Blogify

Blogify offers a single-click solution to the task of building a blog with CraftCMS.

Once installed the plugin creates the data structure and templates, and allows for seeding of fake posts, so you can start customizing your blog right away. Blogify comes with a bunch of Twig enhancements that make the code in your templates declarative and simple.

Click here for a full demo of the result with zero configuration.

Installation

1. Include the package:

composer require matfish/craft-blogify

2. Install the plugin:

php craft plugin/install blogify

3. (Optional but recommended for development) Seed some posts:

php craft blogify/seed

The default is 10 posts. You can pass a --count option to seed as many as you like.

That's all! Now go to {yoursite.dev}/blog/index and see the blog in action.

Spec

Blogify adds the following data structures to Craft:

1. A "Blog Listing" (or index) Single.
2. A "Blog" Channel
3. An "Author Page" Single (All author posts)
4. A "Blog Categories" category group and a corresponding category template to display all posts related to a given category.
5. A "Blog Tags" tag group
6. A "Tag Page" single (All posts with a given tag)
7. A "Blog Assets" assets volume.
8. A "Blog Thumbnail" transform.

Each Post in the Blog channel has the following fields:

1. Title
2. Image
3. Excerpt
4. Content (a Redactor field)
5. Categories
6. Tags

Twig Enhancements

the initial theme demonstrates usage of all the enhancements below.

Global variables

Blogify exposes a global blogify variable with the following properties:

• categories All blog categories
• usedCategories All blog categories that have at least one post associated with them
• tags All blog tags

Global methods

• blogifyRecentPosts gets recent posts. E.g blogifyRecentPosts().limit(4).all()
• blogifySearch searches the blog (title and content fields). E.g blogifySearch('foo')
• blogifyPopularPosts get most popular posts (see below).

In addition, entities contain contextual methods, as follows:

Entry (Post)

• categories get post categories
• relatedPosts get other posts with one of the given post's categories
• tags get post tags
• next get next post
• prev get previous post
• image get post image
• thumbnail get post thumbnail (defined under Settings->Assets->Image Transforms->Blog Thumbnail)
• excerpt get post excerpt
• content get post content (supports Matrix field rendering. See below)

Category

• posts get posts related to the given category

Tag

• posts get posts that have the given tag

User (Author)

• posts get author posts

Note: Unless the method is getting a single entity (e.g entry.image), Blogify will return a query object, which can be used to further augment the query, e.g author.posts.limit(3).all().

Using Matrix field for the post content

By default the provided Post Content field is a Redactor field. If you wish to use the powerful Matrix field instead, we've got your back:

• Go to Settings->Fields->Post Content
• Change field type to Matrix and build your blocks.
• Add a _matrix folder under blogify/post
• Add a template for each block type, named after the handle.

Each partial will expose a block variable containing all the fields. E.g if your block handle is postHeading and it has a heading field, create a blogify/post/_matrix/postHeading.twig file:

    <h2>{{block.heading}}</h2>  

• Render the post content:

<div class="post-content">
    {{ entry.content | raw }}
</div>

Note that you can change the templates folder path via the plugin's config. Create a config/blogify.php file:

return [
     // matrix templates path relative to the templates folder
    'matrixTemplatesPath'=>'my/matrix/path'
];

Record post views

Blogify allows you track the popularity of your posts, so you can sort by popularity and display number of views. This option is disabled by default. You can enable it with a single command:

php craft blogify/views/record

This will add a read-only Post Views field to your posts (right after the title). Now, every time someone views the post Blogify will automatically increment the number of views, while excluding drafts and previews.

Excluding IPs

Since you probably don't want to record your own views you can exclude certain IPs from triggering the event by adding the following to config/blogify.php:

return [
   'postViewsExcludeIps'=>[
       '192.168.10.1'
  ]
];

Now you can sort by popularity (in descending order of course) in your templates:

blogifyPopularPosts().limit(5).all()

To exclude posts with no views from the query pass true to the method call:

blogifyPopularPosts(true).limit(5).all()

Finally, to display the number of views in your template simply call:

{{entry.views}}

Multiple sites

When installed Blogify will register all Category Groups and Sections to all existing sites, with the same URL (relative to site root URL) and same templates.

If you need to vary template content between sites you can use:

1. Static translations
2. If statements
3. Polymorphism

In case you still need to duplicate an entire template, you can duplicate it to your site folder, while keeping the same folder structure ** (e.g templates/de/blogify/listing/_entry.twig) This will prompt Craft to load this template as an override, when accessing the site with a handle of de. See: https://craftcms.com/docs/4.x/sites.html#step-4-update-your-templates

** Note that you can also duplicate it to a path that doesn't retain the same folder structure, in which case you'll need to define a new template path for the relevant Section/Category Group in Craft's back-end.

Modification

Blogify is designed as a solid starting point for a blog. You can freely extend and modify the data structures and templates, while keeping the following in mind:

• Don't change the handles on any of the entities.
• Don't delete any data structures.
• Uninstalling the plugin will remove all data including the blogify templates folder.

License

You can try Blogify in a development environment for as long as you like. Once your site goes live, you are required to purchase a license for the plugin. License is purchasable through the Craft Plugin Store.

For more information, see Craft's Commercial Plugin Licensing.

Requirements

This plugin requires Craft CMS 3.7.0 or later.

Issues and Discussions Guidelines

Please only open a new issue for bug reports. For feature requests and questions open a new Discussion instead. When discussing a feature request please precede [FR] to the title.