Better Blogs [Deleted]

[Rigel Kentaurus]

Yes please do! To the right of the title would be great.

Nice suggestion, thanks

Do you have more screens please ?

(editor for add entry, AdminCP, permissions etc ..)

Added to the first post

I am watching this resource and trying to figure out how to implement this for my students. Last year, each student's blog was mapped a domain in WordPress. This worked because there were only 17 kids. This time, I have a whole academy of students - 160 kids plus the AP kids. Therefore, mapping is out of the question.

Is there a way so the admin determines who gets a blog? In other words, not anyone gets one but only designated members. Maybe a select group could be set to have the blog? I could create "student" as the group and they have permission to blog.

Yes, you can limit that through user permissions. Create a group, and only that group gets the "Can have a blog" permission. Then add the people that you want to that group.

How about allowing guest comments?

Sorry, no plans for that

This addon KILLED my site when I put 8thos.com in the second entry in the Blog Multi site options. How the hell do I change it?

Care to elaborate? How is it killing it? It doesn't load? Permanentely redirect.
In your config.php you can add

$config['enableListeners'] = true;

That will disable all addons, then you can go to the options and remove it, or worst case scenario remove the addon and reinstall

I do offer a $100 professional setup for the subdomain, start a conversation with me if you want that. I did my best to make it straightforward, but every server setup is different and the combination of dns servers, web servers, plugins and rewrite rules can make it really tricky (hence the red warning in the options and the note that support for that will be additional)

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

Yup, when I disabled the "B" it fixed it. Blog updates are still not showing up on the main page though. The little number near the categories also does not change as content is added. I set the cache for 1 minute.

I enabled conversations, if you can provide me with a url, I can debug it, to see why it would not be working

In the meantime, please try going to the url with

index.php?xfa-blog-home/reset-cache

That will reset the caches

 

[DRE]

Nice suggestion, thanks



Added to the first post

Yes, you can limit that through user permissions. Create a group, and only that group gets the "Can have a blog" permission. Then add the people that you want to that group.

Sorry, no plans for that


Care to elaborate? How is it killing it? It doesn't load? Permanentely redirect.
In your config.php you can add

That will disable all addons, then you can go to the options and remove it, or worst case scenario remove the addon and reinstall

I do offer a $100 professional setup for the subdomain, start a conversation with me if you want that. I did my best to make it straightforward, but every server setup is different and the combination of dns servers, web servers, plugins and rewrite rules can make it really tricky (hence the red warning in the options and the note that support for that will be additional)

It was working fine until I played around with multi-site options. I will try to figure this out myself first.

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

Blog updates are still not showing up on the main page though. The little number near the categories also does not change as content is added. I set the cache for 1 minute.

I figured out what the reason is. Since the cache is set to one day, even if you change it to a minute, it is still cached for one day, since the expiration information is saved, the new value will only pick up after the next refresh (or if you force it with the reset-cache option I mentioned).
I will provide with a button on that page for the blogs admin so people can reset it at will

 

[xIsabel38]

I haven't researched if Jake's Route Changer would work - http://xenforo.com/community/resources/route-changer.447/ - it might. As for something built in, there is no functionality for that.

Are you saying that there is no way to change the xfa-blogs in the url?

Alright so I just bought this resource and so far I don't know yet. I am having some issues I hope I can get resolved here.

1. I like the idea of the blog removing the header of the site, it makes it more personal for the user and that's fine. But where's the nav menu? All it shows is Home.

Redirecting my users to the home page means they have to click the forum link again just to return to the forum. This is not a valid option.
Your demo site said Forum and is misleading. The nav bar should be the full nav bar. How do I add these links back in?

2. The Blog support with the widget add-on is great, but where's the option to set a limit on how many blogs should be displayed in the sidebar?

3. Where's the link to "Add a comment"? Clicking on the "There are 0 comments" isn't actually the most obvious link for this and I fear some users may bypass it accidentally.

4. When I did add a comment, the text box broke the lines of the theme layout:

5. How do I make the default link go to the community blog? And change the link to just say Blogs instead of "My Blog"?

6. When you visit a blog of a user that does not have one, it says "This user doesn't have a block yet" which should obviously say "This user doesn't have a blog yet." And further along it says to motivate him and write about his life experiences. It always says "him" and "his" regardless of gender settings. How do I set this to determine gender or even easier, where can I edit the text for this so I can use unisex terms instead and fix the typo.

7. My Alerts bubble thingie doesn't work on the main blog page. It does however work when you click an actual blog.

8. How do I remove the B icon from the Nav Menu?

9. Where can I edit the location of the images for the blog? Mine are currently not showing up and I assume it's because it's searching for them in the default styles directory.

I would suggest removing the Blog icon from the nav menu entirely as this doesn't look good if there are no other icons used in the menu.

