Same Category Posts

Same Category Posts shows a list of same posts to the current post. The widget is only shown on single post pages.

Daniel Comments

New version 1.0.11 with requested ones from the wp.org user forum

great work

The Same Category Posts widget gets a new version 1.0.11 with two features which are requested by the wordpress.org user forum.

  • If you also had a request feel free and write us that we can talk and implement your request.
  • For your developer skills you can pull a request to GitHub and we don’t hesitate to merge your pull-request with the master branch and release it on wordpress.org asap.

The two new features in more depth

  1. The first new feature supports format the rendered date. The options “Use the WordPress Settings general date format” or make your own format with a text box where you can write own customizing Time and Date (codex.wordpress.org/Formatting_Date_and_Time). And a option to make the date a link to the single post page.
  2. The second one give you a filter hook for the post titles: ‘widget_title’. Add a filter with this name to the wp-content\Themes[your-Theme]\functions.php:
function cruise_shortcode_iconship( $html ) { 
    return "prefix-" . $html . "-suffix"; 
} 
add_filter( 'widget_title', 'cruise_shortcode_iconship' );
Daniel Comments

New dynamic layout feature “Separate categories”

The feature support the option 'Number of posts per seperated categories'.

The feature support the option ‘Number of posts per seperated categories’.

With the Same Category Posts widget it is possible to get multi category selection with a new dynamic layout feature: “Separate categories”. Here it’s possible to separate all assigned categories for the post which is shown on a WordPress single page. And so we call it layout feature. (Hint: The widget gets all assigned categories if or if not checkt this new option.)

 

With one new number option: “Number of posts per separated categories” you can set the maximum number of post beneath a categorie headline. Which extends the existing parameters “Number of posts to show (overall)”. This option  remains unchanged and gets the overall counted posts.

 

Why it is called dynamic?

Its simple answer: Because it depends on the filter option order by ‘date’, ‘name’, ‘number of comments’, etc. And it goes further, the widget (shows and seperates) posts from this categories which the current post assigned to. If each shown post have other assigned categories, the widget will show for each post other categoies.

 

For example post ‘doostang’ is in the categories CARS and HOUSES and post ‘hipmunk’ is in the categories CARS, TECHNOLOGY and WEBTWO only one shown category is the the same. The other are dynamiclly and different.

 

'Seperate categories' is similar to a order by category.

‘Seperate categories’ is similar to a order by category.

If you want to picture latest news and your post begin date is important for your readers, so it’s better you don’t use ‘Separate categories’. ‘Separate categories’ may cause that not the newes post is on top. But have you many posts to show and you can hide your thumbnail. Order by categories with the feature ‘Separeate categories’ can be very helpful to show a huge number of posts and get a very clearly layout.

 

The idea for this option comes from Aecorn on WordPress.org. He gives the request for this layout because his site and widget area use a lot of post to show. Create idea – thank you Aecorn.

He has given us a 5-star rating on wordpress.org for the implementation of his option.

 

5-star rating on wordpress.org

5-star rating on wordpress.org.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Downlaod link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/same-category-posts

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Daniel Comments

Live-preview with the WordPress customizer

wordpress customizer

Since WordPress 3.4 it is possible to deposit a theme-dependent Options menu: The WordPress “Customizer”.

Here can specified a variety of settings for the website layout and provided for the Theme user via the WordPress backend under “Appearance> Customize”. For example, texts deposited, CSS classes or complete CSS files are enabled or disabled individually, colors chosen etc. All this has to be processed without the source code. In particular, if one wants to make a theme for a wider audience, for example, on WordPress.org or Premium Theme, you are provided so an elegant way to the user all the important settings easily from the WordPress backend make changable.

One much technikal great feature from the customizer is: Your are in the backend, but the currently used webpage is visible. All changes are made with the visible customizer were displayed in the visible layout and thus receives an immediate preview – a “Live-preview”.

However, a small difference to normal WYSIWG-editors has a big impact. The options can be choosen by each Theme developer or by us widget developers. Our widget option settings where displayed here with the customizer and give spezific values to change the widget and widget area details

WordPress come-up with a new feature for the customizer to display mobile device screen dimentions.

Our posts widgets benefit enormously!

customizer-options

So the thumbnail sizes are changed and the change is immediately visible. Or options can be discovered and tried out. Since they are very specific, are from many widget developers made and give a web site administrator creative ways for shaping your WordPress website.

We spend much time to test the admin panel in the customizer. And increasingly think from the perspective of customizers. As long as WordPress supports and develop this great feature further, it will gives us the boost to make also new ideas and we arise inovativ options.

