The second workshop I attended was about JavaScript by Stuart Langridge. Between the jokes and the put-downs, Stuart had his class do a couple of exercises. I managed to help out my neighbour a bit, who turned out to be an EE enthusiast herself and had recently used one of my add-ons.

I promised Emily I’d write a blog post about a little trick I sometimes use to retrieve certain entries from the database when the default weblog:entries tag won’t let you. In her case, she needed to get all entries from a given month, regardless of the year. She ended up using categories, which is fine, but here’s an approach you could also use.

Check the database

Weblog entries are stored in the table exp_weblog_titles. In that table you’ll find values for year, month and day. This means we can filter entries per month, regardless of the year, albeit not with regular EE tags. We’ll need to get them manually.

Set up a template, use PHP

Create a template (for example: archives/month) and turn on PHP on input. We’re going to use PHP to fetch all entry ids for any given month. In this case, a numeric value of the month will be available in {segment_3}: http://domain.com/archives/month/5. The PHP will look something like this:

<?php
global $IN, $DB;

// get database-safe segment
$seg3 = $DB->escape_str($IN->fetch_uri_segment(3));

// query to get all entry_ids for a given month
$query = $DB->query("SELECT entry_id FROM exp_weblog_titles WHERE month = '{$seg3}'");

// initiate ids array
$ids = array();

// loop through results, populate array
foreach ($query->result AS $row):
	$ids[] = $row['entry_id'];
endforeach;
?>

Use IDs as input for {exp:weblog:entries}

You now have an array filled with all the right entry_ids. You only need to display them with the {exp:weblog:entries} tag, using the entry_id parameter to limit the entries to the ones you’ve just retrieved. That would look something like this:

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="articles" entry_id="<?=implode('|', $ids)?>" dynamic="off" disable="pagination"}
	[...]
{/exp:weblog:entries}

You could add further filtering, like statuses or categories, but all the entries will be from the given month, because of the entry_id parameter.

Remember dynamic=”off”

I’ve used this approach on many occasions. Use PHP to get the right ids first, then use them as input for your regular EE tags. It works like a charm, but has its down side as well. Because you’re using the segments in custom way, you’ll need to set dynamic="off". This will disable the use of pagination. That might be a bad thing, or on the other hand, it might not matter at all.

→ Download Low NoSpam for ExpressionEngine v1.0.4 (Also on GitHub)

What does it do?

Like the Akismet Combo, Low NoSpam will check comments to see if they’re considered to be spam by the chosen service, either Akismet or TypePad AntiSpam. It can optionally also check incoming trackbacks, gallery comments, forum posts and wiki articles. Caught (gallery) comments will be set to Closed for further moderation. Caught trackbacks, forum posts and wiki articles will be discarded, since these do not have a native moderating system in EE.

Requirements

For this combo to work, you’ll need ExpressionEngine 1.6.x and an API Key for either Akismet (free for personal use) or TypePad AntiSpam (free). Enter the API Key in the Low NoSpam Check extension settings.

You can disable or uninstall the Akismet for ExpressionEngine combo once you’ve enabled Low NoSpam.

Change Log

Version 1.0.4, 2009-04-17

• Changed check members setting from yes/no to selection of member groups: explicitly select which member groups to check

Version 1.0.3, 2009-03-14

• Fixed a bug where comments weren’t marked as spam and deleted in the Control Panel (introduced in v1.0.2).
• Fixed a bug where the upgrade message wasn’t shown.

Version 1.0.2, 2009-03-12

• Fixed a bug where weblog comments weren’t opened correctly.
• Increased compatibility with php4.

Version 1.0.1, 2009-03-06

• Fixed a bug in extension where the gallery_id and entry_id weren’t set correctly if a closed gallery comment was added to the database.

→ Download the ExpressionEngine Low Random plugin, version 1.0.0 (Also on GitHub)

{exp:low_random:file}

The file method will search a given folder for files, matches them against any given filter, and returns a found file name at random.

Parameters

• folder: either the server path of the folder, or the numeric Upload Destination id.
• filter: any number of sub strings the file name should contain, separated by vertical bars.

Examples

{exp:low_random:file folder="images" filter="masthead|.jpg"}
{exp:low_random:file folder="3" filter=".pdf"}

{exp:low_random:item}

The item method will return a random item from the set given in the parameter items.

Parameters

• items: any number of items, separated by vertical bars.

Examples

{exp:low_random:item items="cat|dog|ferret|raptor"}
{exp:low_random:item items="Yes|No|Maybe|Try again later|You're kidding, right?"}

{exp:low_random:letter}

The letter method will return a random letter between the given range. It returns a letter in the same case as the given parameters.

Parameters

• from: letter to start the range with, defaults to a.
• to: letter to end the range with, defaults to z.

Examples

{exp:low_random:letter}
{exp:low_random:letter from="A" to="F"}

{exp:low_random:number}

The number method will return a random number between the given range.

Parameters

• from: number to start the range with, defaults to 0.
• to: number to end the range with, defaults to 9.

