Development, Purpose and Direction

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Zachary Segal

So I have been struggling with where to take CataBlog and what new features to add. I am leaning towards the idea that CataBlog should concentrate on being a compliment to WordPress and its various plugins. Instead of making CataBlog an all in one inclusive tool, I will concentrate on making it the best catalog tool possible. This would mean well developed multiple item uploads, csv import feature and more bulk and automated actions. This would also mean I would steer away from supporting ideas such as making individual catalog items into public posts, search functions or other site wide features. The reason why is it seems to me that one should use what is already out there. I understand that the ideas can be cool in certain situations, but they aren't practical and could leave CataBlog bloated with tons of features to support. You can always get in contact with me about developing a theme with custom post types or other specific needs. So with that being said, I have wasted enough time on developing the Public feature, and after pretty much finishing it, I have pulled it from the plugin's code. Well here is too moving forward.

Posted in Development, Personal Notes | 1 Comment

LightBox Colors and Styling

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Zachary Segal

Now I know that the LightBox needs to be more customizable, especially the color and styling. Is there any feelings out there what exact visual aspects of the LightBox should be easily changeable from the options panel. The color and opacity of the background and the curtain (semi-transparent background behind the photo) seem like good candidates. But while you wait for people to pool their opinions and an update, look into the catablog.css file. It is in the css direcotry in the plugin's directory. You can override any of the LightBox styles in your own css file. If you need control over the LightBox make a catablog.css file in your theme's directory, it will let you control padding, font and color. Just look through the file for the LightBox classes, they should be easy enough to find.....perhaps I will list the classes here later. With that knowledge it should be pretty easy to change the color of the LightBox. Cheers

- Zach

Posted in Support | 21 Comments

Catalogs and WordPress Search

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Zachary Segal

There has been some questions and comments recently about CataBlog and the WordPress built-in site search capabilities. Currently the catalog items are hidden from the site searches and public queries. This may change in a future version of CataBlog, but for now they are hidden. Unfortunately this has the problem of hiding your catalog content from site searches as WordPress does not automatically expand shortcode content. There are plugins out there that will fix this problem for you. What you need is a plugin, such as Relevanssi - A Better Search, which can expand shortcode content and index it for site searches. I am running Relevanssi on this site. To test it out, simply search for Theo in the column to the right and notice that the demo page shows with title content from CataBlog found as keywords. When using a site index engine such as Relevanssi make sure to change the indexing option to All public post types instead of Everything. You might also want to make sure you have turned off the CataBlog post type in any XML SiteMap generator you have installed. XML - Sitemap should not be including your CataBlog posts in the sitemap by default.

I Hope that was a helpful article. How do you think CataBlog should handle search in the future? Do we still need the ability to have individual catalog item pages? Thanks for you input.

- Zach

Posted in New Features, Support | 26 Comments

New Five Step Gallery Maker

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Zachary Segal

Recently added in revision 1.0 of Catablog, the new Rescan feature in CataBlog makes it super easy to create a single gallery from a long list of image files. Simply install CataBlog, upload the files with an FTP or file transfer and then run the "Rescan Original Images" action and place the shortcode where you want the gallery to appear. Here's how to do it...

Continue reading →
Posted in New Features, Support | 3 Comments

CataBlog 1.0 Released

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Zachary Segal

CataBlog Release One has been released. A few missing interface holes have been filled, mainly bulk actions and category filtering are present in the CataBlog Admin Panel. A nice script was added to the systems tab of options to automatically detect new image files in the originals folder and make database entries for them. A new grid view has been added to help support CataBlog becoming not only a great cataloging and store generating tool but also an excellent image gallery tool. The LightBox is working better then ever and I am hoping the total functionality of CataBlog warrants lots of positive ratings and reviews at WordPress.org.

Thanks again for all the feed back and comments 🙂
- Zachary

Look for in the next release:
  • More Bulk Actions
  • Upload multiple images at once
  • Attach up to 10 images to one catalog item
Posted in Software Update | 18 Comments

CataBlog 0.9.9 Released

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Zachary Segal

Released a new version of CataBlog today, it has some fairly minor codes changes that fix quite a bit of functionality, especially for WordPress MultiSite users. That right, CataBlog now plays nice with MultiSite and lets you either network activate or choose to activate on a site by site basis. If you do choose to network activate, new sites will remind you to finish the CataBlog installation for that specific site, creating directories and setting up the plugin options. Also site disc quotas are respected and updated as users create and delete CataBlog items, no need to be worried about sites bloating beyond your set limits. The other changes involve the LightBox, which now has better keyboard shortcuts and navigation controls, including an actual close button.

For the next release I am aiming at giving users a control to turn on or off an automatically generated public page for each catalog item, perfect for a product page of sorts. Also I would like to make CataBlog multilingual, but before I invest a lot of time in extracting all the strings, is there any interest from the community? Would people be willing to translate a list of english strings into other languages for me? If so please leave a comment below stating your interest in translation and what languages you are experienced with. Thanks and here is to the 1.0 release coming out before February!

- Zach

Posted in Software Update | 9 Comments

Customizing CataBlog's Template

Posted on November 22, 2010 by Zachary Segal

The HTML template is a newer and not well documented feature to CataBlog, it allows people to setup their own HTML code for CataBlog to render on the page. This can be especially useful when you might want to make a grid layout of catalog items, add an extra link or button at the bottom of each item or remove the description all together. Simply go to the template tab in the options panel to edit your template, currently the template is site wide and you can not set templates with shortcodes. Eventually you will be able to make your own templates, save them and then apply them to specific catalogs via the shortcode. Keep in mind that these templates are heavily dependent on a token system for individual item values. You will notice that each token is all uppercase and surrounded by percent signs, for instance %TITLE%. Below is a list of supported token you may use in your template code.

  • %TITLE%: The catalog item's title, will be a hyperlink if the link value is set.
  • %TITLE-TEXT%: Just the catalog item's title text.
  • %LINK%: The item's link value.
  • %DESCRIPTION%: The description of the item.
  • %BUY-NOW-BUTTON%: Where to place the generated "buy now" button if the item price is above zero.
  • %PRICE%: The catalog item's price.
  • %PRODUCT-CODE%: The item's product code.
  • %PAYPAL-EMAIL%: The email address set in the store tab of the options panel.
  • %IMAGE-SIZE%: The thumbnail size set in options.
  • <strong>NEW TOKENS</strong>
  • %IMAGE%: The url to the thumbnail image.
  • %IMAGE-FULLSIZE%: The url to the full size LightBox version of the image.

Feel free to sprinkle these tokens around new templates and create cool new looks. Please, send any my way if you are especially proud of your creation or look. I like to link to catalog pages people send me, and I would be more then happy to link to yours. - Cheers

Posted in New Features, Support | 34 Comments