I would also suggest moving the ones out of the avatar box because this pushes the avatar to the right. I would prefer it was moved right after the user's name sort of like in the location that John put his gender image icons. http://xenforo.com/community/attachments/screenshot-jpg.34782/

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

Thanks for buying the addon.

I am planning to do a quick turn around of any bugs that arise, keep tuned for an update later tonight.
I tested this addon for more than a month on my site, and my members have depleted their comments and complaints, so now I am dealing with new use cases.

Alright so I just bought this resource and so far I don't know yet. I am having some issues I hope I can get resolved here.

1. I like the idea of the blog removing the header of the site, it makes it more personal for the user and that's fine. But where's the nav menu? All it shows is Home.

That might be a bug with the default breadcrumb. I'll get that fixed.

2. The Blog support with the widget add-on is great, but where's the option to set a limit on how many blogs should be displayed in the sidebar?

There's none, it's hardcoded right now. I'll add a new option for that. It would apply to both the default panel and the bd widget

3. Where's the link to "Add a comment"? Clicking on the "There are 0 comments" isn't actually the most obvious link for this and I fear some users may bypass it accidentally.

This might be a matter of taste. There is a quick reply on the full entry, where the person is actually reading the comments.

5. How do I make the default link go to the community blog? And change the link to just say Blogs instead of "My Blog"?

Not possible other than with an edit. The next version I'll add a switch so you can display either. The default will be My Blog but it will be possible to change it to the main blogs home page

6. When you visit a blog of a user that does not have one, it says "This user doesn't have a block yet" which should obviously say "This user doesn't have a blog yet." And further along it says to motivate him and write about his life experiences. It always says "him" and "his" regardless of gender settings. How do I set this to determine gender or even easier, where can I edit the text for this so I can use unisex terms instead and fix the typo.

I fixed the typo on my side (will be distributed as part of the new update), the blog is fully phrased, go to phrases and search for the string you want to change, it most likely will be in the xfa_blogs_empty_ phrases

You can change that to read whatever you want

7. My Alerts bubble thingie doesn't work on the main blog page. It does however work when you click an actual blog.

I'm taking note of that as a bug

8. How do I remove the B icon from the Nav Menu?

9. Where can I edit the location of the images for the blog? Mine are currently not showing up and I assume it's because it's searching for them in the default styles directory.

Go to your styles, there is a new "blog" section in which you can change the location of the images and even point that to a CDN

I would suggest removing the Blog icon from the nav menu entirely as this doesn't look good if there are no other icons used in the menu.

You can remove it yourself, go to the template xfa_blogs_nav.css and delete it

I would also suggest moving the ones out of the avatar box because this pushes the avatar to the right.

In the blog options, there is an option to remove them from the postbit

 

[Walter]

Have you missed my questions?
(sorry for being impatient)

 

[DRE]

Hey everyone! Do not mess with multisite options in AdminCP/Options if you don't know what your doing. I tried enabling vanity urls and it screwed up my site's url. I couldn't even access it until I deleted this addons' files from my server. It's going to be a pain-in-the-butt trying to delete all the tables from phpMyAdmin so think twice before you mess with vanity urls!

I can't even use this blog. I should've waited until you did more bug fixes.

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

Hey everyone! Do not mess with multisite options in AdminCP/Options if you don't know what your doing. I tried enabling vanity urls and it screwed up my site's url. I couldn't even access it until I deleted this addons' files from my server. It's going to be a pain-in-the-butt trying to delete all the tables from phpMyAdmin so think twice before you mess with vanity urls!

I can't even use this blog. I should've waited until you did more bug fixes.

Could you share to me your server setup?

Server (apache, lighttpd, ngnix)
I see your forums are in www.domain.com/forums (is that right?)
Where where you trying to setup the subdomain myblog.domain.com ?
Do you have mod_rewrite enabled

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

I tested on xfaddons.com:

Where can I see the list of all blogs (not recent, not new - simply all)?
How about a link from the member profile page to his blog?
Customization: I change the colors on my blog but as soon as I leave the page its gone (tested in Firefox and Opera)?

There is no list of all blogs, it is kind like the list of users, once you have too many blogs it becomes too large and meaningless, and is only used by spammy site to leave comments in every blog

Yes, I'll add a link from the member profile

That was a bug with the customization, most of my testing is in the "full screen", and the page container with the header did not have the css definition, I have since fixed it

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

Hey everyone! Do not mess with multisite options in AdminCP/Options if you don't know what your doing. I tried enabling vanity urls and it screwed up my site's url. I couldn't even access it until I deleted this addons' files from my server. It's going to be a pain-in-the-butt trying to delete all the tables from phpMyAdmin so think twice before you mess with vanity urls!

I can't even use this blog. I should've waited until you did more bug fixes.