Examples

{exp:low_random:number}
{exp:low_random:number from="100" to="999"}

Using categories

If there’s no need for different levels of permissions, but you do need lots of flexibility, using categories might be the right way to go. Categories can be a powerful tool for your site. Straight out of the box, it’s great. But with a bit of add-on love, it can become even better. That’s why I created the Low Seg2Cat extension.

→ Download the Low Seg2Cat extension version 1.0.2 (Also on GitHub)

What does it do?

Low Seg2Cat loops through the segments of the current URI, matches them against existing categories, and registers the matching categories as global variables, which you can use in your templates. For example, if your URI looks like this: http://domain.com/index.php/blog/news/election/, this extension will register several extra global variables. Per segment, it will register…

• {segment_n_category_id}
• {segment_n_category_name}
• {segment_n_category_description}
• {segment_n_category_image}

…where n is the segment number. This means if there’s a category with url_title ‘news’ and one with ‘election’, you’ll have their ids and names ready to be used in your templates. If no matching category is found for a segment, an empty string is returned. In addition to these, a final variable is also set: {segment_category_ids}, which will return an inclusive stack of all found category ids, for example: 4&12 (if category ‘news’ would have an id of 4 and ‘election’ would be 12).

Low Seg2Cat gives you easy access to category ids so you can use url_titles in your URIs without the use of the Category URL Indicator or custom PHP.

Caveats

If there are multiple categories with the same url_title, but in different groups, this extension will only return one of those. So best make sure your category url_titles are unique.

Change Log

Version 1.0.2, 2009-06-03

• Altered the installation/update methods to play nicer with custom table prefixes.

Version 1.0.1, 2009-03-14

• Added {segment_n_category_description} and {segment_n_category_image} as global variables.
• {segment_category_ids} defaults to an empty string.

[There is] a substantial problem with content management systems. They are often implemented in the hope they will solve what is an organizational rather than technical problem.

The Brit hits the nail on the head, although I’d like to take a slightly different approach to his statement. The problem does not lie with the CMS itself so much, but rather with the people implementing and using it. It is they who expect that a piece of software will cater to all their (or even everyone’s) online needs and solve all their problems. Some might even think they have real influence and power over the company’s website just because they have a user name and password to login to the CMS and edit data. Even though those changes will never appear online without approval of a web editor.

This is a difficult problem, because you need to convince people to think differently about the system they’re using. Change their minds, so to speak. Do they really need to spend a lot of money to buy a huge content management system that can handle multiple workflows and permissions and whatnot? Or can they suffice with just sending an email to the web editors every now and then? Remember, it’s not CMS’s that kill websites. People do. (And some browsers, but let’s not go into that…)

When I was at @Media in London this year, a fair amount of questions was asked about SEO. But it’s not just developers who worry about it anymore. More and more, clients think that something special has to be done to their sites in order to optimise them for search engines like Google. They turn to the developers or to someone who actually specialises in SEO. Then the site is altered or built with this in mind. The site is optimised for search engines.

But isn’t this the wrong approach? Shouldn’t we be optimising for our users instead? Something like User Optimalisation (UO)? Luckily, one excellent method for optimalisation appears to benefit both: building with Web Standards. But I reckon it is wrong to assume that all measures taken to improve the “findability” of a website will also benefit its users. Therefore, I think it’s necessary to get priorities straight and turn some thought processes around.

A client might think that as soon as their site appears on the first search result page of Google, more visitors will come and use their site. Google first, users later. Let’s turn this around. If you build an accessible website with great content, more users will gradually use your site, maybe even link to it. This will eventually lead to a higher page rank; because people are already using it. Worry about users first, Google later, if at all.

Search engines, after all, are companies with their own agenda, who can change their algorithms any time they want. That pretty much rules out any SEO certainties. If we forget that our main priority should be our human users, we risk going back to the dark ages of dozens of meaningless meta tags, huge amounts of keywords on the bottom of pages or maybe even putting random numbers in URLs.

→ Download the Low CP extension, version 1.0.2

What does it do?

This extension doesn’t have any settings, so as soon as you enable it, you’ll notice the following effects:

No title attribute for links

You know how you get three JavaScript prompts each time you click the “Link” button in the entry form? The third one will add a title attribute to the link you’re creating, which is not necessary most of the time. Low CP gets rid of the third prompt, omitting the attribute.

No Check Spelling, Glossary or Smileys

I’ve never really used the three “textarea helper” links. Some browsers, like Firefox and Safari, even have built in spelling checkers. The glossary is only useful if you add your own items in there. Don’t even get me started on smileys. Low CP hides these three links.

No localization for custom date fields

Each time I used a custom date field for a client, that client asked me what “fixed” or “Localized” meant. Each of those times it wasn’t really important, but “fixed” would be my preferred choice. In the end — also due to a clumsy translation mistake — it caused more confusion than it should. Low CP gets rid of the drop down select box and replaces it with a hidden form field which sets the localization to fixed by default.

No Trackbacks column

Seriously, who uses trackbacks anymore? I’ve never used them and found that — in the edit entries table — it causes confusion with clients. Of course we can’t have any of that, that’s why Low CP removes that column from the edit entries table.

