[Plugin: Dynamic Content Gallery] Difficult Manual Post Selection

  • I’m amazed at how comprehensive DCG is! It’s almost the perfect solution for both lay users and experts alike. I especially love the flexibility in NOT having to select a Feature Image. It does so well in finding both text and image content with little fuss.

    DIFFICULT POST ID SELECTION
    The one game-stopper is the difficulty in manual selection of IDs for posts. Even for an advanced user, having to find post IDs and then go to the DCG settings to manually enter IDs is a pain, especially when this setting must change often. For clients and lay users, it’s near impossible.

    RECIPE FOR FAILURE
    This is my client’s situation (and I imagine many other lay users too). I can’t ask my client to do all of the above steps. It’s a recipe for users avoiding the amazing DCG because it’s too time consuming/confusing to manually select posts.

    SIMPLE SOLUTION
    There is one obvious solution: add a checkbox to the DCG post edit page sidebar block to manually select a particular post for DCG display.

    Follow up with a new table column in the Post/Page overview page so that a user can easily scan down the list of available posts and see which ones are selected.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Thread Starter sassymonkey

    (@sassymonkey)

    Another solution that I think could apply to many users of DCG is having a fourth method of automated post selection based on a Custom Field.

    In my instance, I want to show posts in a certain category, but not the most recent ones. My client is entering posts for info about gallery exhibitions. This means that the most recent posts are actually the furthest away chronologically in terms of the physical gallery show and so should not show in DCG in favor of older posts that represent exhibitions happening sooner.

    There are probably many people with this problem in WordPress. And, like many developers, I’m using event/calendar plugins that utilize custom fields for event date information. If I could target any custom field with a date entry (AND select either Ascending or Descending) within DCG settings, my problem would be solved.

    This way DCG is always showing posts based on the upcoming gallery exhibitions regardless of when the post was entered and date stamped.

    Plugin Author studiograsshopper

    (@studiograsshopper)

    Thanks for the nice comments and suggestions. ??

    Replying to your first post:

    The one game-stopper is the difficulty in manual selection of IDs for posts.

    Why not use the multi-option or One Category methods instead? The ID method was designed for Pages (which don’t normally get added at the same frequency as posts), so is not ideal for posts.

    I especially love the flexibility in NOT having to select a Feature Image.

    For info, I’m currently working on an updated version which will use Featured Images, but the featured image can be overridden on a post by post basis using the DCG metabox.

    Regarding your second post, yes, I can see that this would be useful in some use cases. I’ll have a think about it…

    Thread Starter sassymonkey

    (@sassymonkey)

    Thanks for responding!

    In terms of Multi-option or One Category, I answered it more specifically in my second reply above.

    Like I think every slider, DCG seems to only allow the most RECENT posts in a given category. This is great for most everyone EXCEPT people with posts about chronological events (such as galleries, playhouses, and bands, etc.).

    With my gallery client, I need to see posts in DCG that are generally (but not always) the oldest in the post list (entered into WordPress awhile back in time and not recently). The reason is upcoming exhibitions are entered into WordPress as they are finalized, but are furthest away chronologically. This means newer posts are about exhibitions that are further away in the calendar while older posts are actually the ones are about recent exhibitions that need to show in DCG.

    Sorry, that’s a convoluted explanation but I hope it makes sense.

    This is why being able to set DCG to view posts in a category (or multiple categories) WITH the ability to target a date-oriented Custom Field is ideal and flexible. It eliminates any potential conflicts in relying on posts and when they were entered into WordPress.

    Would be nice also to have an Ascending and Descending setting on One Category so that DCG can display latest posts first in a category or oldest posts first.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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