WP-SNAP! WordPress Plugin
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!
- 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.
- Activate the Plugin from the WordPress Administration Plugins tab.
- 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(); } ?> - Copy the CSS example below and paste it into your WordPress Theme stylesheet (you can style it better later).
- Upload the files and refresh the category page on your WordPress blog to see it in action.
- 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'); } ?> - 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
Comments
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Frequently Asked Questions
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When will the next version of your plugin be released?
As soon as I find the time, I will update the plugin and release a new version. I understand how frustrating it can be to be so close to having the perfect Wordpress installation only to be held up by a plugin that just needs a little more work to be exactly what’s needed. However, please remember that I am not paid write this plugin and that, like you, I have a family and responsibilities that extend far beyond this little piece of code. I really appreciate your enthusiasm, but if you wish to reap the benefits of my freely given labor, then you must be satisfied with doing so on my timetable. Otherwise, if you simply cannot wait, you are more than welcome to modify and extend the capabilities of my plugin yourself.
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Why do the results WP-SNAP! returns look funky? Why is it numbering every item?
A web page is composed of two parts: a document containing HTML code and a document containing styling code (known as a Cascading Style Sheet, or CSS for short). Because WordPress templates can look so drastically different from one another, I have intentionally avoided injecting any CSS information into WP-SNAP! However, I have included several ID selectors (that can even be modified from within wp-admin) that should allow you to style WP-SNAP! to look however you’d like. Those numbered lists? You can turn them off. I do ask that you try to refrain from asking me CSS related questions — while I would love to help you, my time is limited. If you would like to learn more about CSS, I suggest visiting A List Apart or Vitamin.
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I tried using your plugin, but it just won’t work. What am I doing wrong?
Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to troubleshoot every installation of this plugin. However, if you believe you have discovered a bug, I encourage you to post a comment to my website and I will reply as soon as I can. I do request that you be as specific as possible when asking for assistance. Please provide a detailed account of the steps you took that resulted in the error you encountered so that I can try to reproduce it and more quickly deduce how to fix it.
WP-SNAP! has been updated to version 0.3. The plugin now creates a post excerpt from the post content if the post’s excerpt field is blank.
May 8th, 2006 at 9:55 am
Nateo - Thank you for creating such a useful plugin. I am using it to create a glossary on a Page. However, 1) when I add a new entry, it bumps the previous entry off the Page (so that there is only one), and 2) clicking on the alphabet menu brings me to the category page. Any suggestions?
shantarohse.com/glossary/
May 13th, 2006 at 3:13 am
Shanta — Beautiful site! I have updated the plugin to version 0.3.1, fixing the error with the urls linked to the navigational menu. I’m afraid that I cannot reproduce the error you are having with new entries bumping old ones off the Page. There’s no reason that I can see for all the entries under a give letter to not be displayed. Looking at your site, there appears to only be one entry per letter so far — are there actually more that cannot be seen?
May 13th, 2006 at 10:51 am
Nathan - Thanks for the quick response. v0.3.1 does the trick! The dropped posts is no longer a problem either - I think it was an artefact of the urls linking to the category page. It just looked like they were dropped. Great stuff. Thanks for the complement about the site - lots of the credit has to go to the Musil theme created by Florian Kriener.
May I ask - is it possible to add the more tag to the excerpts?
May 13th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Shanta — You are welcome. If when you say “more tag” you mean that at the end of the excerpt it would say “[More]” or “[Read More]” etc. then, yes, that is possible. Aesthetically, that seems to be a little overkill for me since the title itself is a link to the full article, but let me tell you how you can “hack” the plugin to get what you want. Open up the plugin and change line 350 from:
To:
Obviously, you can change the word “[More]” to say whatever you wish.
May 14th, 2006 at 10:17 am
[...] nateomedia A recently released, and newly updated plugin that allows for the navigation of a category alphabetically. Which means the inclusion of a glossary, or the listing of reviews, people, etc can easily be done with WP. [...]
May 14th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Thanks once again Nathan. And you are quite right about the aesthetics the more link. But it was nice to be able to try it out!
