Blog Plugin

A simple, extensible blogging platform for October CMS.

Blog & Forum Building Tutorial Video

Editing posts

The plugin uses the markdown markup for the posts. You can use any Markdown syntax and some special tags for embedding images and videos (requires RainLab Blog Video plugin). To embed an image use the image placeholder:

![1](image)

The number in the first part is the placeholder index. If you use multiple images in a post you should use an unique index for each image:

![1](image)

![2](image)

You can also add classes or ids to images by using the markdown extra syntax:

![1](image){#id .class}

Excerpt Vs. Read more

Posts are managed by selecting Blog > Posts from the menu. Each post can contain an excerpt by entering some text in this field on the Manage tab. This content is displayed on the page using the summary attribute of the blog post.

{{ post.summary|raw }}

Alternatively this field can be left blank and the excerpt can be captured from the main content (Edit tab). Use the special tag <!-- more --> to specify a summary from the main content, all content above this tag will be treated as the summary. For example:

This is a great introduction to a great blog post. This text is included as part of the excerpt / summary.

<!-- more -->

Let's dive in to more detail about why this post is so great. This text will not be included in the summary.

Finally, if no excerpt is specified and the "more" tag is not used, the blog post will capture the first 600 characters of the content and use this for the summary.

Implementing front-end pages

The plugin provides several components for building the post list page (archive), category page, post details page and category list for the sidebar.

Post list page

Use the blogPosts component to display a list of latest blog posts on a page. The component has the following properties:

• pageNumber - this value is used to determine what page the user is on, it should be a routing parameter for the default markup. The default value is {{ :page }} to obtain the value from the route parameter :page.
• categoryFilter - a category slug to filter the posts by. If left blank, all posts are displayed.
• postsPerPage - how many posts to display on a single page (the pagination is supported automatically). The default value is 10.
• noPostsMessage - message to display in the empty post list.
• sortOrder - the column name and direction used for the sort order of the posts. The default value is published_at desc.
• categoryPage - path to the category page. The default value is blog/category - it matches the pages/blog/category.htm file in the theme directory. This property is used in the default component partial for creating links to the blog categories.
• postPage - path to the post details page. The default value is blog/post - it matches the pages/blog/post.htm file in the theme directory. This property is used in the default component partial for creating links to the blog posts.
• exceptPost - ignore a single post by its slug or unique ID. The ignored post will not be included in the list, useful for showing other/related posts.
• exceptCategories - ignore posts from a comma-separated list of categories, given by their unique slug. The ignored posts will not be included in the list.

The blogPosts component injects the following variables to the page where it's used:

• posts - a list of blog posts loaded from the database.
• postPage - contains the value of the postPage component's property.
• category - the blog category object loaded from the database. If the category is not found, the variable value is null.
• categoryPage - contains the value of the categoryPage component's property.
• noPostsMessage - contains the value of the noPostsMessage component's property.

The component supports pagination and reads the current page index from the :page URL parameter. The next example shows the basic component usage on the blog home page:

title = "Blog"
url = "/blog/:page?"

[blogPosts]
postsPerPage = "5"
==
{% component 'blogPosts' %}

The next example shows the basic component usage with the category filter:

title = "Blog Category"
url = "/blog/category/:slug/:page?"

[blogPosts]
categoryFilter = "{{ :slug }}"
==
function onEnd()
{
    // Optional - set the page title to the category name
    if ($this->category)
        $this->page->title = $this->category->name;
}
==
{% if not category %}
    <h2>Category not found</h2>
{% else %}
    <h2>{{ category.name }}</h2>

    {% component 'blogPosts' %}
{% endif %}

The post list and the pagination are coded in the default component partial plugins/rainlab/blog/components/posts/default.htm. If the default markup is not suitable for your website, feel free to copy it from the default partial and replace the {% component %} call in the example above with the partial contents.

Post page

Use the blogPost component to display a blog post on a page. The component has the following properties:

• slug - the value used for looking up the post by its slug. The default value is {{ :slug }} to obtain the value from the route parameter :slug.
• categoryPage - path to the category page. The default value is blog/category - it matches the pages/blog/category.htm file in the theme directory. This property is used in the default component partial for creating links to the blog categories.

The component injects the following variables to the page where it's used:

• post - the blog post object loaded from the database. If the post is not found, the variable value is null.

The next example shows the basic component usage on the blog page:

title = "Blog Post"
url = "/blog/post/:slug"

[blogPost]
==
<?php
function onEnd()
{
    // Optional - set the page title to the post title
    if ($this->post)
        $this->page->title = $this->post->title;
}
?>
==
{% if post %}
    <h2>{{ post.title }}</h2>

    {% component 'blogPost' %}
{% else %}
    <h2>Post not found</h2>
{% endif %}

The post details is coded in the default component partial plugins/rainlab/blog/components/post/default.htm.

