GregM
Forum Replies Created
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Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: wp_list_cats Unable to Return Single Category RSSHi Beel,
Thanks for trying it out — the fact the array hasn’t worked for you yet reassures me I’m not *totally* confused, at least! 🙂
What I’m trying to achieve, from the visitor’s point of view is: I see a category title I like in the sidebar, I click on that category title, and I’m taken to a page that lists all the recent posts in that category. But also on that page, just below the text describing what kinds of things appear in the category, is a handy little blurb saying that if I’d like to keep track of new posts just in this category, all I have to do is click here…
Unfortunately, I can get it to say click here or here or here or here, depending on which category the user might like, but I cannot get it to say just click here for an RSS feed matching this category which you are viewing right this moment.
Does that make sense?
Thanks,
GregForum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: wp_list_cats Unable to Return Single Category RSSHi Beel,
If you mean hard-coding part of the feed URL just by appending /feeds/etc. to the end of the URL for the category page, that would work…if only there were a straightforward way to extract the URL for the category presently being viewed..but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be.
If you mean hard-coding the whole entire feed URL, then this doesn’t work in the context of a theme using a category page, where that one page will be used to build what is delivered to the browser, regardless of what specific category we might be in.
Does that make sense? Or did I misunderstand your question, and you were wondering about a different mix of hard-coding & soft-coding?
Thanks,
GregForum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: Soft and robust vs. brittle links between postsFolks, this just keeps getting better! I’ll scope out the RunPHP plugin, because as you describe it, it sounds like it could provide *exactly* the capability I was after originally!
Many thanks,
GregForum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: Soft and robust vs. brittle links between postsKafkaesqui, that’s an *extremely* clever solution to the problem — your extra mod_rewrite rule lets you translate clean links which don’t use any category names, dates, etc.. I guess this same rule would pop out if I just defined my permalink style to use *only* the post name, without including any of the other %variables%? So one possible solution, as you say, is to use a mod_rewrite rule like this one (or maybe whatever WP might spit out with a plain-Jane permalink structure) *at the same time as* the rules for your chosen permalink structure. Then, the only way of breaking the link would be to change the file name, but changes to permalink structure or category names would be perfectly safe.
From the feedback so far, I’m going to guess that WP lacks any built-in way of achieving the feat I was originally hoping to achieve. If this really is the case (which would be quite a glaring hole in an otherwise exceptionally well thought-out approach to permalinks, IMHO), then your solution sounds like an excellent work-around.
Thanks a bunch!
GregForum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: Soft and robust vs. brittle links between postsHmmm, yes, as you say — if you change the lock, the old combination ain’t gonna work…
That’s a large part of the reason why content management systems were invented in the first place — so that publishers don’t have to go manually running through their pages and changing combinations whenever they decide to change the lock. CMSs do that for them. That’s also why WP *already* achieves this feat perfectly well for thousands upon thousands of links across hundreds of different blog installations, for every single link on the blog which it generates itself.
The question is: is there a way to utilize that exact same functionality in material which *I* generate, so that I don’t need to make manual changes in links whenever something gets moved or renamed?
Maybe I’m making this sound difficult somehow, but it’s a built-in capability of every main CMS out there, it’s a built-in capability of every HTML editor that does site management, etc., etc. Nobobdy but nobody goes around manually changing all their links when they want to change a file name, etc.
Thanks again for any more insights,
GregForum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: Soft and robust vs. brittle links between postsYes, including the database query explicitly will definitely do it — thank you for pointing out at least one way of achieving a link between posts which doesn’t break the second a change is made in how the posts are served up!
Unfortunately, though, it gives up on the elegance of permalinks and the goal of providing the user with cleanly formatted links across the whole blog.
A large part of the benefit of using permalinks is that links within your own site are formatted cleanly, so the visitor never needs to see the database query string. This is how all the other links work, which WP generates itself — e.g., links to categories, links to posts within categories, etc.
So, it sounds like there’s a trade-off: either use permalinks throughout, even in your own posts, and it will all be clean…but brittle…or give up on them altogether for links within your own posts, in which case they are robust…but ugly.
You’ve helped me to clarify my own thinking about the question and make it more explicit… Now I realize that what I’m really after is this: is it possible to use permalink-style links *consistently*, all throughout a blog, without having them break due to structural changes in the way the database entries are presented (e.g., changing a category name, changing an article title, etc.)? Or does robustness to changes in presentation require mixing in some non-permalinks?
Thanks in advance for any more suggestions!
GregForum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: Soft and robust vs. brittle links between postsSorry I wasn’t logged in — that was me, rather than ‘Anonymous’!
Greg