Realblog_XH facilitates presenting a blog on your CMSimple_XH website. It offers the basic blogging features, such as an displaying a chronological overview of the posts, an optional monthly archive, automatic scheduled publishing and archiving of posts, searching contents, an RSS feed and very simplistic categorization. Separately written teasers are supported. Teasers and articles may contain arbitrary CMSimple_XH scripting. Each blog post can be made commentable individually, what requires a compatible comments plugin.
For multilingual websites, each language will have its own blog; besides that, Realblog_XH doesn't have any multilingual capabilities.
Please do read this documentation before you encounter any problems!
Realblog_XH couldn't be tested so far in various environments. It is a so called beta version. Use with caution!
Realblog_XH is a plugin for CMSimple_XH. It requires CMSimple_XH ≥ 1.6 and PHP ≥ 5.
The installation is done as with many other CMSimple_XH plugins. See the CMSimple_XH wiki for further details.
The plugin's configuration is done as with many other CMSimple_XH plugins in the website's back-end. Select "Realblog" from "Plugins".
You can change the default settings of Realblog_XH under "Config". Hints for the options will be displayed when hovering over the help icon with your mouse.
Localization is done under "Language". You can translate the character strings to your own language (if there is no appropriate language file available), or customize them according to your needs.
The look of Realblog_XH can be customized under "Stylesheet".
To display the blog on a CMSimple_XH page, write:
{{{Realblog_blog();}}}
To also display the search form, write:
{{{Realblog_blog(true);}}}
In the main plugin adminstration you can manage the blog posts. You can create, edit and delete posts, change their status, etc. The administration is meant to be pretty much self explaining.
Realblog_XH currently has only very basic support for categories. To define the categories a post belongs to, you have put a plugin call in the teaser or the actual article:
{{{rbCat('|Category 1|Category 2|');}}}
Note that you can define as many categories as you like, and that all categories have to be surrounded by vertical bars.
It is not possible for visitors to filter for categories, but you can prepare separate CMSimple_XH pages for each category, and display the respective posts on these pages by passing a second argument to Realblog_blog():
{{{Realblog_blog(false, 'Category 1');}}}
To display the blog archive on a CMSimple_XH page, write:
{{{Realblog_archive();}}}
To also display the search form, write:
{{{Realblog_archive(true);}}}
Note that the blog archive must not be on the same page as the actual blog.
If enabled in the configuration, Realblog_XH automatically offers an RSS feed with the published blog posts. Optionally, you can display an RSS feed icon that links to the feed in the template:
<?php echo Realblog_feedLink();?>
Besides some feed related settings in the configuration, there are some settings in the language file in the section "RSS". Most important is "page", where you have to enter the URL of the page on which the main blog is shown. It's best to navigate to this page and copy and paste everything after the question mark up to, but not including, the first ampersand (&), if any, from the browser's address bar.
To add a commenting facility to your blog, you have to install a compatible comments plugin and enter its name in Realblog_XH's configuration.
Note for implementers: to be compatible with Realblog_XH you have to write a class named %YOURPLUGIN%_RealblogBridge which implements the interface Realblog_CommentsBridge, which is defined and documented in plugins/realblog/classes/CommentsBridge.php. Make sure this class and its dependencies are loaded when Realblog_XH needs it.
Realblog_XH is mostly backward compatible to Realblog 2.8, so you can reuse its data files (realblog.txt) and use its plugin calls. However, the old plugin calls are deprecated, and may be removed in the future.
The RSS feed files (realblog_rss_feed.xml) are not used anymore—instead the feeds are built dynamically. You should delete the old files, so that news readers will not grab the old contents.
There is a soft limit on the amount of posts and their size that Realblog_XH can handle, similar to the soft limit on the size of CMSimple_XH's content.htm. Most likely you'll never reach this limit if you're writing just one or two posts per week, but if you're planning to do heavy blogging, you are better off using a database driven blogging software.
Realblog_XH is licensed under GPLv3.
© 2006-2010 Jan Kanters
© 2010-2014 Gert Ebersbach
© 2014 Christoph M. Becker
Slovak translation © 2014 Dr. Martin Sereday
Realblog_XH is a fork of Realblog 2.8, which is developed by Gert Ebersbach. Realblog (which was formerly called Realblog_XH) is based on Advancednews 1.0.5 by Jan Kanters. Many thanks to both for making these popular and useful plugins available under GPL.
Realblog_XH uses a slightly modified version of the Flatfile package developed by Luke Plant, and jscalendar developed by Mihai Bazon. Many thanks to both developers for publishing these components under MIT license resp. LGPL.
The plugin icon is designed by Alessandro Rei. Many thanks for publishing the icon under GPL.
The feed icon is designed by Anomie. Many thanks for releasing it under GPL.
This plugin uses free applications icons from Aha-Soft. Many thanks for making these icons freely available.
Many thanks to the community at the CMSimple_XH forum for tips and suggestions and testing.
And last but not least many thanks to Peter Harteg, the "father" of CMSimple, and all developers of CMSimple_XH without whom this amazing CMS wouldn't exist.