Movable Type Community Forum > Grouping today's entries on homepage via links

Full Version: Grouping today's entries on homepage via links

Movable Type Community Forum > Additional Resources > Tips and Tricks

capricious

Nov 11 2002, 06:11 PM

I'm using MT to manage an event calendar at exploitboston.com. I'm trying to list the most recent date stamp plus that day's events (aka "Today's Events") via links at the top of the homepage. I thought bschoate's Perl plugin would be good for this (I'm using it to reverse the order of "browse by week" and "browse by month" and it works quite well). Or maybe there's an easier way. I can't figure it out!

I'd like it to look like this:

CODE

<strong>Monday, November 11, 2002</strong>
<a href="#" title="link to the entry's individual page">Title of the first event for today goes here</a>
<a href="#" title="link to the entry's individual page">Title of the second event for today goes here</a>

Thanks for any tips you can provide!

kadyellebee

Nov 11 2002, 06:54 PM

If you have daily archives turned out, here's an easy way to do it:

CODE

Kristine

capricious

Nov 11 2002, 07:12 PM

Thanks for the help, Kristine!

The code you shared is listing every date and not just the latest. I tried to use lastn="1" inside the MTEntries tag so that it would reflect "Today's Events" (or at least the most recent events coming up); but that didn't help.

Here's what the code looks like with my small additions for lastn, date format and sort_order (only the date format is working out of the three):

CODE

Here's the test page:

homepage with "Today's Events" test

Sooz

girlie

Nov 11 2002, 07:20 PM

Try this:

CODE

capricious

Nov 11 2002, 07:26 PM

So close!

The only thing left is that it should be listing the most recent entry. For some reason MT insists on listing the entry that is farthest in the future. (It's listing an event on December 20th instead of November 14th.)

I am most definately a novice when it comes to MT. Thanks so much for all your help!

How it looks on the web

kadyellebee

Nov 11 2002, 08:14 PM

Sorry about that, I misunderstood your initial question!
Girlie's suggestion would be what I would have thought. But I'm not sure what to do with future entries!

Kristine

capricious

Nov 11 2002, 08:40 PM

No worries. I doubt my question was all that clear. I'd love to see examples of MT used as an event calendar if anyone else is doing something like this!

It seems like I need a variation of this (as provided by Brad Choate in the support forum on 11/4 here); but with the MTEntries stuff, too, so that the entry title is displayed and not the archive title. I'm sure there is some way or another to do this. Maybe.

CODE

<MTPerlScript>
my @list;
<MTArchiveList archive_type="Monthly"'>
push @list, q{<a href="<$MTArchiveLink$>"><$MTArchiveTitle$></a> (<$MTArchiveCount$>)}."\n";
</MTArchiveList>
print foreach reverse @list;
</MTPerlScript>

bschoate

Nov 12 2002, 06:48 AM

Here's what I came up with:

CODE

<strong>Today's Events (<MTDate format="%A, %B %e %Y">)</strong>

<p>
<MTCalendar><MTCalendarIfToday><MTCalendarIfEntries>
<MTEntries><a href="<MTEntryLink>"><MTEntryTitle></a>
</MTEntries><MTElse><em>No events for today</em>
</MTElse></MTCalendarIfEntries></MTCalendarIfToday></MTCalendar>
</p>

It has to be rebuilt daily of course, but a script could be used to automate that.

(Edited to remove the unnecessary 'month="this"' attribute for index templates.)

capricious

Nov 12 2002, 05:43 PM

Thanks for the help, Brad!!!!

I inserted your code and when I rebuilt the index pages, I got this error message in the popup:

An error occurred:

Build error in template 'index-with-daily': Error in <MTCalendar> tag: You used an <MTCalendar month="this"> tag without a date context set up.

I wonder if I need to add something else?

Here's what the page's html looks like:

CODE

<$MTInclude module="headerstuff"$>

<div id="content">

<div class="blog">

<h2>Today's Events (<MTDate format="%A, %B %e %Y">)</h2>

<p>
<MTCalendar month="this"><MTCalendarIfToday><MTCalendarIfEntries>
<MTEntries><a href="<MTEntryLink>"><MTEntryTitle></a>
</MTEntries><MTElse><em>No events for today</em>
</MTElse></MTCalendarIfEntries></MTCalendarIfToday></MTCalendar>
</p>

<MTEntries>
<$MTEntryTrackbackData$>

    <MTDateHeader>
    <h2 class="date">.:
<$MTEntryDate format="%x"$> :.
    </h2>
    </MTDateHeader>

    <div class="blogbody">

    <a name="<$MTEntryID pad="1"$>"></a>
    <h3 class="title"><$MTEntryTitle$></h3>

<p>Filed under: <a href="<$MTEntryLink archive_type="Category"$>">
<$MTEntryCategory$></a>
</p>
    <$MTEntryBody$>


    <MTEntryIfExtended>
    <p><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>">Additional event details for "<$MTEntryTitle$>"</a></p>
    </MTEntryIfExtended>



<$MTInclude module="posted"$>

</div>

</MTEntries>

</div>

</div>

<$MTInclude module="sidebar"$>

jlm

Nov 12 2002, 07:13 PM

It looks like you might need the MTDateHeader and /MTDateHeader tags around that MTDate format code after "Today's Events".

girlie

Nov 12 2002, 07:23 PM

The problem is that on an index page, MT doesn't know which month "this" is. From the manual:

QUOTE

This tag takes an optional attribute month, which, if present, specifies the desired calendar month and year. If the value of this attribute is the string this, the calendar will be created in the surrounding date context; this means that, for example, in an archive template, you can use

<MTCalendar month="this">
...
</MTCalendar>

to represent the calendar for the month of the archive currently being viewed. This will work for Individual, Daily, Weekly, and Monthly archives, not for Category archives.

If you want the calendar to display for the current month on an Index Template, remove the month="this" attribute.

bschoate

Nov 12 2002, 07:50 PM

Yep, that's what I was trying to do. Removing the month="this" should do it. Thanks girlie!

girlie

Nov 12 2002, 08:02 PM

Aww, it's the least I could do for the guy who created all those fine plugins!

capricious

Nov 12 2002, 08:14 PM

Awesome! It works now! Now I just need to fine tune the formatting.

You all rock.

This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.