The $$BLOG$$ substitution directive allows simple weblogs to be supported.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

The VWcms blog facility should not be thought of as just a mechanism for airing opinions though.  It is much more versatile than that.  It is essentially a set of dated, related topics and so lends itself to "what's new?" style of information, etc.

When a section (page) begins  $$BLOG$day month year hour:minute$$  it is considered a weblog for that date and time.  The $$BLOG$$ directive with the current date/time is available from the management interface macro selector and button. The date/time allows chronological ordering of the weblog entries.

An actual directive looks like

$$BLOG$2 March 2009 22:44$$

and when seen on the blog entry is rendered

Monday, 02 March 2009 22:44

If the time components are excluded only the date of the entry is displayed

Monday, 02 March 2009

These can be seen in the following blogging examples.

goto=section-name

Normally a blog [read] link will open the blog entry.  Where a blog is being used as a list of short advisory notes (as with the What's New? section) it may be a more useful to open an alternative location.  The $$BLOG$$ timestamp supports an optional goto parameter that allows just this.

$$BLOG$2 March 2009 22:44$goto=Building_The_Site/Blogging/Latest_Blog_Example$$

Single-Button Blogging

A blogger can initiate a new blog entry either by opening the site management interface, adding a new section and inserting the required  $$BLOG$date$$ directive, or on the blog page include a $$BLOG$new$$ entry which provides a single-button function to do all of the required steps to create the blog entry; the blogger then just completes the text entry and publishes.

This single button blog entry is only visible to a logged-in user capable of editing the site and looks like the following:

 

A blog topic must be entered.

Most Recent Blog

The most recent blog entry can be displayed as the content of any section using the directive $$BLOG$latest=<integer>$$ as the first line of the section.  The latest integer parameter performs the same function as level in blog and section synopsis.

For example, to make the home page of a site the most recent blog entry you would have the first line of the first section of the site contain

$$NOTOC$$$$BLOG$latest=1$$

The Latest Blog Example illustrates the use of this directive.

List of Recent Entries

The directive $$BLOG$list=integer$$, where integer is a number up to 99, generates a list of the integer most recent weblog entries. This list is generated from the entire site, even when multiple sets of blogs are maintained under independent parent sections. Each has the blog entry (section) title, the blog date/time, and a plain-text extract from the entry.

Note that these are presented in reverse-chronological order!

The following example shows a maximum of 6 of the most recent entries.

$$BLOG$level=-1$list=6$$

Example ThreeTuesday, 03 March 2009 20:26  (3 years ago)A bit more history from Wikipedia ... "The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger[51] on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into[read]

Example TwoMonday, 02 March 2009  (3 years ago)A second blog entry - not much to say. (Note that this entry shows only a date.)[read]

Example OneSunday, 01 March 2009 07:21  (3 years ago)This is the first example blog entry. From Wikipedia ... "A blog (a contraction of the term weblog) is a website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions[read]

Size of Extract

Values between 64 and 1023 are allowed.

$$BLOG$list=6$level=-1$extract=512$$

Example ThreeTuesday, 03 March 2009 20:26  (3 years ago)A bit more history from Wikipedia ... "The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger[51] on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.[52][53][54] Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger[read]

Example TwoMonday, 02 March 2009  (3 years ago)A second blog entry - not much to say. (Note that this entry shows only a date.)[read]

Example OneSunday, 01 March 2009 07:21  (3 years ago)This is the first example blog entry. From Wikipedia ... "A blog (a contraction of the term weblog) is a website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog." All of the facilities of the WYSIWYG editor is available to the blogger. In fact all of the VWcms facilities. (just[read]

Synopsis Special-Case

In fact a blog listing is just a special case of a synopsis listing, with different defaults but with all the same parameters supported.

Read More

A directive  $$BLOG$list=6$level=-1$extract=512$read=more$$  would change it to [more]

And  $$BLOG$list=6$level=-1$extract=512$read=<img src="/_vdub/glasses.png" border="0">$$  to

See Icons for additional information.