If you messed it up ...
only remove the file XfAddOns/Blogs/MultiBlog/Listener.php

Then just uninstall the addon. That will call the bundled uninstaller and will remove all tables for you
Before you install the addon again go to settings and modify anything, to force the options to be rebuilt

 

[Geoffrey]

Love this! Will probably buy it soon.

 

[DRE]

Could you share to me your server setup?
Server (apache, lighttpd, ngnix)
I see your forums are in www.domain.com/forums (is that right?)
Where where you trying to setup the subdomain myblog.domain.com ?
Do you have mod_rewrite enabled

Semi-Dedicated. Apache 2.2.22, PHP 5.2.17

No my site is on the root. 8thos.com/board is not a folder or anything. Just the index redirect setting from xenporta.

Using Friendly URLs

This is my htaccess.

#      Mod_security can interfere with uploading of content such as attachments. If you
#      cannot attach files, remove the "#" from the lines below.
#<IfModule mod_security.c>
#      SecFilterEngine Off
#      SecFilterScanPOST Off
#</IfModule>
 
ErrorDocument 401 default
ErrorDocument 403 default
ErrorDocument 404 default
ErrorDocument 500 default
 
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  Options +FollowSymLinks
        RewriteEngine On
 
RewriteRule ^/([^/]*)/([^/]*)$ /$1.php/$2
 
        #      If you are having problems with the rewrite rules, remove the "#" from the
        #      line that begins "RewriteBase" below. You will also have to change the path
        #      of the rewrite to reflect the path to your XenForo installation.
        #RewriteBase /xenforo
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^8thos\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.8thos.com/$1 [R=301,L]
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
        RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]
        RewriteRule ^(data|js|styles|install) - [NC,L]
        RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L]
    RewriteRule ^/threads/ /forum/threads
RewriteRule ^/forums/ /forum/forums
</IfModule>

 

[DRE]

If you messed it up ...
only remove the file XfAddOns/Blogs/MultiBlog/Listener.php

Then just uninstall the addon. That will call the bundled uninstaller and will remove all tables for you
Before you install the addon again go to settings and modify anything, to force the options to be rebuilt

I wish I knew that before I messed with the multisite settings. Once you mess up on that, you can't even access your admincp just to uninstall it. So those directions don't work. The only way I could get my site working again was to delete the files from my server.

From that point on I tried deleting all your xfa tables from my phpMyAdmin but even that doesn't work. What is the list of tables needed to uninstall it? After I do this I would like to reinstall your blog addon.

So far I tried doing these commands but they don't all work. There's always something missing.

DELETE FROM xf_content_type_field where content_type = 'xfa_blog_comment'
DELETE FROM xf_content_type_field where content_type = 'xfa_blog_entry'
DELETE FROM xf_content_type where content_type = 'xfa_blog_comment'
DELETE FROM xf_content_type where content_type = 'xfa_blog_entry'
ALTER TABLE xf_user_privacy DROP allow_view_blog
ALTER TABLE xf_user_profile DROP entry_count

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS xfa_blog_entry_category
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS xfa_blog_category
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS xfa_blog_entry_read
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS xfa_blog_read
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS xfa_blog_css
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS xfa_blog_comment
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS xfa_blog_entry_watch
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS xfa_blog_entry
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS xfa_blog_watch
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS xfa_blog

ALTER TABLE xf_user_privacy DROP allow_view_blog
ALTER TABLE xf_user_profile DROP entry_count


After trying all that I still got this error:

Server Error

Mysqli statement execute error : Duplicate entry 'xfa_blogs_commentTrimLength-xfa_blogs_option_group' for key 'PRIMARY'

1. Zend_Db_Statement_Mysqli->_execute() in Zend/Db/Statement.php at line 297
2. Zend_Db_Statement->execute() in Zend/Db/Adapter/Abstract.php at line 479
3. Zend_Db_Adapter_Abstract->query() in Zend/Db/Adapter/Abstract.php at line 574
4. Zend_Db_Adapter_Abstract->insert() in XenForo/DataWriter/Option.php at line 475
5. XenForo_DataWriter_Option->_updateRelatedGroupList() in XenForo/DataWriter/Option.php at line 409
6. XenForo_DataWriter_Option->_postSave() in XenForo/DataWriter.php at line 1385
7. XenForo_DataWriter->save() in XenForo/Model/Option.php at line 1104
8. XenForo_Model_Option->importOptionsAddOnXml() in XenForo/Model/AddOn.php at line 317
9. XenForo_Model_AddOn->importAddOnExtraDataFromXml() in Waindigo/CustomFields/Model/AddOn.php at line 33
10. Waindigo_CustomFields_Model_AddOn->importAddOnExtraDataFromXml() in TMS/Model/AddOn.php at line 20
11. TMS_Model_AddOn->importAddOnExtraDataFromXml() in XenForo/Model/AddOn.php at line 225
12. XenForo_Model_AddOn->installAddOnXml() in XenForo/Model/AddOn.php at line 169
13. XenForo_Model_AddOn->installAddOnXmlFromFile() in XenForo/ControllerAdmin/AddOn.php at line 178
14. XenForo_ControllerAdmin_AddOn->actionInstall() in XenForo/FrontController.php at line 310
15. XenForo_FrontController->dispatch() in XenForo/FrontController.php at line 132
16. XenForo_FrontController->run() in /home/user/public_html/admin.php at line 13

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

I wish I knew that before I messed with the multisite settings. Once you mess up on that, you can't even access your admincp just to uninstall it. So those directions don't work. The only way I could get my site working again was to delete the files from my server.