May 14th, 2006 at 8:02 pm
[...] Two WordPress plugins, Nathan Olsen’s WP-SNAP! and Joel Bennett’s Ubernyms work together to create an interactive glossary for your site. [...]
May 20th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
Hi,
I have saved wp-snap plugin. But at first attempt, it generated and rendered my dashboard as non-working. I could not even logged out. I had to then click back on the browser and de-activated plugin. Only then, I was able to logout of do other things.
I had then checked wp-snap.php and found a line space before the closing tag. And after saving, when I activated wp-snap, some of my existing pluging say for e.g. SK2, Akismet etc. were de-activated.
And after that, I created a category “Glossary” and page template, inside the template, I entered . “165″ being cartegory ID.
But I am receiving an error while viewing the page
Can you please look at and advice me to get this working.
DG…
May 21st, 2006 at 6:46 am
Hi DG — I’m sorry to hear that you’re having difficultly getting the plugin to work. I suggest that you re-download the plugin by right-clicking on the link above and then renaming the file as my instructions advise. Copying and pasting the code into a new document is really not a good idea.
May 21st, 2006 at 9:12 am
May I suggest that you provide a direct link to the mere simple PHP text file. It is rather painful to cleanup the phps file to use it.
With Opera, I finally got to produce a text file but with a bunch of additional CR-LF which break the comments into syntax errors.
It seems it will be what I need, but it will take some time before I can even try it.
Yves
May 21st, 2006 at 9:18 am
Hi Yves — If you right-click on the document, save it to your desktop, then simply rename the file, you should not have to clean anything up. I like providing the file as a phps because it allows those that want to look at the code before they download the plugin to do so. But, perhaps you’re right. Maybe I should provide a zipped version of the file as well. Making the change now. Thanks for your input.
May 21st, 2006 at 9:32 am
Hi Nateo,
First thanks for your reply. I just downloaded plugin zip file. And re-uploaded and activated again.
But when I go to page view, I am still receiving the followin quoted error:
Just to make the things easier for you, I have inserted this code in page template .
Here is the page link: http://www.roks.xmgfree.com/blog/glossary/
You can see what error is displayed, please advice me, I want to see it up.
Regards, DG…
May 21st, 2006 at 11:23 am
DG — Is this a category or a page? If it is a category, you do not need to input a category number (ie, 165), it will pull content from that category automatically. Do you have any posts in this category yet? If you do not, the plugin will not work right.
May 21st, 2006 at 11:35 am
Nateo - Please ignore my last post.
After activating wp-span plugin, I did the following.
1. Created a new category called “Glossary” with ID 165.
2. Created new template “Glossary-t” and inside this, I have entered the code as mentioned above in useage for e.g. .
3. Then I created a new page using the template mentioned at step 2. and named it “glossary”.
So, the link : http://www.roks.xmgfree.com/blog/glossary/
is of a page Glossary.
DG…
May 21st, 2006 at 12:42 pm
DG — Do you have any posts in category 165 yet? If you do not, the plugin will not work correctly.
May 22nd, 2006 at 10:18 am
Great Plug in Nateo, took me a minute to clue into how to install it…
May 30th, 2006 at 11:04 am
Tom — Thanks for the feedback. As you can see, your last comment got caught in the gap between the switchover from my old host to my new host. I was about to respond to it when you posted — it sounds like you figured out how to get the plugin to work? Glad to hear it!
May 30th, 2006 at 11:13 am
I did, it works great. I downloaded a visibility toggle plugin http://wordpress.org/support/topic/21171 as well so the new posts to the glossary don’t show in the categorys or at the top of the blog, rather they are a link.
here it is working on my page: http://www.digitalconversations.net/glossary/
One thing I noticed, although not really a big deal, but since I am pretty picky about the html, I think I may change the list tags to definition tags. If there is any difference as far as search engine optimization goes for this…which I will have to look into.
Great Plugin Nathan, thanks again.
May 30th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
i’ve just downloaded the “Latest Release,” but it identifies itself as v0.2, with the changelog last updated 03.2006.29. Did you neglect to update the versioning in the code, or is your link above a bit stale?
May 30th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
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