Nateomedia: Illustration, Art Direction, Motion Graphics

WP-SNAP! WordPress Plugin

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What Is WP-SNAP!?

WP-SNAP! (WordPress System for Navigating Alphabetized Posts) creates an alphabetical listing of post titles on a Category or Page template file. Navigation through the listings WP-SNAP! generates is accomplished using the alphabet itself. (For example, if a site visitor clicked on the letter D, any post titles that began with that letter would be showcased.) WP-SNAP! will work on any Wordpress 2.1.x or higher site, but is particularly useful managing glossaries, indexes, reviews, or directories. Since it is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s a screenshot of WP-SNAP! in action:

WP-SNAP! offers three different navigational styles and integration with both custom permalinks and the Wordpress loop. Plugin options can be managed both site-wide and on the template itself with results either restricted to one category or broadened to include child categories as well. The clever web developer should have no problem seamlessly integrating WP-SNAP! into their latest project. Options have also been added to allow the customization of css class names and the appearance of html mark-up.

How To Configure WP-SNAP!

1. Click on the link to the right to download the WP-SNAP! WordPress Plugin, extract it and upload it to your WordPress Plugins folder on your site.
2. Activate the Plugin from the WordPress Administration Plugins tab.
3. Edit the category templates your Theme uses, such as category.php, and add the following code above the start of the Wordpress Loop:

   <?php if (function_exists('wp_snap')) { echo wp_snap(); } ?>

4. Copy the CSS example below and paste it into your WordPress Theme stylesheet (you can style it better later).
5. Upload the files and refresh the category page on your WordPress blog to see it in action.
6. For further customization, go to the Plugins > WP-SNAP! panel and change the alphabetical structure to something different and click Update Options. You may also change the categories to be displayed and the menu navigational structure by passing variables as a query-string to the plugin like so:

   <?php if (function_exists('wp_snap')) { echo wp_snap('arguments'); ?>

   There are currently four possible arguments: Category (’cat’), Include Category Children (’child’), Navigational Menu Style (’menu’), and First Load (’firstload’). Category must equal a category number from your WordPress installation, Include Category Children must equal true or false as to whether to include child categories (the default value is false), Navigational Menu Style must equal a number between 1 and 3 (corresponding with the three navigational styles offered in the admin options panel), and First Load must equal ALL, NONE or RECENT and will affect how WP-SNAP! displays posts/tags when it is first called on a template. Note that if RECENT is selected, the number of recent posts/tags to display can be controlled from the admin options page. For instance, to create a navigational menu for all posts in category 15, including child categories, using the default menu navigational style, and displaying recent posts on first load, WP-SNAP! would be called like this:

   <?php if (function_exists('wp_snap')) { echo wp_snap('cat=15&child=true&firstload=recent'); } ?>

   To create a navigational menu for the current category, excluding child categories and using navigational menu style 3, WP-SNAP! would be called like this:

   <?php if (function_exists('wp_snap')) { echo wp_snap('menu=3'); } ?>

   To create a navigational menu for all categories, using default navigational menu style, WP-SNAP! would be called like this:

   <?php if (function_exists('wp_snap')) { echo wp_snap('cat=all'); } ?>

7. Test it out and enjoy!

Note: For the Plugin to work, you must have access to edit your WordPress Theme files. You must also have a category.php template file in your WordPress Theme. If you do not, you can create one following the instructions on the WordPress Codex for creating a category template file.

CSS Styling

It should be noted that this plugin does not inject any css styling information, so it is up to the user to add the appropriate class information to the Wordpress Theme css stylesheet. Here is some sample code to get you started:

ol.snap_nav {
	display: inline;
	float: left;
	clear: both;
	list-style: none;
}

ol.snap_nav li {
	display: block;
	float: left;
	padding: 0 2px 10px 0;
}

ol.snap_nav li a {
	font-weight: bold
}

ol.snap_nav li.snap_selected a {
	cursor: text;
}

ol.snap_titles {
	clear: both;
	display: block;
	border: 0;
	list-style: none;
}

Feedback

This plugin thrives on user feedback. Praise, ideas, and bug reports are all welcome. Use the comment form below to let me know what you think. Please keep in mind that I am not paid to work on this plugin and that delays between updates can and will occur. Please do not post questions about when the next update will be released. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but your comment will be deleted. If there is a significant delay between releases, I try to post a timeframe of when the next update can be expected.

Thank You

My thanks to Lorelle VanFossen for reviewing my plugin and allowing me to reuse her instructions on this page.

Change Log

• 06.2008.10 Version 0.8.5
  • Added international language file support
  • Changed the method for passing data to the plugin
  • Tracked down bugs
• 06.2008.08 Version 0.8.4
  • Made the plugin compatible with Wordpress’s new tagging system
  • Corrected problem with listing recent posts
• 04.2008.03 Version 0.8.3
  • Fixed a small — but significant — typo
  • Moved the administrative submenu to plugins.php
  • Added the ability to display All/None/Recent posts on first load
• 12.2007.02 Version 0.8.1
  • Fixed incompatibility with PHP 4
• 11.2007.28 Version 0.8
  • Added support for fancy URLs
• 10.2007.04 Version 0.7.3
  • Fixed error with Wordpress 2.3 database call
• 09.2007.28 Version 0.7.2
  • Made database call compatible with Wordpress 2.3
• 06.2007.02 Version 0.7.1
  • Fixed error with database call
• 05.2007.30 Version 0.7
  • Fixed issue preventing the display of more than 10 posts
  • Fixed issue with sorting uppercase/lowercase post titles
  • Restored ability to pass a category to the plugin
  • Added ability to include category children in returned results
  • Added ability to display all categories
  • Added ability to change navigation style when calling the plugin
  • Added support for Gengo (hopefully)
• 05.2007.12 Version 0.6.2
  • Restored the ability to exclude first words from being alphabetized
  • Cleaned-up some instructional text in the options menu
• 01.2007.21 Version 0.6.1
  • Fixed a minor error with the $wp_snap_category variable
• 01.2007.20 Version 0.6
  • Rebuilt the entire plugin to be better, stronger, faster
  • Changed how results are displayed; plugin now plays well with the Wordpress loop
  • Removed option to pass a category number directly to the plugin, making it incompatible with Pages (feature to return if requested)
  • Added nonce protection to the admin options panel
  • Added option to group posts beginning with a number under ‘#’
  • Fixed unencoded ampersands
• 09.2006.20 Version 0.5.4
  • Updated WP-SNAP! to ignore posts with post-dated timestamps
• 08.2006.02 Version 0.5.3
  • Fixed an error that affected certain navigational menu styles
• 08.2006.01 Version 0.5.2
  • Updated alphabetization to accomodate accent marks; still needs refinement
  • Fixed a logic error with the post title sort loop
• 06.2006.07 Version 0.5.1
  • Squashed some bugs in the new ignore filter
• 06.2006.06 Version 0.5
  • Words can now be filtered from the alphabetization process from the WP-SNAP! admin options menu
• 06.2006.01 Version 0.4
  • Added ‘#’ to catch category entries beginning with non-alphanumeric characters
  • Tweaked the code here and there
  • Fixed the WP-SNAP! plugin url on the admin options page
• 05.2006.13 Version 0.3.1
  • Fixed the url structure of the navigation when used on a Page
  • Added ‘apply_filters’ to the post excerpt
• 05.2006.08 Version 0.3
  • Plugin no longer displays excerpts for password protected posts, if the viewer is unauthorized
  • If there is no excerpt for a post and excerpts are turned on, plugin now creates an excerpt from the post content
  • Fixed a typo
• 03.2006.29 Version 0.2
  • Added the ability to pass a category number directly to the plugin, making WP-SNAP compatible with Pages
• 03.2006.29 Version 0.1
  • Initial Release

Tags: navigation, plugin, WordPress