Tile Plus

Every string in a template can be customized to suit your specific needs. This can be done by setting template enabled shortcode options. These string shortcode options all begin with “str_”. Every template differs on what strings are available to be customized, please refer to the template’s documentation [currently under construction] to learn more. But here’s a couple examples that will work across most templates.

/*
 * Example 1
 * Change the 'Home Phone' label to 'Phone'
 */
[connections str_home_phone='Phone']
 
/*
 * Example 2
 * Change the 'Personal Email' label to 'Email'
 */
[connections str_personal_email='Email']
 
/*
 * Example 3
 * You can add as many string customization shortcode options as needed.
 * 
 * Change the 'Personal Email' label to 'Email'
 * AND
 * Change the 'Home Phone' label to 'Phone'
 */
[connections str_personal_email='Email' str_home_phone='Phone']

The default dimensions of the Tile template are 240px x 150px. Tile enables two shortcode options to control the card dimensions. They are card_width and card_height.

Examples:

/*
 * Example 1
 * Change both the height and width.
 */
[connections card_width=300 card_height=175]
 
/*
 * Example 2
 * Change just the width.
 */
[connections card_width=300]
 
/*
 * Example 2
 * Change just the height.
 */
[connections card_height=300]

It’s a little difficult to explain how the addr_format option works so I will provide some examples.

But first… some background.

The addr_format option accepts only a few specific tokens.
Tokens are the % symbols and the word between, for example, %label% is a token.

The valid tokens for the addr_format option are:
%label% [NOTE: unless this is overridden, the label will be the address type.]
%line1%
%line2%
%line3%
%city%
%state%
%zipcode%
%country%

When processing the display of the address, Connections will scan for each token and replace it with the corresponding address segment. Each token should only be used once even though you could use each token more than once, but that is not recommended.

Here’s the default layout of the tokens that create the format of the address:
%label% %line1% %line2% %line3% %city%, %state% %zipcode% %country%

Now, your first question might be, but the address items are stacked in the traditional block layout, not on a single line, how is that being done? Right, the block layout is achieved using CSS which can easily be overridden to make the address segments display inline. How to override the CSS is a separate topic.

On to the examples.

This will display the address minus the label and country fields.

[connections addr_format'%line1% %line2% %line3% %city%, %state% %zipcode%']

This will display the address with the state and city switched, which is common in eastern Europe.

[connections addr_format'%label% %line1% %line2% %line3% %state%, %city% %zipcode% %country%']

By default the template will show 20 entries per page. You can change the number of entries per page by setting a template enabled shortcode option, page_limit. Here is an example:

[connections page_limit=10]

Unfortunately a very small percentage of users experience this issue, which is odd, because the same method to upload and verify the template is the same one that is used by WordPress to install themes.

The solution is to unzip the template that was downloaded. Once unzipped, you will have a folder with the template name which contains the template files. Copy this folder and it contents to this folder on the server ../wp-content/connections_templates/

The result should be this path:
../wp-content/connections_templates/template_name

template_name should be the actual name of the template you are installing. Once this is done, the template will be available for activation.

You can hide empty categories by setting a template enable shortcode option, show_empty_categories. Here’s an example:

[connections show_empty_categories='false']

When copy and pasting the shortcode into a page or post while using the rich text editor (the Visual tab) HTML tags will also be pasted when copying from a webpage. The solution is to paste the shortcode into the HTML editor (the HTML tab). To fix this error, go to the page or post where you pasted the shortcode and switch to the HTML editor and remove any tags that surround the shortcode, for example <pre></pre> and <code></code>.

Also, many commercial themes support a shortcode named [raw]. If yours does, wrap the Connections shortcode in it like so: [raw][connections][/raw]. Why? The theme is removing and then re-applying the wpautop filter which is interfering with the code for Connections and will interfere with other shortcode based plugins as well, but may not be as noticable. If the [raw] does not work, you’ll have to send me a copy of the theme so I can see how they implemented that ‘feature’. Sometimes theme authors simply rename the [raw] shortcode.

The CSS file is named styles.css and can be found in the wp-content/connections_templates/template-name folder.  The template-name would be the actual name of the template, for example, cmap or market.

This template requires a permalink structure other than the default “Default” setting. This can be changed on the Settings : Permalinks page in the WordPress admin.