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Recently, while going through my Navigation to see how easy (or difficult) it is to find anything on my site, I found it most distressing that none of the series I wrote, can be found. You can find individual posts in the proper category, but not in sequential order.
I started looking for a Plug-in to help put each series in some kind of order that made sense and could be easily accessed. I came across a Plug-in by skippy dot net called In-Series.
Yesterday, (even with my host server being down for hours) I Downloaded the Zip file, Opened it and Uploaded it to the server (while it was still up). I Activated the plug-in, ready to go. That part is very simple at least.
The hard part is finding what ?php phrases you need. I found the one’s I’m using in the txt file. The phrases are recommended to be placed in the single post php, but it wouldn’t work for me. I placed them in the Sidebar php where I wanted them to appear and it works. You will have to decide which phrases you want to use and where you want them.
Once that is done, you need to find the posts in the series.
On each individual post, click Edit and do the following.
~~ Go to the Custom Fields section.
There you want to select Key and put series_name, and in the Value field put the Name you want to use for the series.
~Click Add Custom Field.
Then, on the same post, select Key and put series_order, and in the Value field put 1 for the first in the series, 2 for the second, etc.
~Click Add Custom Field.
~~Click Save (or Publish if it is a new post).
Repeat all steps for every post in the series, not forgetting to increase the series_order field.
This works well for the Very First Series you add. The Series Name will appear (it did for me), but Not in subsequent series. For that you need to use the HTML of the First Post in the Series.
Follow all of the steps above on each post in additional series, but you will have to manually put the HTML of the First Post in the proper section using the Name of the Series within the tag.
There well may be a ?php in there somewhere that allows for a series of series, but I haven’t found it yet, if I do, I will put an update on this post.
Have you tried any other plug-ins for putting posts in a series form? Have you tried In-Series? How did it work for you?
4 Comments
How disapointing. I was looking forward to finding just this sort of thing. But I’ll be checking back in here to see if something else turns up. Thanks for looking into it!
Hey Susan,
It does work pretty well, it just takes some tweaking to get it the way you want it.
You may want to try it out, at least on newer series you write, I think it will be a lot easier to apply.
Joe
Hey HART,
It is a little easier when you start a new series, but putting an older one together is a real PAIN.
With 2500 posts it will take a long time to put together ANY page. Good luck on that.
Joe
Wow. I’m the king of activating plugins, and even this sounds too difficult for me. I’ve been thinking of doing something for both my main sites .. PetLvr.com and 1800HART.com blogs .. combined, i’m almost 2500 posts now. I was just thinking of browsing my archives and creating a new page from the ones that I like the best, and the ones that are getting most hits in my “refer”‘al scripts .. and then plaster ads on that page.
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