— The Best WordPress News Aggregation and Content Curation Template —
— The Best WordPress News Aggregation and Content Curation Template —
The WP-Drudge theme uses WordPress Posts as the main source of content throughout the site. In this theme, posts are split into two types: Posts (aka “regular posts”), which is content meant to be created and read on the site and Posted Links, which is content located on another site and linked to directly. The difference between these two is simple: Posted Links have an “Outbound URL” saved to them and regular Posts don’t. Saving a Post with an Outbound URL creates a Posted Link; saving it without creates a Post.
There are different ways to post links and several different formats that can be created. There are also a number of settings you can use to change how the listing pages (like categories and date archives) and individual Post pages look. Here, we’ll concentrate on common tasks for posting links and cover the settings in another section.
Note for those just getting started: Depending on how you set up your categories, I’d recommend having at least 5 links for each category before you start playing with the settings. You can add dummy links here to practice and remove them later if you’d like.
Note: The video above is for version 2.6 and higher. If you have an older version, see the video here.
As mentioned above, a Posted Link is created by adding a new Post, entering an Outbound URL, adding to a particular category, and publishing. As of version 2.6, the interface for creating and editing Posted Links has been improved and focused. The steps below cover the basic way to add links to your site. For more ways to add Posted Links, see the “Tips & Tricks” section at the bottom of this section.
Posted Links appear, appropriately enough, in the Posted Link widgets under the category you added and in order from newest to oldest. There are many more options for Posted Links, all of which are covered below.
Starting with version 2.8, there is now a group of checkboxes and a Get Link Details button just below the Outbound Link field. This button takes the link you’ve entered and, using the Embed library, reaches out to that site to pull information. Please note: you’ll need PHP 5.4 or later and the Curl library installed on your host. The vast majority of hosts support this (included our recommended one, Fused) but if you’re just getting started, ask the host before you sign up.
To use this feature:
By checking the “Featured link” box in the WP-Drudge Fields box, the link will appear at the top of the content section with a larger image and text size. Only the most recent featured item will show so no need to go back and remove this box from previous postings. Links that are featured and displayed on the page will not appear in the link lists below.
There are two ways of adding an image: using a hot-linked image from the article you’re posting or uploading an image right to your site. Images are automatically linked to the “Outbound URL” added above.
This is the recommended way to add images to your site.
As of version 2.8, there is a “Try to save image to your site?” checkbox under this field. When you add an image via URL or use the Get Link Details button, checking this box then saving the Post will attempt to save that image to your media library and attach it to the Post as a featured image.
A quick disclaimer: this is often discouraged and adding many of these will make your site slower. Also, some sites disable this by replacing the image you’re linking to with a different one telling you not to do this. Still, it’s an easy way to use an existing image and, as long as you’re linking to the source, you shouldn’t be in any hot water.
A quick note on using images from Google Images: if you copy images straight from the main search page, you might get a URL that some browsers can’t see. Make sure to click on the image and use it from the next page. You can also make sure to use the right attribution, if necessary.
Posted Links can have a blurb of content associated with them on the link listing pages, like the home page. This blurb can also be shown on the comments or interrupt page on your site, depending on how things are set up.
In short, there are two fields that can be used for the blurb content: the main Post editor (the one with the formatting buttons) and the “Headline blurb” field in the WP-Drudge fields section. On the settings page, you can choose which one appears where and you can override that setting for each Post. Right out of the box, the “Headline blurb” is used on the link listing pages and the editor content is used on the comment and interrupt pages. This is covered in more detail on the settings page.
All that is to say, it depends on your settings as to where to input your blurb. If you’re just getting started, add your blurb content to the “Headline blurb” field before you publish (or, if after, add it and click the blue Update button).
Videos are added to the site depending on the version of WP-Drudge you’re using. For either version, to make the video to expand to fit the column width, try this.
Adding videos in version 2.5 and above is very simple. Just pasted the URL to a valid embeddable media source like YouTube or Vimeo (full list of sites is here) into the “Posted Link video” field and the theme will take care of the rest.
WP-Drudge has a setting called “Blurb and body field usage” on the Other tab of the options page that lets you change how change what is shown on the Post listing and what is shown on the Post page. If you’re using the default, “blurb on list and body on post pages,” then you should use the “Headline blurb” field to post a video:
If you’re not using the body content anywhere (meaning that you’re not linking to the Post page or have the setting on “blurb text everywhere”) or are using it everywhere (setting on “body text everywhere”), you can use WordPress’s build-in video embedding:
Even after all that, there’s more!
Some stories develop over time and need supportive or additional information added. You can add more links to an individual Posted Link that will follow it throughout the site. Additional links added will be output directly below the main headline in the normal link style for the site.
To add additional links at any time, either before or after publishing:
WordPress has lots of built in functionality that you can take advantage of, like, post scheduling, multiple authors, and commenting. These options are more are outlined here.
One thing that’s a little tricky to get the hang of with Posted Links is the individual pages are created on your site for these links. WordPress creates a post page for each piece of content that’s created, including Posted Links. You can see these pages by clicking on the View link when hovering over a row in Posts > All Posts. These pages are listed in sitemaps, core RSS feeds, and other locations. This is also the page that’s used for social network auto-posting plugins, on-site comments, and the interruption page (if this setting is activated). You can output the featured image and blurb on these pages by using the settings under the Images and Other tab on the options page.
Posts are used as on-site content and will appear in the same widgets and archive pages as Posted Links. Posts have the same controls as Posted Links but they are located in a different place (as of version 2.6), below the post editor.
Other than their appearance in Posted Link widgets, their functionality is the same as any other Post in any other theme with a few exceptions: