Do new pages show up in the Reader/e-mail notifications
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Hi
I’m thinking of adding a section to my blog for a specific topic and the only way I can really see to do it is by having a main static page followed by a series of nested static pages.
But what I wondered is – do followers get notified of new pages in the same way as they do of new posts? That is, will the new pages show up in the Reader and will e-mail followers get an e-mail about them?
Thanks in advance for any help.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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No. Pages are not shown in the Reader, nor can your readers follow pages.
If you make the articles as posts you can use categories to organize them with a custom menu. They would look like pages on your site but they would have the publisizing power of posts: going out to the Reader, and email, and having categories.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/
more details about custom menus: -
Thanks for that – that let’s me know that what I was planning to do won’t work.
The reason I was looking at doing it this way is that in my theme, Titan, when you use categories to create ‘pages’, when you click on that you get a list of links to the posts under that category rather than seeing the actual posts. It works, but is clunky. I can’t find any way to bypass this links page and go direct to the posts. Do you know if there’s any way round this? In all other ways, Titan’s a great theme for creating an easy to navigate blog, so I’d rather stick with this them if I can.
Thanks again.
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You might experiment with this shortcode:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/display-posts-shortcode/I just tried it on a test blog wearing Titan and it works quite nicely.
[display-posts include_excerpt="true" tag="YOUR-CATEGORY-HERE" posts_per_page="20"]I used the custom excerpt box so the whole post doesn’t show. I included a picture so the display is nice, whit a lot of posts showing on the page.
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Oh, thanks! That may be beyond my technical skill (!), but I’ll experiment with it and let you know how I get on.
I really appreciate you taking the time on this. :)
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I should note that Titan does not usually support custom excerpts: you’ll see a list of posts when you look at category and archive pages, just like the list you see on your menu items.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/splitting-content/excerpts/It’s a little extra work, but it looks really nice with that shortcode. And if you ever switch to a theme that support custom excerpts you’ll be ready to go! I think also, that custom excerpts will go out in RSS and email as written so instead of an automatic summary you can customize what your followers see.
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You are welcome.
I like interesting questions.
You’ll need the custom excerpts first, but here is a picture of how the shortcode I gave you above displays them:
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I’ve had a little play and I think this could well work for what I want (once I master it a bit better!).
Could I ask though – how do you put an image into the excerpt?
Again, many thanks!
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The easiest way is to insert the picture into a draft post in the Visual editor. Add your text for the custom excerpt. Then switch to the Text (code) editor and copy all the code, and finally paste that into the custom excerpt module of the post it belongs to.
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Thanks again, 1tess! Can I push my luck and ask you one other thing? It’ll be the last, I promise… ;)
The post to introduce the topic is the first one I’ll be doing, obviously, but the way my blog is set up that means it’ll keep dropping further down the page each time I do a new post. I don’t want to sticky it on the home page, but is there any way to sticky it on the category ‘page’? Or to order the posts in some way on the category ‘page’?
If not, I’ve worked out I can keep it as the top post by changing the publication date/time to make it the most recent – but if I do this will my followers keep getting notified (on the reader or by e-mail) as if it’s a new post each time? And presumably, it’ll keep coming back to the top of the home page each time I do that too…
Thanks loads for the advice you’ve already given me – I’m feeling very smug about my new skills now! :)
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First off, I’d put that shortcode on a page rather than on a post. The page itself will become part of your navigation menu. I don’t think I was clear about that.
The posts themselves (the ones you list with the shortcode) will get mixed in with the other posts on your home page, but they will still be “specially linked to” on that page in your navigation. If that page with the shortcode is the parent it should display all the custom excerpts for your category / categories. That would include your introduction to the topic. But now I’m now wondering if you might need to add a second shortcode to keep the introduction on top? That shouldn’t be difficult.
Whatever you do, don’t change the date on any post. That will lead to 404 errors on search engines. The date is a permanent part of the URL of each post so changing it will mean the post won’t be there where it was (if this makes sense?). Don’t change URLs because when Google indexes them, the old link will be gone and the new link won’t yet be visible.
I’d say go ahead and publish what you are working on. Then I (or another volunteer) can see what you are doing. It’s much easier to see something concrete than to go by speculation.
Or how would you feel about setting up a second blog to use for testing how this will work. You can do that for free, use the same theme, even export/import your real blog to the test blog. Set its privacy setting to not be indexed by search engines but still public. Then you can make mistakes, experiment, play, and allow us volunteers to see it, help with the set up. I have a bunch of test blogs myself just for that purpose, and it makes me feel free to experiment with things “behind the scenes” and learn a lot. I understand if that sounds difficult, but it has been a great way for me to use wp.com.
BTW, you are not “pushing your luck.” As I said, I enjoy interesting questions. This is interesting.
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First off, I’d put that shortcode on a page rather than on a post.
Agreed!
Whatever you do, don’t change the date on any post.
Agreed! See here http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2011/08/05/avoid-creating-404-pages/
Or how would you feel about setting up a second blog to use for testing how this will work.
Agreed! Every blogger needs a test blog. Scroll down to “Creating a mirror blog” http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/05/19/how-to-select-a-wordpress-com-theme-part-1/
Lastly, Tess rocks! :)
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Sorry, it’s me that’s confusing the issue. I have set it up as a page not a post – getting the terminology mixed up.
It’s on my test blog https://fffilmblog.wordpress.com which I’ve now hopefully made public. The page in question is called GAN Quest and as you’ll see there are three dummy posts on it. The one I’d like to always stay at the top is the Great American Novel Quest – What’s It All About? The other posts will be added very slowly and it won’t really matter if they’re in any order, since there won’t ever be a huge number of them – though if it was possible to make them alphabetical that’d be an added bonus.
However the What’s It All About post is also the one I’ve fiddled with the date on – didn’t realise this would cause problems, so again thanks for that info. Will it be OK to leave it for test purposes or would it be better if I deleted it and did another dummy post?
And I agree – Tess rocks!! :)
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Oh, and the posts will be much more interesting and better written when I put them on the real blog…!! ;)
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Oops! I think I forgot to press Save – did I mention my skill levels are…er…variable? ;)
Please try again – I think It should be public now…
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Am I correct, you are in Scotland?
At any rate, I’ve got to tend to dinner prep so will be away for a while. I have very much enjoyed working with you, and if you still need help when I can return, will be happy to continue working on this puzzle to make what you want work perfectly…
Ian Rankin is great. Agatha Christie. Collin Dexter, oh, so many others
I’ll have to make time to actually read your site instead of looking at technical issues. Thanks…
See you later
Tess -
OH, yes, I can see it now. It’s public! I really must make dinner or my family will eat me alive if there’s nothing on the table. LOL
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Haha! Yes, dinner should definitely take priority!
Scottish indeed – Kirkintilloch to be exact. Just outside Glasgow.
Any time you have a mo, if you were able to explain what you meant about using another shortcode to keep the intro post at the top, that’d be great – but there’s no urgency. It’ll take me a while to get my thoughts together properly about what I want the posts to say/look like anyway.
And of course, you’d be more than welcome if you ever pop into the real blog. :)
Enjoy your meal!
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