BlogThis 1.14

This is a forked version of the "Blog" extension. Instead of specifying a specific forum category as a Blog category, one can promote any comment from any discussion to the front page as a "Blog" post.

This is currently working on my sites, spodesabode.com and thinkabouttech.com, and because it is in use, I intend on maintaining the code. Please get in touch with me if you find any bugs or have feature requests.

*Features*

- Promote any post from any discussion or user to the blog page.
- Have multiple blog posts from the same discussion (sharing the same title).
- Display blog posts from a particular user by appending &BlogUser=userid to the URL.
- Where permissions allows, a text link is displayed in the top-right corner of each post with "blog this" or "unblog this".
- Settings for blog page title, tab name and tab position.
- Settings for date format.
- Social bookmarking links.
- Adsense section targetting for blog posts and titles.
- Support for Feed Publisher RSS Feeds.
- Customizable word limiter, to display only the first few words of a post and a "read more" link for the rest.
- Each blogger has a freetext profile that will be displayed on their page - this can be turned off and is only for those with permission to blog.
- Link on the account page to view just that individuals blog posts.

*Upgrading from Version 1.10 and prior*

If you are running a version prior to 1.11 you will need to run the upgrade, which adds the extra fields to the database. This is done by going to:

http://www.yourdomain.com/extension.php?PostBackAction=Blog&UpgradeBlogThis=1

*Friendly URLs*

If you are using the Friendly URLs extension, the following extra lines to your .htaccess file will work.

RewriteRule ^extension/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)$ extension.php?page=$2 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^extension/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/$ extension.php?page=$2 [QSA,L]

If you want to set the Blog as your frontpage, the following rewrite rule will do so:

RewriteRule ^$ /extension.php?PostBackAction=Blog

*RSS Feeds*

If you need RSS Feeds, I recommend looking at the FeedThis extension that I have implemented to work specifically with BlogThis and TagThis

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CHANGELOG

v1.14 - Added "Start a new blog post" link on the site, so you can post straight to the front page.
v1.13 - Added permission to have HTML in profile text. Now uses CommentManager to fetch comments, so in theory should work with Multi-Roles. Will not longer display BlogPosts that do not have permission to view (e.g. deleted or in a category you can't view). Added option to display blogger's full name instead of just nick name. Defined some text instead of hard coding. Improved method of focussing on blogged comments via link - significantly less SQL use. Fixed SQL injection vulnerability.
v1.12 - Fixes rendering of the profile text.
v1.11 - Fixed bug that meant it wouldn't work on machines with MySQL 3. Fixed bug where a non-fatal Notice came up. Added support for freetext profile for bloggers. Added a "View blog posts..." link in profiles.
v1.10 - Clicking the link to read the discussion the blog post came from, now takes you to the exact post on the correct page - rather than the beginning of the discussion. Very useful if you have 3 blog posts in one discussion!
v1.09
- Changed the user permissions. There are now two roles - one that can blog ANY post and one that can only blog their own.
- Added a word limit to the blog posts, accompanied by a "read more" link.
v1.08
- Added ability to modify the text in the tab from the settings page
- Added ability to have multiple blogs per user, by appending &BlogUser=userid to the URL.
- Changed text in settings page about examples to definitions, to aid translation.
v1.07 - Fixed bug with database.conf, where a newline was needed.
v1.06
- Added a Google Adsense optimisation option, which encloses blog posts and titles with Adsense section targetting tags.
- Made comments link go to second comment, rather than first.
- Added error handling for database.php when first installing the extension.
- General code clean up.

v1.05 - Fixed social bookmarks not displaying. Added support for FeedPublisher RSS Feeds.
v1.04 - Fixed an error message, that didn't affect functionality, but was displayed when blogging/unblogging a comment.
v1.03 - Fixed stupid error added in 1.02.
v1.02 - Fixed url writing bug when not using friendly urls.
v1.01 - Fixed SQL query, stopping the BlogThis column being added when installing.
v1.00 - Initial Release