Daniel 4 Comments

Same Category Posts v1.0.5 gets CSS cropping feature

We added CSS feature image cropping to our youngest widget: Same Category Posts came up at the end of September 2015 with the version 1.0 and depends on a fork from ‘Related Posts’ Widget. The idea depends on a user request, don’t have to select the category each time but select dynamicly posts from the ‘same’ category. Ovidiu send us a lot request and featue request: Show from same category as current post instead of choosing is one his greatest.

Because we want to build lightweight, clearly structured widgets that allow the obese the widget area clearly. We opted for a standalone widget – which is designed to do one thing and do it well.

And Same Category Posts is not only the youngest, it’s also the first which gets CSS cropping for feature images.

Teaser-Bild-v2

 

Its a little check box ‘Use CSS cropping’, the feature is available and we are looking forward if you enjoy it.

Appropriate for widget areas

What is CSS cropping? If you had images with a other format as you want to show you have two options: Scale the image down than you can show the full image or you can crop the image so you can fill you desired image dimention. The first option has the following disadvantage that edges occur which remain empty. The second, the image is cropped and parts of the image was cutted. The third would be the image has the correct size, which is not usually the norm.

WordPress use and supports the first option for rendering HTML with the_post_thumbnail() and shows the full image but with a smaller size. And images of different dimensions is what does not look so great in the widget area.

That’s why we implement the second option for our widgets. With ‘CSS cropping’ your layout gets the configurated image dimentions.

If you don’t use ‘CSS cropping’ because you had a own image size you aren’t use the HTML img attributs srcset and size for ‘best’ images.

Another conceivable case is all your setted image sizes has the same dimention and only differ in there size. We don’t know any website which has only one image dimention.

To crop the image via CSS seems for us the most viable solution. So we will maintain this option and enhance it in the feature.

Daniel Comments

CSS Image Crop

The new thumbnail feature CSS Image Crop should solve all problems? Yes, it does! 🙂  While WordPress release the best image size or image for responsive design layouts we can’t wait and redesign our thumbnail dimentions with a option for ‘CSS image crop’.

The benefit is that we us the responsive image HTML code which WordPress is rendered, with src, size and srcset and make a crop with CSS for the outputed image. The difference between the WordPress concept and ‘CSS image Crop’ is, WordPress use best fitted sizes and ‘CSS image Crop’ do a fill with the shorter size and crop the rest of the image.

This is a very huge benefit because the image dimentions is so not depent on the used image size or best image which is rendered to the srcset. The image dimentions is so correct for width and height.

Do I lost WordPress functionality?

No! Another great advantage is that predefined image sizes do not matter here, but the best most appropriate image is loaded by the browser as it was written by WordPress in the responisve img attribute srcset and size. This means there is a real added feature that supports existing WordPress functionality to 100% and they only expands.

  • This is good when there are already many images exists, in the upload directory.
  • It is also good that no additional image size is generated and so many unnecessary images are generated.

Of course, it is possible under Settings> Media to produce per PlugIn or add_image_size () an additional image size, as suggested by Sanjayrath: WordPress.org support request “Feature image size”. Sanjayrath proposes to generate new images with your choosen image dimentions for existing uploaded images with a PlugIn, e.g. with ‘Ajax Thumbnail Rebuild‘.

  • There is then no additional ‘CSS Image Crop’ code processed and rendered as HTML when an WordPress- or custom image size exactly matches with the setted image dimentions.

That sounds as you want even more.

What we want subsequent delivery is a drop down selection box that displays existing image formats and thus can fill in the values for image width and height dimention easier. A dropdown selection could be ‘WP best image’, ‘thumbnail’, ‘medium’, ‘Large’, ‘Custom sizes’, …

We feel here because it seems more confusing to users, which aren’t use and deposed there own image size. Much worser will be a misconfiguration. If an image size is selected, but not all images are in the present, it can easily lead to poor image quality. We work on it and will keep you up to date.

Do you use ‘CSS Image Crop’? We like to hear from you and your experiences.

Updated 2016-06-07:

We want to use ‘CSS image crop’ as default and not as option. Our estimation is that WordPress recommend to work with own custom image sizes when a workflow is desired. Only in this way the WordPress core classes ensure exact image sizes to present.

This workflow is not inhibited with our ‘CSS Image crop’. It is merely the image size are specified in our widget and we give the best most appropriate picture back – the custom image size.

Our widget will switch and doesn’t change the standard WordPress behavior, when this occurs: There is an custom image size with the same image dimensions as they registered in the widget.

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