Category list

Use the blogCategories component to display a list of blog post categories with links. The component has the following properties:

• slug - the value used for looking up the current category by its slug. The default value is {{ :slug }} to obtain the value from the route parameter :slug.
• displayEmpty - determines if empty categories should be displayed. The default value is false.
• categoryPage - path to the category page. The default value is blog/category - it matches the pages/blog/category.htm file in the theme directory. This property is used in the default component partial for creating links to the blog categories.

The component injects the following variables to the page where it's used:

• categoryPage - contains the value of the categoryPage component's property.
• categories - a list of blog categories loaded from the database.
• currentCategorySlug - slug of the current category. This property is used for marking the current category in the category list.

The component can be used on any page. The next example shows the basic component usage on the blog home page:

title = "Blog"
url = "/blog/:page?"

[blogCategories]
==
...
<div class="sidebar">
    {% component 'blogCategories' %}
</div>
...

The category list is coded in the default component partial plugins/rainlab/blog/components/categories/default.htm.

RSS feed

Use the blogRssFeed component to display an RSS feed containing the latest blog posts. The following properties are supported:

• categoryFilter - a category slug to filter the posts by. If left blank, all posts are displayed.
• postsPerPage - how many posts to display on the feed. The default value is 10.
• blogPage - path to the main blog page. The default value is blog - it matches the pages/blog.htm file in the theme directory. This property is used in the RSS feed for creating links to the main blog page.
• postPage - path to the post details page. The default value is blog/post - it matches the pages/blog/post.htm file in the theme directory. This property is used in the RSS feed for creating links to the blog posts.

The component can be used on any page, it will hijack the entire page cycle to display the feed in RSS format. The next example shows how to use it:

title = "RSS Feed"
url = "/blog/rss.xml"

[blogRssFeed]
blogPage = "blog"
postPage = "blog/post"
==
<!-- This markup will never be displayed -->

Configuration

To overwrite the default configuration create a config/rainlab/blog/config.php. You can return only values you want to override.

Summary

A summary attribute is generated for each post.

If you enter an excerpt manually, it gets used as summary. Alternatively, you can use the summary_separator (default is <!-- more -->) to mark the end of the summary. If a post contains no separator, the text gets truncated after the number of characters specified in summary_default_length (default is 600 characters).

Markdown guide

October supports standard markdown syntax as well as extended markdown syntax

Classes and IDs

Classes and IDs can be added to images and other elements as shown below:

[link](url){#id .class}
![1](image){#id .class}
# October  {#id .class}

Fenced code blogs

Markdown extra makes it possible to use fenced code blocks. With fenced code blocks you do not need indentation on the areas you want to mark as code:

```
Code goes here
```

You can also use the ~ symbol:

~~~
Code goes here
~~~

Tables

A simple table can be defined as follows:

First Header  | Second Header
------------- | -------------
Content Cell  | Content Cell
Content Cell  | Content Cell

If you want to you can also add a leading and tailing pipe:

| First Header  | Second Header |
| ------------- | ------------- |
| Content Cell  | Content Cell  |
| Content Cell  | Content Cell  |

To add alignment to the cells you simply need to add a : either at the start or end of a separator:

| First Header  | Second Header |
| :------------ | ------------: |
| Content Cell  | Content Cell  |
| Content Cell  | Content Cell  |

To center align cell just add : on both sides:

| First Header  | Second Header |
| ------------- | :-----------: |
| Content Cell  | Content Cell  |
| Content Cell  | Content Cell  |

Definition lists

Below is an example of a simple definition list:

Laravel
:   A popular PHP framework

October
:   Awesome CMS built on Laravel

A term can also have multiple definitions:

Laravel
:   A popular PHP framework

October
:   Awesome CMS built on Laravel
:   Supports markdown extra

You can also associate more than 1 term to a definition:

Laravel
October
:   Built using PHP

Footnotes

With markdown extra it is possible to create reference style footnotes:

This is some text with a footnote.[^1]

[^1]: And this is the footnote.

Abbreviations

With markdown extra you can add abbreviations to your markup. The use this functionality first create a definition list:

*[HTML]: Hyper Text Markup Language
*[PHP]:  Hypertext Preprocessor

Now markdown extra will convert all occurrences of HTML and PHP as follows:

<abbr title="Hyper Text Markup Language">HTML</abbr>
<abbr title="Hypertext Preprocessor">PHP</abbr>