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This tutorial is extending the Creating a blog from scratch with PHP with that in mind I will only be covering new pieces of code and not the whole codebase.
This part will cover adding categories to posts.
admin demo: http://www.dcblog.dev/demos/simpleblog-sidebar/admin
username: demo
password: demo
First the templates will need updating to be in 2 column the first column will be called main and the second will be called sidebar.
Open style/main.css and replace #wrapper with:
#wrapper {
margin:auto;
width:960px;
}
#main {
float:left;
width:640px;
margin-right:20px;
}
#sidebar {
float:right;
width:300px;
}
For all pages add the following structure:
<div id='main'>
<!-- php code here -->
</div>
<div id='sidebar'>
<?php require('sidebar.php'); ?>
</div>
Next create a new file called sidebar.php
Sidebar.php will contain all the sidebar content.
To add a latest posts section loop through the posts table and set a limit for how many record to display
<h1>Recent Posts</h1>
<hr />
<ul>
<?php
$stmt = $db->query('SELECT postTitle, postSlug FROM blog_posts_seo ORDER BY postID DESC LIMIT 5');
while($row = $stmt->fetch()){
echo '<li><a href="'.$row['postSlug'].'">'.$row['postTitle'].'</a></li>';
}
?>
</ul>
For categories it's the same as above query the cats table and loop through.
<h1>Catgories</h1>
<hr />
<ul>
<?php
$stmt = $db->query('SELECT catTitle, catSlug FROM blog_cats ORDER BY catID DESC');
while($row = $stmt->fetch()){
echo '<li><a href="c-'.$row['catSlug'].'">'.$row['catTitle'].'</a></li>';
}
?>
</ul>
For archives loop through the posts table return the month and year for each month use a GROUP BY to merge identical results.
In the loop create a link in the href needs a custom slug creating that will be a- then the month then the year for instance: a-2-2014, a new rule will need to be added to the .htaccess file to point the link to archives.php
<ul>
<?php
$stmt = $db->query("SELECT Month(postDate) as Month, Year(postDate) as Year FROM blog_posts_seo GROUP BY Month(postDate), Year(postDate) ORDER BY postDate DESC");
while($row = $stmt->fetch()){
$monthName = date("F", mktime(0, 0, 0, $row['Month'], 10));
$slug = 'a-'.$row['Month'].'-'.$row['Year'];
echo "<li><a href='$slug'>$monthName</a></li>";
}
?>
</ul>
Next update .htaccess and add the following above on line 5
RewriteRule ^a-(.*)-(.*)$ archives.php?month=$1&year=$2 [L]
This will point a-3-2014 to archives.php?month=3&year=2014
Next create a new file called archives.php
Copy the content of index.php to this file.
Replace the query this the following, this will collect the data from a $_GET request then display all posts that match the date range.
//collect month and year data
$month = $_GET['month'];
$year = $_GET['year'];
//set from and to dates
$from = date('Y-m-01 00:00:00', strtotime("$year-$month"));
$to = date('Y-m-31 23:59:59', strtotime("$year-$month"));
$stmt = $db->prepare('SELECT postID, postTitle, postSlug, postDesc, postDate FROM blog_posts_seo WHERE postDate >= :from AND postDate <= :to ORDER BY postID DESC');
$stmt->execute(array(
':from' => $from,
':to' => $to
));
Upload the files, All done, the blog now has a sidebar with categories, latest posts and archives.
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