This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

Blog Topics For WPMU

Description

This plugin creates site-wide topics. Each blog can be identified as belonging to a single topic. Blog owners can select a topic for their blog at creation time, and through a menu under settings. Blog owners can also choose whether or not to include their content in any site-wide aggregated content via the Blog Topics Settings menu.

Site Admins can set up the site-wide topics, select a “featured topic,” and manage blog’s topic settings through the Site Admin -> Blogs -> Edit menu.

This plugin comes with 5 optional widgets (in the widgets subdirectory).

  1. BT – Topic Name – displays the name of the topic of the current blog.
  2. BT – Related Blogs – displays a linked list of other blogs in the same topic.
  3. BT – Related Posts – displays the title of the N most recent posts in the same topic as the current blog.
  4. BT – Featured Topic w/Posts – displays the N most recent posts from the “featured” topic.
  5. BT – Topics w/Posts – displays the N most recent posts from each topic, with the option of excluding selected topics.

Some of the widgets rely on theme code for topic listing pages and site listing pages, referred to as “portal links.” All portal links can be turned on and off in the widgets. This plugin comes with a sample theme to help you learn how to modify your own theme to incorporate the portal elements.

Screenshots

  • Back end view of the BT – Topics with Posts widget
  • Front end view of the BT – Topics with Posts widget, including portal links (highlighted in red)
  • Back end view of the BT – Featured Topic with Posts widget
  • Front end view of the BT – Featured Topic with Posts widget, including portal links (highlighted in red)
  • Back end view of the BT – Topic Name widget
  • Front end view of the BT – Topic Name widget
  • Back end view of the BT – Related Blogs widget
  • Front end view of the BT – Related Blogs widget
  • Back end view of the BT – Related Posts widget
  • Front end view of the BT – Related Posts widget
  • Back end view of blog admins settings screen.
  • Back end view of the add/edit interface for site admins.
  • Back end view of site admins featured topic and uninstall interface.
  • Back end view of site admins blog edit features.

Installation

  1. Place the cets_blogtopics.php file and the cets_blog_topics folder in the wp-content/mu-plugins folder.
  2. If desired, place the widget files (located in the widgets subdirectory) in the wp-content/mu-plugins or the plugins folder. It’s recommended that you use the plugins folder and only enable these widgets on blogs that need them. They may be confusing for some users.
  3. Go to Site Admin -> Blog Topics Management to add/edit topics. You should enter a name and slug for each topic you wish to use. Description is optional. It is used in the BT Topic Name widget and in the example theme code.
  4. Blog admins can go to Settings -> Blog Topic to edit their assigned topic.

If Use of the Portal Aspects are desired

  1. By default, none of the widgets use the portal links. If you want to use the portal links, examine the sample theme. The most relevant bits of code are in rewrites.php, topics.php, and sites.php. The portal code rewrites links such as ?topic_id=1 to /topic/slug.

FAQ

  1. Can I upgrade from version 0.3.2 to 3.0?
    The plugin will attempt to upgrade your database tables from the previous version of this plugin. There are elements from the previous version that are no longer supported, particularly the portal elements. If you had previously used cets_blog_topics_page.php or cets_blog_topics_list.php you will want to carefully examine the sample theme to determine how to integrate the new portal elements into your blog’s theme code.

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Contributors & Developers

“Blog Topics For WPMU” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Translate “Blog Topics For WPMU” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

1.2
* Bug fix for featured topic setting page
* Moved sharing/notification settings to privacy page
* Moved managment menu to network admin page
* Added notification of blog/site being in “development mode” – ie, not sharing content – and added way to turn off/on notification. Default is notification on.

1.1

  • Tweaked uninstall script for 3.0

1.0

  • major overhaul of portal aspects
  • addition of several columns to database tables
  • incorporation of “featured” topic

.3.2
* Fixed bug that prevented initially signing up users from setting blog topic.

.3.1
* Modified layout code for sign up page to fit new 2.6.3 divs instead of tables.

.3
* Added optional count of blogs by topic to cets_blog_topics_page.php page (defaults to showing count).
If you don’t want to show the count, change line 16 from

to

.2
* modified naming conventions for more consistency throughout.
* fixed set up bug
* fixed bug to not include Donncha’s site wide tags blog