Tuesday, January 06, 2009

artsblogs.com | Online personal journals for the world's arts community

Blog Template Codes

Blog Template Codes provide the link between the templates and your Blog data. The Codes are used to issue instructions to the artsblogs.com web site how to insert and display the data in your pages. It's quite like using merge codes in a word processing application to print form letters.

There are two types of codes:

Container Codes are used to indicate sections of the page where data needs to appear. For example, a list of categories, or a list of entries from your Blog. In some cases the codes simply test if something is true, for example, lines between the tags <ItemPage> </ItemPage> will only display if the page currently rendered is displaying a single Blog Entry.

In other cases, the Container acts as a loop, the site will loop through the lines repeatedly. For example, the <BloggerArchives> <BloggerArchives> codes loop through a list of links to previous Blog Entries. Container Codes take the format:

<[Code]>
Something happens here
</[Code>

For example, this code checks that there are Categories Available (that the Blog does have Categories) using the tag <BlogCategoriesAvailable>. It then lists the Categories by using the <BlogCategoryList> tag. The site loops through the lines between the <BlogCategoryList> </BlogCategoryList> tags until each Category name has been listed:

<BlogCategoriesAvailable>
<h3>Categories</h3>
<a href="<$BlogURL$>">All Categories</a><br>
<BlogCategoryList>
<a href="<$BlogCategoryURL$>"><$BlogCategoryName$></a><br>
</BlogCategoryList>
</BlogCategoriesAvailable>

Merge codes are used to indicate where a particular piece of information should be display. In the example above, the <$BlogCategoryURL$> and <$BlogCategoryName$> tags are used to display the link and name for the Categories. Merge codes are constructed in the format <$[Code]$>. For example: <$BlogTitle$>. Merge codes can appear both inside Container Codes and outside. For example codes used to display global information such as the name of the blog <$BlogTitle$> can appear anywhere on the page. Others must appear within Containers in order to function correctly.

The following is a list of the codes currently implemented:

BlogId

BlogTitle

BlogPageTitle

BlogDescription

BlogOwnerUserName

BlogOwnerFullName

BlogOwnerEmail

BlogOwnerURL

BlogOwnerLocation

BlogOwnerCountry

entryArchive

BlogOwnerAboutMe

BlogURL

BlogTimeLastModified

BlogMetaData

BlogATOMFeedURL

BlogCategoryList

BlogMemberProfile

BlogCalendar

Inside <BlogCategoriesList>

BlogCategoryName

BlogCategoryURL

BlogCategoryId

</BlogCategoriesList>

Inside <BloggerPreviousItems>

BlogItemPermalinkURL

BlogPreviousItemTitle

</BloggerPreviousItems>

Inside <BloggerArchives>

BlogArchiveURL

BlogArchiveName

</BloggerArchives>

Inside <Blogger>

<BlogDateHeader> </BlogDateHeader>

BlogItemNumber

BlogItemTitle

BlogItemPermaLinkURL

BlogItemURL

BlogItemDate

BlogItemTime

BlogItemBody

BlogItemAuthorNickname

BlogItemAuthor

BlogItemAuthorEmail

BlogItemAuthorURL

BlogItemAuthorLocation

BlogItemAuthorAboutMe

entryGMTOffset

BlogItemCommentCount

Inside <BlogCategoriesAvailable>

Inside <BlogItemCategories>

BlogItemCategoryId

BlogItemCategoryName

BlogItemCategoryLink

</BlogItemCategories>

</BlogCategoriesAvailable>

Inside <BlogItemCommentsEnabled>

Inside <BlogItemComments>

BlogCommentNumber

BlogCommentDateTime

BlogCommentDate

BlogCommentTime

BlogCommentAuthorIP

BlogCommentAuthor

BlogCommentAuthorEmail

BlogCommentAuthorURL

BlogCommentBody

BlogCommentCount

</BlogItemComments>

</BlogItemCommentsEnabled>

</Blogger>