haven’t picked out a month to hammer on it or get it “shipped” or anything like that. But I’ve filed the bugs for these feature requests, so they won’t be forgotten. :)
* For the curious, In Series 3.x uses a doubly-linked list to order posts, and calculating position is an O(N)/linear time operation. The trade-off is that forward/next navigation, insertion and removal operations are all O(1)/constant time operations.
Posted: Dec 25th, 2007 at 16:30
hello hello! thanks so much for your plugin, it is exactly what i was looking for for a few articles that i have that are quite lengthy. i am having one small problem tho…the posts show up in order on my features page http://judgementalzine.com/?cat=3, but when i click on the first part of the series my table of contents is out of whack. and i’ve tried pretty much everything including erasing & reposting but it’s still all jumbled. i am sure i am missing something really obvious, but not quite sure what it is. i have the posts time stamped with #1 at 00:09, #2 at 00:08 and so on…not sure if that’s the issue or not? any help with this would be great so i stop ripping my hair out. thanks so much & happy happy holidays :)
Posted: Dec 25th, 2007 at 20:03
Hi Christie,
The link that you gave looks just fine to me. What exactly is “out of whack”? The posts in the ToC seem to be in the correct order, and also appear to be formatted nicely.
For the record, In Series does not use the post’s publish time to order posts within a series. You can learn more about how posts get (re)ordered in the documentation (see the “Manipulating Series” section).
Posted: Dec 30th, 2007 at 15:11
Hey Quandary - quick question for you…
How would one go about using graphics for the first, previous, next and last links? I’m thinking that some of the linkage may get lost or overlooked in a more crowded post, and I can’t for the life of me get posts to show the series links both above and below the content within my theme.
Thanks in advance, and thanks for your work.
Posted: Dec 30th, 2007 at 15:37
Hi John,
Which version of In Series are you using? I assume it’s a 3.1 beta, because 3.0 doesn’t have support for first/last links.
Basic mode (no images, top and bottom): “[x] I want navigational links for the [first, previous, next, and last] posts to appear [in all views] at the [top and bottom] of the post.”
Advanced mode (images, top and bottom):
Post Layout:
<div class='series_links'>%first %prev %next %last</div> %content <div class='series_links'>%first %prev %next %last</div>Each of First, Previous, Next, and Last link items as follows:
<a href='%url' title='%title' ><img src="an_appropriate_image.png" /></a>Posted: Dec 31st, 2007 at 00:58
Thanks for the tip on using graphics for navigation. Worked like a charm.
However, there may just be something weird with my theme - whenever I select the option to use nav-links at the top and bottom of the post, both sets show up at the bottom. If I select just “top”, then it still appears at the bottom of the content.
No biggie, just thought you might like to know.
Posted: Dec 31st, 2007 at 08:30
Hey John,
That symptom generally means that %content is not expanding properly. I’d actually chalk that up to either a badly-behaved plugin or an In Series bug before a badly-behaved theme.
It’d be handy if you could check the following for me (edit: Ack! You already did step one. Sorry; I’m not a morning person.):
If things are still broken after disabling all the other plugins, let me know. I’ll get in touch by e-mail, and if you send a zip of your theme, I’ll see if I can figure out if the bug’s in it or In Series. Oh, and be sure to let me know what specific version you’re using, too (you might want to upgrade to Beta 2 if you haven’t already). :)
Posted: Jan 4th, 2008 at 14:47
I upgraded wordpress to version 2.3.2 and was using the inseries plugin version 3.0.10. I was having problems adding a new post to an existing series so I upgraded to 3.0.11 hoping it would help. I still have the problem.
I can use the drop down to pick the series that I want to add it to at first but then there is no option for ‘end’ or ‘last’ like there was before. The options on the drop down are ‘first’ ‘post number 1′ ‘post number 2′ ‘remove’.
Help!
Posted: Jan 4th, 2008 at 21:24
Hi Lori,
The behavior you describe means that the post you are editing is already in a series. Double-check that the post you are trying to add to the series is not actually showing up in the series’ ToC, forward/next links, etc.
[edited to add]
And if you want to move the post from one series to another, you must first remove it from the series that it is already in. Please see the “Manipulating series” section of the documentation for how to add and remove posts from series.
Posted: Jan 5th, 2008 at 11:17
Hi Quandary.
I checked that the post is not in the series. I have added it, removed it, checked again. Clicked the previous and nexts posts within the two parts in the series that do show up and the post I’m writing is not connected anywyere.
I haven’t changed any of the options in the options tab and it isn’t working for two sites that I use it on.
I have recently upgraded to Leopard (Mac). Could there be a problem there?
Posted: Jan 5th, 2008 at 11:25
All right; I’ll contact you by e-mail, and I’ll see if we can’t track this down.
Posted: Jan 5th, 2008 at 16:01
Thanks. I resolved it with a clean install of wordpress 2.3.2.
Posted: Jan 6th, 2008 at 11:08
I’m glad to hear it. I was running out of ideas as to what could have possibly been going on. ;)
Posted: Jan 8th, 2008 at 13:12
As someone else has asked, what I was trying to find out is whether it is possible to a list of all series which I can put in Side bar and then when someone clicks that, s/he gets list of all the posts in the series.
Posted: Jan 8th, 2008 at 19:20
Maybe; depends on how you want to look at it. ;)
With In Series 3.1 Beta 3, there is a built-in sidebar widget for listing the series that the site has. For In Series 3.0, you have access to it, but you have to root around in PHP (so it isn’t really well-supported). Neither of these generate a static/separate table of contents, but they will link to the first post in the series (which may contain a ToC).
