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Multi-Author Interface and Control

I have a multi-author blog regarding urban planning and design on which I some day hope to have hundreds of authors distributed among several dozen networked sites. I would like to limit the file size and dimensions of their post photo uploads and embedded/linked photos. I'd also like to automatically limit their front page posts to excerpts while still displaying any photos on the front page. I have tried both WP built-in functions and various plugins. All my efforts have been met with occasional broken code and photo problems. There seems to be no way to limit the dimensions of embedded photo links. Are there any solutions or plugins for this that don't result in broken code? I'd like it to be nearly as easy as Facebook for my Authors to upload media and post articles, while displaying a clean excerpt with at least a thumbnail of any media they put in their posts.

  • Mason

    Hiya!

    If I'm tracking with you correctly (and who knows at this point as it's getting close to 5 on friday ;D) the important part here is to make sure that only the post excerpt and correctly sized author avatar shows on the home page. Is that correct?

    I'm unsure what you mean about embedded photos. Are they being pulled in from another site or are these the author avatars associated with WordPress on your site?

    We should be able to make either of things happen by the formatting of our theme. The theme will limit the output both of the excerpt for the post and the size of the author avatar. Again, this is assuming I'm on the right track.

    I noticed the link in your post. It looks like excerpts and avatars are being displayed. Can you give me some more detail on how you'd like to see it changed. If you don't have a link a screenshot or mockup of what you're visualizing may also help. We'll get it figured out. :smiley:

    Thanks!

  • wadams92101

    Thanks Mason. Actually, the Avatars are working OK. I'm talking about photos uploaded by the authors, and also photos pulled from another site by the authors. I want the look I have now. However, at present, the excerpts are being created manually in the posts using the "Insert More Tag" button in the Posts dashboard. Basically, I want the uploaded or pulled photos in the excerpt automatically. I also want to automatically limit the size and dimensions of photos. And I want the excerpted text to occur autmatically on the front page, without breaking the code for the photos or video. I'm still using a non-wpmudev theme and it will take some time to phase in a wpmudev theme.

    I tried the WP Limit Posts plugin, Advanced Excerpts plugin, Max Image plugin, Get Image plugin, Smart Image plugin, the Theme's built-in excerpts and thumbnail functions, and WP's media and excerpts options. All either broke photo code and didn't limit the photos being pulled from other sites.

  • wadams92101

    I worked on this some more this weekend. Its really two issues I'm trying to tackle for my multi-author blog:

    1) Automatically limiting the dimensions of images in posts, including photos, video and external images (via URL); and

    2) Displaying post excerpts on my front page that also display the media.

    At the moment, the second issue seems the more important and received the most attention from me this weekend. Basically, whether I use one of the excerpt plugins, or I use the options in the theme, the videos are stripped from the excerpts leaving behind garbled URL and code in the excerpt, The only way I seem to get clean excerpts on my front page, with media, is to use the manual "Insert More Tag" button in Post Admin toolbar. Is there away to do excerpts without stripping any html or media? Seems like just automatically inserting the more tag at some predetermined word number would do it but how?

    Also, is there a way to limit the dimensions of photos from external URLs and videos brought in to my authors' posts?

  • Mason

    Hiya,

    Perhaps one of our theme designers can comment on some best practices as far as doing this.

    Also, could you post how the theme is currently formatting your posts? Just copy it into a post here or attach it as a txt file.

    Also, just cause you're not currently using a WPMU DEV theme on our site, doesn't mean you can't use bits of it that match what you're looking for. Many of our themes provide for nice looking excerpts and formatted photos on the homepage. Find a theme that does what you want, and copy how things are done there.

    For instance, the height on the images in the bp-magazine theme is dictated by the theme code. Here's a bit of that as a model:
    <div class="post-image">
    <span class="attach-post-image" style="height:110px;display:block;background:url('<?php the_post_image_url($image_display); ?>') center center no-repeat"> </span>
    </div>
    See how the style has the height dictated right in the theme? Then, regardless of image size in the post, the image will be scaled accordingly.

    Again, probably one of the dedicated theme designers would know best, but hopefully this gives you a start. Thanks! :smiley:

  • wadams92101

    i'm noob so i'm wasn't sure where to look. The closest thing I found was in functions.php:

    if ( function_exists( 'add_theme_support' ) ) { // Added in 2.9
    add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );
    if ($bfa_ata['post_thumbnail_crop'] == "Yes")
    set_post_thumbnail_size( $bfa_ata['post_thumbnail_width'], $bfa_ata['post_thumbnail_height'], true );
    else set_post_thumbnail_size( $bfa_ata['post_thumbnail_width'], $bfa_ata['post_thumbnail_height'] );
    add_image_size( 'single-post-thumbnail', 150, 9999 ); // Permalink thumbnail size
    }

    The theme is Atahualpa 353 and it has extensive options menu in which you can control the thumbnail size but I didn't find anything for post images in general. Where should I look for this?

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