Blog Types

This plugin allows you to create one or more categories for your users to select for their blogs at signup and later on.

This offers you a way to easily separate your blog community into different segments which you can then group together

For example:

Teachers and students
Geography teachers, Math teachers, French teachers etc.
Guitarists, Bassists, Drummers
Real estate agents, Surveyors, Lawyers
The possibilities are endless…

Users can then change the category via the admin panel, should they wish to.

This plugin is highly adaptable and can be used for a number of different purposes such as blogs associated with countries, topics or anything else you fancy.

For example…

… at Edublogs teachers emails can be added to one mailing list, and students to another
… on a fishing site you can produce a front page (or customized dashboard) for shore / deep sea or fly fishers

To take it one step further and you now have the meta data at your fingertips to allow you or your developers to create dynamic front pages (or any other sort of content) which list users, posts, tags and other data associated with that group.

In 2011 we’ll be updating this plugin to allow that to happen with greater ease (i.e. less development) too… so stay tuned to wpmu.org for updates.

Naturally the new version will be able to use all the data collected by this older version, so the sooner you start collecting – the more options you’ll have later on.

To install:

Important: If upgrading from a version earlier than 2.0.7 you will need to delete the existing version first!

Download the
plugin file
Unzip the file into a folder on your hard drive
Configure your config file using the instructions below then upload blog-types-config.php to /wp-content/.
Upload the /blog-types/ folder to /wp-content/plugins/ folder on your site
Visit Network Admin -> Plugins and Network Activate it there.

Netwwork activate plugin

To Configure Blog Types:

1. Rename blog-types-config-sample.php to blog-types-config.php

2. Open up your blog-types-config.php using a Text Editing program like EditPlus

Open up blog-types-config.php using EditPlus

3. Edit the contents of blog-types-config.php to create the blog types you want to use.

Editing the blog types using EditPlus

4. Edit the contents of blog-types-config.php to create the blog sub-types you want to use.

Sub-types is optional. Remove if you don’t want to use them.

Editing the blog sub-types using EditPlus

5. Edit any of the other extra options in blog-types-config.php as you see fit:

// Allow users to select one or multiple blog types
// Note: If you allow users to select multiple blog types, they cannot select a subtype
$blog_types_selection = ‘single’; //Options: ‘single’ or ‘multiple’

// Allow users to select one or multiple blog subtypes
$blog_subtypes_selection = ‘single’; //Options: ‘single’ or ‘multiple’

// Branding singular
$blog_types_branding_singular = __(‘Blog Type’);
$blog_subtypes_branding_singular = __(‘Blog Subtype’);

// Branding plural
$blog_types_branding_plural = __(‘Blog Types’);
$blog_subtypes_branding_plural = __(‘Blog Subtypes’);

// Display admin panel blog types page
$blog_types_display_admin_page = ‘yes’; //Options: ‘yes’ or ‘no’

// Display signup form blog types selection
$blog_types_display_signup_form = ‘yes’; //Options: ‘yes’ or ‘no’

// Enable subtypes
$blog_types_enable_subtypes = ‘yes’; //Options: ‘yes’ or ‘no’

6. Upload blog-types-config.php to /wp-content/

7. Upload the /blog-types/ folder to /wp-content/plugins/ folder on your site

8. Visit Network Admin -> Plugins and Network Activate it there.

The plugin should automatically install, if it does not then run the sql code in “sql.txt” on your database.

To Use:

1. When users go to your sign up page they’ll now be able to select their blog type and blog sub-type at sign up.

Selecting blog type at sign up

2. Existing users will be able to change their blog type in Settings > Blog Type.

Changing Blog types in Settings > Blog Types” width=”650″ height=”438″ /></p>
<p>3. If you have any problems, or are looking to customize how blog types displays in your install, please drop by <a href= the forums and we’ll help you out :)

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