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
-
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.
-
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.
Right. I understood. I’ve already fixed it for the next version, but here’s how you can get standards compliant right this very second!
Go to line 335 and change:
To:
Make the same change on line 368.
December 30th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
You’re a star! A total star!
December 31st, 2006 at 4:52 am
Oh, good! I hope you’re able to release the next version soon.
December 31st, 2006 at 2:43 pm
[...] WP-SNAP! [...]
January 13th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Okay, here it is! Version 0.6!
Sorry for the delay, but I ran into a couple of problems with this version that took me longer than I expected to figure out. The biggest change is that the titles and contents of post are now displayed as they should have been all along: using the Wordpress Loop. This should provide a lot more flexibility with how posts are styled and what meta information is included.
Enjoy! Let me know if you find any bugs.
January 20th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
when using this plugin on my archive i get this error
Missing argument 1 for wp_snap() in ... on line 95it points to the wp-snap.php plugin file.
any suggestions?
January 21st, 2007 at 2:57 am
n3rdism — Thanks for the heads up. All fixed!
January 21st, 2007 at 10:39 am
when i search a word in search i get this error.do u have any idea?
Warning: array_values() [function.array-values]: The argument should be an array in C:\Inetpub\vhosts\blabla.com\httpdocs\wp-content\plugins\wp-snap.php on line 261
January 23rd, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Jamie — No, I don’t. If you want help, you’re going to have to give me more information about your situation. Are you using a theme? On what template file did you call WP-SNAP? Etc. Be specific please.
January 23rd, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Hello Nathan,
The new version looks very promising. I am using Wordpress 2.0.1 and WP-Andreas-09 and prior to this new version, was using wp-snap 0.5.1.
When I removed the old plugin (0.5.1) and uploaded/then activated the new plugin (0.6.1) and inserted :
into the loop in one of my category templates. The index appeared but it contained links for only the 10 posts on that category page, rather then all the posts in that category. As an example in category 2 - I have 27 pages of posts, each page with 10 posts. The new WP-Snap would have listings/links to just the last 10 postings on that (1) page.
Is the plugin supposed to work like this or is there a bug somewhere between my theme and the new version of WP-Snap? Please advise…
In the meantime I went back to WP-Snap 0.5.1 ..thanks for your great work!
January 24th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Keith — Wordpress uses a setting under Options > Reading to determine how many posts to list per page. The default is 10. To display all posts, you’re going to want to use query_posts to change the number of posts displayed when using WP-SNAP! To list all posts on a single page, add this:
January 25th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Hello,
I have a logical issue and you may well have no answer to it. I am asking it in case Nathan (or anyone else here) has already thought this through :)
I want to use WP-SNAP on each category, while at the same time giving readers the option to see the posts in a single category in reverse chronological order.
I can think of two approaches:
1: persuade WP to switch between two files (category.php & archive.php?) according to sort method, putting WP-SNAP in category.php and the standard loop in archive.php
2. create a single file with a complex if…then…else that switches between the two options.
Currently I have used the second approach to get a working arrangement on http://www.owenkelly.net whereby parent categories display chronologically and child categories display alphabetically. However I cannot seem to fit WP-SNAP into this :)
Does anyone have any suggestions or examples I can think about or look at?
Many many thanks
Owen
February 2nd, 2007 at 12:13 am
Further to my previous post, I CAN now fit WP-SNAP into my current scheme (and I have done, and you can see it working at http://www.owenkelly.net) but my logic problem is still there.
How do I enable the user to click between seeing the categories as chronological lists and seeing them as SNAP-driven alphabetical pages?
Ceers
Owen
February 2nd, 2007 at 1:38 am
Sorry for spamming like this. A long morning playing with php and I got it to work.
All I needed in the end was a restructured if…then…else which responded to the value in a variable called show_snap which was passed in at the end of the link like this:
/categories/information?show_snap=1
You can see it in operation now, if you have any desire to :)
February 2nd, 2007 at 3:14 am
[...] had found the WordPress plug-in WPsnap, which allows you to display a category alphabetically (which I was already doing) , but crucially [...]
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:13 am
[...] Ho introdotto lo SNAP plugin, che permette la visualizzazione di una finestra di anteprima dei link, spero vi piaccia [...]
February 21st, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Owen that is awesome, I have not used Nathan’s plugin for the categories, because there was no option to use either alphabetical or chronological views. Whats the chances this could be implemented into WPsnap? I would love to know how to do this!
February 22nd, 2007 at 6:45 pm
This plug in seems like it would be GREAT! But I can’t download the zip archive…. I tried the link on the top right of this page, and get a 404 not found. Where’d it run off to?
February 23rd, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Velvet Kitty — All fixed. I have no idea what happened there. Must have been the gnomes.
February 24th, 2007 at 8:35 am
Thanks Nate! I love the plug in.
February 24th, 2007 at 10:21 am
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