WordPress.org

1. tobiasly
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Hey folks, I'm working on setting up a new WordPress site and need some general guidance on the architecture. I'm very familiar with Apache and coding in PHP but just want to make the most workable site.

   The basic idea is that numerous users will have their own blogs, but there will also be a showcase page where once a month or so, a site admin will pick and choose certain posts to appear on a front page. Ideally that page would have its own, separate domain name, and *really* ideal would be the ability to rearrange the order of those posts arbitrarily.

   The approach I'm thinking of is to use Categories to accomplish this, where posts that have a certain category appear on the front page. The site admin will then add that category to posts. Is there a way to have a "sub-site" that shows only that category? Maybe create a Page with an RSS feed of that category?

   If I create a second domain, and use an .htaccess rewrite rule so that domain pointed at just that page, will WordPress respond OK to that?

   Any ideas for how I could accomplish the arbitrary re-ordering? Does WordPress support the idea of custom fields, or would I need to create a plugin for this? I'm thinking I could have some type of "Priority" field which then dictates the order of the RSS feed, with posts of the same priority then sorted by date.

   This is for a corporate website, and the only users will be employees, so permissions isn't a huge issue (meaning I don't have to worry about users messing with their Categories if we just tell 'em not to!)

   Many thanks...

2. @mercime
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   numerous users will have their own blogs

   I recommend installation WordPress Multi-User - one installation, you can set up or delete blogs on the fly. Each blog can have one or more users. Plus, you can upload a WPMU plugin Sitewide Recent Posts - lists latest post from each blog in front page. You might also consider using the BuddyPress plugin for WPMU for your corporate website so that employees with separate blogs can also be in different groups within WPMU for projects or events.

3. asechrest
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   I'm confident you can make this work. Here's how I'm doing something similar. My apologies, but I'm at work on lunch break and I don't have the time to link to the plugins I'm going to list.

   * Force new registered users to a specific role (built-in WordPress option)

   * Restrict that role's capabilities (Role Manager plugin)

   * Set a default posting category (built-in WordPress functionality)

   * Remove the option by that role to assign any category to a post but the one I select (Level2Categories plugin)

   * Exclude category from posting to the front page (Advanced Category Excluder plugin)

   * [optional for your purposes] - Remove sections of the dashboard that I don't want a simple user to see/manipulate (Adminimize plugin)

   At this point, I think you've got a lot of what you need. You've got the front page only displaying your (or admin, et al) posts, but users can still create their own posts.

   Now all you need to do is A) have user posts show up on their own page and B) have a showcase page where you can promote select user posts.

   Just as you suggested, the best way I can think to do this is using Categories. I've created a new page with a new page template whererin I use a loop utilizing query_posts only for a certain category(ies).

   Now, pick the user post(s) that you want to Showcase, assign them a new Category, and display them however you'd like on the Showcase page.

   That's what I'm doing or have done. Thoughts?

   P.S. - I'm really quite a novice with WordPress and coding in general, so I can't even being to answer your .htacess question. Sorry.

4. tobiasly
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Thanks for the suggestion, actually my first thought was also to use Mu but then I got to thinking it might be overkill. One thing that we'll eventually want to do is have a set of profile pages where the authors can post pretty much whatever they want about themselves. Does Mu support such a feature where user profiles across all blogs can be aggregated in one place also?

   The two plugins do look interesting, thanks for the heads up...

5. asechrest
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Perhaps WordPress MU is the way to go, as suggested. The extent of my coding knowledge is a Java course I took 6 years ago, so WordPress MU scared me off.

6. tobiasly
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Thanks asechrest, those plugins you mention sound great. Half the problem with WordPress is that there are so many plugins it's hard to even know what's out there! :)

   I should mention that this is actually for a smallish (maybe 30 users) group within our company so I'm not even sure that self-registration is necessary.

   The Role Manager plugin sounds very interesting, although it looks like it's not quite ready for 2.7 yet, but one of my big concerns with WordPress was the inability to have fine-grained access over roles.

   Anyway, thanks for the pointers, it's good to know that you have done something like this. The custom query page you mention to only show the one category makes a lot of sense, sounds like it should be pretty simple.

   Thanks again to both of you!

7. asechrest
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   I run 2.7.1 and Role Manger does still seem to work. I have no WordPress experience prior to WP2.7.0, so I can't be sure whether Role Manger retains full functionality, but I've not found a case where it doesn't work for me, and I know many others still use it.

   Eventually I hope that role management becomes native to WP.

   Re: Page Templates -

   I just copied my default template (page.php for most themes), renamed it per this tutorial, deleted the sections I didn't need for my specialized page, then modeled my post display loop after the primary WordPress loop except that I utilized the query_posts function. This is coming from someone who's digging into PHP for the first time, so you may have a much easier time at this.

8. tobiasly
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Ah OK, I just saw where it said Role Manager works for 2.1-2.6. But looking at the website I think it just hasn't been updated since then.

Topic Closed

This topic has been closed to new replies.