Support for permalinks (bug 18) is not in yet, and I’m going to say that would be a prerequisite for having a separate ToC page.
Posted: Jan 9th, 2008 at 13:26
WordPress Plugins: Inhalte erstellen, bearbeiten,anzeigen…
Dies ist ein Teil der WordPress Plugin Serie. Weitere Teile findest Du unter (wird später erweitert). Die Funktionsweise der Plugins wird nur knapp erläutert, damit man sich schnell einen Überblick un……
Posted: Jan 11th, 2008 at 19:36
I am having a problem getting back to basic configuration mode. Even if I uninstall the plugin and reinstall, it goes to advanced configuration mode. How do I get back to basic configuration?
Posted: Jan 11th, 2008 at 19:38
Oh, and yes, I tried pressing the “Basic Config” button - :)
Posted: Jan 11th, 2008 at 19:54
Hmm… I’m not sure what would cause that. Then again, I don’t think I have test automation for that yet, either. Let me see if I can’t get this to happen in my testbed.
Posted: Jan 11th, 2008 at 20:15
Maybe I can just do it with advanced - trying to get previous and next posts on top and bottom of page - I used the script above for adding an image but it doesn’t seem to be working for me:
Post Layout: %first %prev %next %last %content %first %prev %next %last
Link Formatting (all):
Posted: Jan 11th, 2008 at 20:34
ok, I give - I can’t seem to copy the code without the code being stripped
Posted: Jan 11th, 2008 at 21:13
All right; I can’t repro this issue locally. If you haven’t upgraded to 3.1 Beta 3, I’d like to take the opportunity to ask that you do (make sure to deactivate and re-activate the plugin when you upgrade). I don’t expect this to solve the problem, however, I’d like to at least be on the same page, since Beta 3 is what my local test setup is on. If the problem persists, I’ll take it up with you on e-mail tomorrow — for now, I’m going to sleep. :)
Posted: Jan 14th, 2008 at 13:51
Hi thanx for the plugin, just testing it out for the first time. I’ve been having a quick scan over the code to see if I can hack it to display an image with the title link. I was hoping to pull a yapb thumb image for each item in the Toc. Or if I put an image in the post excerpt maybe I could pull that in. Of course I want to have the image do a lightbox popup, and the title to link to the post. Do you think it could be done? YAPB
Posted: Jan 17th, 2008 at 19:14
Ok, I finally moved to a new host where I have access to my db :) - ran the delete script, reloaded, and it appears in the page. However, when I click on the link, nothing happens. Also, although I set it to place on top and bottom and to include text, it is only on top and only shows the link, not the text (IE “Next:”) - also I can confirm that the button switch to basic and switch to advanced does not work with IE7 - works fine with firefox though so not a big deal to me.
Posted: Jan 17th, 2008 at 19:46
Thanks Brian, I’ll file a bug on the IE7 thing, and see if I can’t get it fixed.
Can you give me a link to the page exhibiting the problem? Do the problems with the links persist if you turn off all your other plugins?
[edited to add]
This is now Bug 34.
Posted: Jan 17th, 2008 at 20:08
Well, I was wrong. Apparently the links I saw was from another plugin. I disabled it. Now nothing shows. So actually it still isn’t appearing on the page at all.
the site is http://www.morepartnerincome.net
Posted: Jan 17th, 2008 at 20:15
I need a link to the specific post that’s exhibiting the problem, please. :)
Posted: Jan 17th, 2008 at 20:19
That may be the issue. I expect it to show on all post pages. Do I need to inject it into a page to make it appear?
Posted: Jan 17th, 2008 at 20:29
Don’t confuse posts with pages; they have very specific meanings in WordPress, and saying “post page” is very confusing. In Series operates on posts.
I need to know which posts should be in the series. In Series can display links on both multi-post views (e.g., the home page), single-post views (i.e., the post itself), or both. However, I need a link to at least one of the posts, because otherwise, I don’t know which ones are supposed to be in the series.
[edited to add]
Actually, I guess I need to know two posts that are adjacent in the series. No links will show up if only one post is in the series.
Posted: Jan 17th, 2008 at 20:44
Maybe I am misunderstanding the functionality. What I was looking to do is have it show next and previous links automatically, without having to tag any of the posts. If that is not the case, then this would explain why it doesn’t show up anywhere -
Posted: Jan 17th, 2008 at 20:45
Pub-o-clock is fast approaching, and pub-o-clock means my responsiveness will be dropping to zero. Just FYI. I guess if I’m mentioning pub-o-clock, I should also mention the band that makes pub-o-clock happen. :)
Posted: Jan 17th, 2008 at 20:50
You have to “tag” the posts, insofar as adding the posts to a series. This process does not use actual tags (either post tagging or template tags). The documentation (see section “Manipulating Series”) describes the procedure you need to go through to put posts together in a series.
Posted: Jan 19th, 2008 at 19:40
Hi twincascos; sorry, your post got stuck in my spamtrap, and I just now got it out.
If you’re willing to play with the file structure on your server, you can locate images in such a way that a static <img> entry in your In Series configuration points to an appropriate image for the given post. However, it’d be sort of a pain. In series does not support anything like this natively — though if you’re running WordPress 2.0–2.2, Organize Series might work out a little better for you.
Posted: Feb 10th, 2008 at 17:26
I’ve closed comments on this page for obvious reasons — the thread’s just getting too long with all the feedback. :)
However, you can still post your thoughts in the forum. It’s far easier to manage conversations there, and it won’t gum up the works for people who just want a quick overview of the plugin. I hope to see your comments there!