Infinite URL title duplicates

Not very common, but harmless to add anyway. There’s a maximum to the number that’s appended to the URL title if it already exists. Say, for example, that you add an entry called “News” every week. The first time, the URL title becomes news. The second time, it’ll be news1. Then news2, and so on, until you reach news50. After that, you’ll get an error message saying the URL title already exists. Low CP removes this limit.

→ Download the Safe Encode extension, version 1.0

What does it do?

Whenever you use {encode=""} in your weblog entries to display email addresses, this extension will generate an accessible link, instead of the JavaScript generated one. There is hardly any obfuscation, except that the . are replaced with . and the @ is replaced with @. This also means the email address is more likely to be picked up by bots and harvesters, so use at your own risk.

If you’re using the encode-tag in your templates, this extension will have no effect. But then again, you could just as well not use the encode-tag there.

Example

Using the extension, this…

{encode="example@domain.com" title="Send an email"}

…will be converted to…

<a href="mailto:example&#64;domain&#46;com">Send an email</a>

→ Download the ExpressionEngine Google Mini plugin, version 1.0

• Search results
  • Parameters
  • Conditionals
  • Single variables
  • Variable pairs
  • Example
• Keywords
• Search form

Search results

The main tag pair you will need is {exp:googlemini:results}. This contains several single variables and variable pairs that let you set up your search results page.

Parameters

• host="googlemini.domain.com"
• Request Parameters

host=

host="googlemini.domain.com"

The host name assigned to our Google Mini search appliance.

Request parameters

All Request Parameters used by the Google Mini search appliance are available. All Request Parameters will be overwritten by GET variables in the url. For example:

client="default_frontend" site="default_collection"

Conditional variables

• {if keymatch}

if keymatch

{if keymatch}
 content
{/if}

This conditional lets you display content if a KeyMatch was found for the current search.

Note: in addition to these conditionals, all single variables can be used as conditionals as well.

Single variables

Variable pairs

• {entries}
• {synonyms}
• {pagination}

entries

{entries}
 <div{if filtered} class="filtered"{/if}>
  <h3><a href="{url}">{title}</a></h3>
  <p>{excerpt}</p>
  <p class="meta">{display_url}</p>
 </div>
{/entries}

synonyms

{synonyms}
 {synonym_count}: <a href="{synonym_url}">{synonym_name}</a>
{/synonyms}

pagination

{pagination}
 {if is_active}
  <strong>{page_count}</strong>
 {if:else}
  <a href="{path=search}{query_string}">{page_count}</a>
 {/if}
{/pagination}

Example

{exp:googlemini:results host="googlemini.domain.com" oe="utf8"}
	
{if keywords}
 <p>Searched for <strong>{keywords}</strong><br />
 Results <strong>{start_result} – {end_result}</strong> of about <strong>{approx_results}</strong>.</p>
{/if}

{if keymatch}
 <p>KeyMatch: <a href="{keymatch_url}">{keymatch_description}</a></p>
{/if}

{if total_synonyms}
 <h3>Also try:</h3>
 <ul>
  {synonyms}
   <li><a href="{path=search}?q={synonym_url}">{synonym_name}</a></li>
  {/synonyms}
 </ul>
{/if}

{entries}
 {if count == 1}<ol id="searchresults">{/if}
  <li{if filtered} class="level2"{/if}>
   <h3><a href="{url}">{title}</a></h3>
   {if excerpt}<span class="excerpt">{excerpt}</span>{/if}
   <span class="meta">{display_url}</span>
   {if more_url}<span class="sitesearch">[ <a href="{path=search}?q=site:{more_url}%20{keywords_url}">More results from {more_url}</a> ]</span>{/if}
  </li>
 {if count == total_results}</ol>{/if}
{/entries}

{if total_pages > 1}
 <p class="pagination">
  <span class="count">{current_page}/{total_pages}</span>
  {if previous_qs}<a class="prev" href="{path=search}{previous_qs}">Previous page</a>{/if}
  {pagination}{if is_active}<strong>{page_count}</strong> {if:else}<a href="{path=search}{query_string}">{page_count}</a> {/if}{/pagination}
  {if next_qs}<a class="next" href="{path=search}{next_qs}">Next page</a>{/if}
 </p>
{/if}

{/exp:googlemini:results}

Keywords

To display keywords outside the results-tags, use the single tag {exp:googlemini:keywords}, for example:

<title>{exp:googlemini:keywords} - Search - My Site Name</title>

Search form

To create a search form, simply point a form to your search results template and use an input field with name="q". For example:

<form action="{path=search}" method="get">
 <fieldset>
  <legend>Search this site</legend>
  <label for="keywords">Keywords</label>
  <input type="text" name="q" id="keywords" value="{exp:googlemini:keywords}" />
  <button type="submit">Search</button>
 </fieldset>
</form>

Drag the following link to your browser’s toolbar and behold the speediness of bookmarklets (also known as ‘favelets’): !ee

That will speed up your support searches big time.