Setting up Recent News feed like the skin 2 demo home page

• jgiroux

  said

  I’ve created a new sidebar that has the same alias as below but how do I get it to display images and look the same as the one on Skin #2? How do I limit it to the recent-news category only?

  <h2>Recent News</h2>
  [sidebar alias="skin-2-home-page-widget" ]
  [/one_half_last]

• jeffw

  said

  Go to Appearance > Widgets and drag a text widget into the Skin 2 Home Page Widget area that you created.

  In the text widget use a [blog] shortcode for your content:

  [blog category="999" images="true" image_width="40" image_height="40" post_content="excerpt" excerpt_length="23" show_date="false" author_link="false" comments_link="false" show_category_list="false" show_tag_list="false" posts_per_page="3" paging="false" orderby="date" order="desc"]

  Save the text widget, and that’s it.

  I have used the category ID “999″ in the above shortcode, you must replace this with whatever is the ID for your recent news category.

  P.S. Instructions for including code in posts are here: http://para.llel.us/support/groups/mingle-wordpress/home/

• inkwellcreative

  said

  Hi JeffW,

  I have a follow-up question to this. I imported a blog from blogspot into WordPress (there are 37 posts in this import). I then set up my home page layout for skin 2 and set up the recent news area – this works. My only problem is that it only shows 1 post in the feed (instead of 3) and it shows the first post ever, not the most recent. Would this have anything to do with the ID number? Or would you be able to resolve this detail? Happy to supply any other information you would need. Thank you!

• jeffw

  said

  Sounds like GIGO to me. Change the [blog] shortcode to use category="" temporarily, this will include all categories and you should then see three posts, as defined in the shortcode. You then need to find out what the category ID is for all these posts that you imported and feed this ID to the category attribute.

• inkwellcreative

  said

  Jeff – Thank you for your help! Issue resolved!

• staeven

  said

  I’m having trouble setting the specific categories for my latest posts. I only want one category to show up. In various places.

  I have categories set up as words, not numbers. I enter the slug, in between blog category=”enter slug here” but they don’t show up.

  What am I overlooking?

• jeffw

  said

  @staeven You need to enter category ID numbers, not slugs. Go to Posts > Categories and hover your mouse pointer over the category in question. Look in the status bar, you will see a parameter in the URL that begins tag_ID=. The number after the equals sign is the category ID number.

• staeven

  said

  OMW. I did not know this, thank you. I’m smart now, thanks!

• staeven

  said

  Crap. I entered 72 into the “formula” above and nothings showing up. Hmm.

• staeven

  said

  Ah. Wait–I’ve got it setup so that its a main parent category with sub categories. Is there a special way to make that happen? The assumption is that putting the parent would also include the “babies.” This apparently is not so.

• jeffw

  said

  You will need to feed the category attribute a comma separated list of category IDs.

• suresh

  said

  Hi Jeffw,

  I did a lot of changes…Thanks..
  i couldnt make Recent News content. I tried help docs. But i couldnt. Please check my page http://mingle.linkstreetstore.com/v2/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/mingle2.jpg.

  Thanks

• jeffw

  said

  @suresh

  The answer to your question is in my original reply in this topic:

  http://para.llel.us/support/groups/mingle-wordpress/forum/topic/setting-up-recent-news-feed-for-skin-2-home-page/#post-18523

  So you use that [blog] shortcode in the content for a sidebar, then you use the [sidebar] shortcode in your home page content.

  If you do not understand something in that reply, please explain exactly what it is that you do not understand about that reply and I will try to explain.

  N.B. Please do not ask questions within screenshots, and please start a fresh topic for each separate issue that you have.

• suresh

  said

  Hi,

  i have tried the code. It works fine. But need the recent news look like http://para.llel.us/themes/mingle-wp/home-page-samples/home-page-skin-2/

  Please have look of mine http://mingle.linkstreetsore.com/v2/

  I used

  [blog category="10" images="true" image_width="40" image_height="40" post_content="excerpt" excerpt_length="23" show_date="false" author_link="false" comments_link="false" show_category_list="false" show_tag_list="false" posts_per_page="3" paging="false" orderby="date" order="desc"] 

  Whats wrong in that? and Whats the shortcode for that?

  Thanks

  Suresh

• jeffw

  said

  The [blog] shortcode has two different styles, the normal style and the more compact style, of which there is an example on the demo webiste with the skin 2 demo home page. To get the [blog] shortcode to use the more compact style you need to use it in a sidebar area (via a text widget) and then include that sidebar area in your content, either via the layout manager or directly in your content using a [sidebar] shortcode.