Follow this instructions please

1) Add to your config.php (this will disable all the addons)

  $config['enableListeners'] = false;

2) Reupload all the blog files

3) Upload the modified uninstaller attached to this post.
This has added resilience so it will not error out on the things you manually deleted

4) Go to your admin control panel

5) Uninstall the blog addon

6) Go to your config.php and remove

  $config['enableListeners'] = false;

7) Reinstall the blogs

------------

I think on the next version I'll add a master switch editable on config.php so people can go into rescue mode should that happen to someone else

 

[DRE]

Thanks but none of that will work because I removed the blog from xf_addon in phypmyadmin

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

Thanks but none of that will work because I removed the blog from xf_addon in phypmyadmin

Sorry about the trouble. Please run the following

DELETE FROM xf_admin_navigation WHERE addon_id = 'xfa_blogs';
DELETE FROM xf_admin_permission WHERE addon_id = 'xfa_blogs';
DELETE FROM xf_code_event WHERE addon_id = 'xfa_blogs';
DELETE FROM xf_code_event_listener WHERE addon_id = 'xfa_blogs';
DELETE FROM xf_cron_entry WHERE addon_id = 'xfa_blogs';
DELETE FROM xf_option WHERE addon_id = 'xfa_blogs';
DELETE FROM xf_option_group WHERE addon_id = 'xfa_blogs';
DELETE FROM xf_permission WHERE addon_id = 'xfa_blogs';
DELETE FROM xf_permission_group WHERE addon_id = 'xfa_blogs';
DELETE FROM xf_permission_interface_group WHERE addon_id = 'xfa_blogs';
DELETE FROM xf_phrase WHERE addon_id = 'xfa_blogs';
DELETE FROM xf_route_prefix WHERE addon_id = 'xfa_blogs';
DELETE FROM xf_template WHERE addon_id = 'xfa_blogs';

 

[DRE]

So I tried all of that and tried reinstalling your addon. I keep getting this error.

Server Error

Mysqli statement execute error : Duplicate entry 'xfa_blogs_commentTrimLength-xfa_blogs_option_group' for key 'PRIMARY'

1. Zend_Db_Statement_Mysqli->_execute() in Zend/Db/Statement.php at line 297
2. Zend_Db_Statement->execute() in Zend/Db/Adapter/Abstract.php at line 479
3. Zend_Db_Adapter_Abstract->query() in Zend/Db/Adapter/Abstract.php at line 574
4. Zend_Db_Adapter_Abstract->insert() in XenForo/DataWriter/Option.php at line 475
5. XenForo_DataWriter_Option->_updateRelatedGroupList() in XenForo/DataWriter/Option.php at line 409
6. XenForo_DataWriter_Option->_postSave() in XenForo/DataWriter.php at line 1385
7. XenForo_DataWriter->save() in XenForo/Model/Option.php at line 1104
8. XenForo_Model_Option->importOptionsAddOnXml() in XenForo/Model/AddOn.php at line 317
9. XenForo_Model_AddOn->importAddOnExtraDataFromXml() in Waindigo/CustomFields/Model/AddOn.php at line 33
10. Waindigo_CustomFields_Model_AddOn->importAddOnExtraDataFromXml() in TMS/Model/AddOn.php at line 20
11. TMS_Model_AddOn->importAddOnExtraDataFromXml() in XenForo/Model/AddOn.php at line 225
12. XenForo_Model_AddOn->installAddOnXml() in XenForo/Model/AddOn.php at line 169
13. XenForo_Model_AddOn->installAddOnXmlFromFile() in XenForo/ControllerAdmin/AddOn.php at line 178
14. XenForo_ControllerAdmin_AddOn->actionInstall() in XenForo/FrontController.php at line 310
15. XenForo_FrontController->dispatch() in XenForo/FrontController.php at line 132
16. XenForo_FrontController->run() in /home/user/public_html/admin.php at line 13

 

[DRE]

Okay the blog is back up.

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

So I tried all of that and tried reinstalling your addon. I keep getting this error.

Looks like I missed one

DELETE FROM xf_option_group_relation where option_id like 'xfa_blog%';