[SOLVED] Basic blog CMS that's easily integrated

[Aso]

Hi All

I was trying out sNews and getting confident this could work for me. I already have the site designed, I just needed a basic CMS that would give the 'news' page some blogging facilities. Then turns out the client's host does not enable mod_rewrite and they don't want to change hosts, and sNews doesn't work without mod_rewrite.

I have a basic knowledge of PHP, and I want to integrate a CMS into my design. Wordpress is so big I don't know what to edit where. Are there any lightweight CMS's like sNews that are easy to adapt?

[alexgeek]

Use wordpress without the rewrites, quite easy!

[Aso]

This was all very new to me, but I'm getting the hang of it now. I've integrated wordpress into my design. The blog is set up to run on www.domain.com/news/ HOWEVER, is there a way I can include the sidebar on every page of the site. I tried php including sidebar.php (in my themes folder) but I get

PHP: Select all

 Call to undefined function wp_list_pages() in ... on line 8 

(replaced include path with '...')

I vaguely know what the problem is. Is there a workaround? Is there another file I can include that has the functions it needs?

Many many thank you's in advanced

EDIT: If anything, all I really need is to show a couple of new posts (just titles & summary) with links to the relevant post in the column of the other pages.

[alexgeek]

Actually you need to show me what the include path was.
and post your code for both the page that is including the sidebar and the code for the sidebar.
It's not a security flaw mate.

[Aso]

Oh I know it's not a security flaw. At a guess, was it because it was operating 'outside' of wordpress, so certain functions were not defined?

If you can help it would be much appreciated *deep breath*

Sidebar:

PHP: Select all

<div id="column">

<ul id="sidewidget">
<?php     /* Widgetized sidebar, if you have the plugin installed. */
        if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar() ) : ?>
    <?php wp_list_pages('title_li=' . __('Pages:')); ?>
    <?php wp_list_bookmarks('title_after=&title_before='); ?>
    <?php wp_list_categories('title_li=' . __('Categories:')); ?>
 <li id="search">
   <label for="s"><?php _e('Search:'); ?></label>
   <form id="searchform" method="get" action="<?php bloginfo('home'); ?>">
    <div>
        <input type="text" name="s" id="s" size="25" /><br />
        <input type="submit" value="<?php _e('Search'); ?>" />
    </div>
    </form>
 </li>
 <li id="archives"><?php _e('Archives:'); ?>
    <ul>
     <?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly'); ?>
    </ul>
 </li>
 <li id="meta"><?php _e('Meta:'); ?>
    <ul>
        <?php wp_register(); ?>
        <li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>
        <li><a href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>" title="<?php _e('Syndicate this site using RSS'); ?>"><?php _e('<abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr>'); ?></a></li>
        <li><a href="<?php bloginfo('comments_rss2_url'); ?>" title="<?php _e('The latest comments to all posts in RSS'); ?>"><?php _e('Comments <abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr>'); ?></a></li>
        <li><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer" title="<?php _e('This page validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional'); ?>"><?php _e('Valid <abbr title="eXtensible HyperText Markup Language">XHTML</abbr>'); ?></a></li>
        <li><a href="http://gmpg.org/xfn/"><abbr title="XHTML Friends Network">XFN</abbr></a></li>
        <li><a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="<?php _e('Powered by WordPress, state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform.'); ?>"><abbr title="WordPress">WP</abbr></a></li>
        <?php wp_meta(); ?>
    </ul>
 </li>
<?php endif; ?>

</ul>

</div>

The include path is

Code: Select all

D:\My Documents\My Web Sites\news\wp-content\themes\ov\sidebar.php

but I'm using $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'], where document root is 'My Web Sites' (this is where the current site is stored, so localhost/contact.php accesses My Web Sites/contact.php) .

So the content of a page on the site looks like:

PHP: Select all

<div id="wrapper">
 <?php include ($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/php/header.php');?>
 
 <div id="content"><br />
 <span class="breadcrumb"><a href="/" title="Home">Home</a> &gt; Contact Us</span>
 <h1>Contact Us</h1>
 <div id="details">
 <p>Tel. 00000 0000 00</p>
 <p>Fax. 00000 0000 00</p>
 <p>Address:</p>
 <p><a href="#" title="View Map">View Map</a></p>
 </div>
    <form method="post" action="">
<div>
       <label for="name">Name:</label>
      <input type="text" tabindex="1" name="name" id="name" /></div>
     <div>
      <label for="company">Company:</label>
      <input type="text" tabindex="3" name="company" id="company" /></div>
     <div>
      <label for="email">Email:</label>
      <input type="text" tabindex="2" name="email" id="email" /></div>
     <div>
      <label for="comments">Comments:</label>
      <textarea tabindex="5" name="comments" id="comments" cols="30" rows="4"></textarea></div>
     <div><input type="submit" tabindex="6" name="submit" id="submit" value="Submit" class="btn" /></div></form>
  
</div>
  
<?php include ($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/news/wp-content/themes/ov/functions.php');?> 
<?php include ($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/news/wp-content/themes/ov/sidebar.php');?>

 <div class="clearfix">&nbsp;</div>
</div>

<div id="shadow-foot">&nbsp;</div>

<?php include ($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/php/footer.php');?>

As you can see I tried including functions.php alongside sidebar.php but no luck.

[alexgeek]

Hmm why are you creating the page your self when wordpress does it for you?
Why not take what wordpress gives you and edit it to work, not remove what is needed.

[Aso]

The only page I want to blog on is 'news'. I've simply modified a theme* so that it appears exactly like the other pages, and feels 'integrated.' The rest of the site is nothing to do with the blog, but what I would've liked was effectively a 'snippet' of the 2 most recent blogs appear in the column of the other pages.

*I copied the 'classic' theme and then modified the CSS (and one or two classes in index.php, plus including my own header and footer).

[Aso]

What I did eventually was connect to the wordpress db and extract the data I needed Not the ideal solution, but this was a bit of last minute resort

[cosmicbdog]

I actually integrated a solution like what you are talking about (I think).

I needed a blog facility on the website triumphantevents.co.uk so that the frontpage would display the most recent news. I used Moveable type and the whole blog is viewable at triumphantevents.co.uk/inspiration

To do this I just created a function that retrieves the most recent blog post and displays it on the front page. I like movable type because it lets you have multiple blogs and with the function I created I can simply say which blog to refer to and it will display the post of that blog within the design style of the site.

Why not try cute news http://cutephp.com . ALthough it does seem to be getting a bit dated a quick whizz around the forum shows that there is an entirely new build coming.

The different elements of the script (such as blog) can be split into different outputs so you can have 4 various blog outputs all formatted differently and include them on your existing page with a simple <?php include.

It's so easy to use and implement into your page with a great resource forum, it's just a simple way to alter content on a page using a wysiwyg editor.

But it has more features if you want (like comments on specific articles, allowing guest writers to log in and write in specific places etc.)

It basically suits the functionality you wanted, where as wordpress has many advanced default features making it more complex to work with? (wouldn't know, never used it).

Oh well just my input.