Connections

I’ve been hard at work on the next version of Connections. A couple of the new major enhancements are a completely revamped template loader and a brand new template manager in the admin. Here you will be able to manage the default templates per list type, install and delete templates.

In Connections, each entry can be set as an individual, organization or family and when displaying the list in the frontend, using the list_type  shortcode attribute, you can display all entry types [the default setting] or just one of them. By default these would display using the default template, unless you specified an alternate template using the template_name [deprecated] shortcode attribute. Now with this template manager you can specify which template should be used by default for each entry type list.

The upcoming_list shortcode, used to display upcoming anniversaries and birthdays, didn’t support the use of templates, but while I was at it I added template support which can also be managed with this new templates manager.

The template loader will now load external CSS files and JavaScript files for templates. The CSS is printed in the tag right before displaying the entry list. All browsers do support this even though it is not or rather was not valid markup. With HTML5 this is now valid as long as it is scoped, which the template loader will set automatically. If a template has a JavaScript file, it will be enqueued and printed in the page footer on only the pages where the Connection’s shortcodes are used. This will reduce possibility of conflicts by loading the JavaScript only when needed.

I have to admit, I am surprised sometimes at how creative people can be with creating templates for Connections. Checkout this site: http://windsorite.ca/music/directory/bands

I haven’t asked them about their setup, but I’m fairly certain they are using the stock plug-in with two custom templates. One to show the band list and the other to show the band bio. How’d they link the two? I bet they have a base directory page listing all the bands with a subpage for each band details. That would require some manual maintenance, but what I have planned for the future will make a setup like this extremely simple and self maintaining.

I strive to make Connections as flexible as possible and I think this site exemplifies that!

The default template used when displaying entry embedded in a page/post does not render correctly in Internet Explorer 6. This is do to Internet Explorer’s poor ability when displaying content that use floats. In order to deal with that issue the next version of the plug-in will contain an alternate template that can be used. This template is based on a table layout which Internet Explorer can render correctly. The other major browsers will be able to render it just fine as well. To use this template use this short code (in brackets):

connections_list template_name='card-tableformat'