EP Blog

EP Blog adds blogging to PageMotor. The core platform ships Page, HTML, Home and 404 content types; EP Blog adds a Post type with its own admin manager, a reverse-chronological index, categories and tags, author bylines, and post-to-post navigation.

Published by ElmsPark Studio.

Overview

• Post content type with its own Select Post / Create New Post / Edit Post screens.
• Post details panel in the editor: category, tags, excerpt, featured image URL.
• Chronological index with excerpts, category badges, bylines and pagination.
• Nested categories defined once in settings, picked per post from a dropdown. Filtering a parent includes everything beneath it.
• Category archive URLs, optional: every category gets its own real page, e.g. /journal/category/news/.
• Tags as free comma-separated text, filterable on the index.
• Bylines with the author’s display name, toggleable.
• Previous/next navigation and a byline shortcode for single posts.
• BlogPosting structured data on every post, automatically.
• RSS feed of posts at /feed/rss/post via EP RSS 1.1.6 or later.
• Comments on posts via EP Comments; scheduled publishing via EP Scheduled Content.

Requirements

• PageMotor 0.8.3 or later
• EP Suite base class (bundled)
• EP RSS 1.1.6+ (optional, for the post feed)

Installation

1. Download ep-blog.zip from the EP Suite downloads page.
2. Upload via Plugins → Manage Plugins. Activate.

Getting started

1. Open Plugins → Blog and define your categories, one per line. Plain names work (News); use slug|Name when you want to control the slug.
2. Create a page for the blog, for example /journal/, and put [ep-blog] in its body. Enter that page’s URL as the Blog index URL in settings.
3. Create posts under Content → Post. Set each post’s Parent to the blog page so post URLs nest under it (/journal/my-post/).
4. Optionally add [ep-blog-meta] at the top of each post’s body and [ep-blog-post-nav] at the bottom.

Posts render through your theme automatically — EP Blog clones the theme’s Page template into a Post template the first time it runs, so there is no Theme Editor work to do.

Shortcodes

Shortcode	Renders
[ep-blog]	The index: newest first, excerpts, pagination
[ep-blog category="news"]	Index pinned to one category
[ep-blog-recent limit="5"]	Compact recent-posts list
[ep-blog-categories]	Nested category list with counts. parent="news" renders one branch
[ep-blog-meta]	Byline for the current post: date, author, category, tags
[ep-blog-post-nav]	Older/newer links on the current post

Index arguments: category, tag, limit (posts per page), pagination="off", heading="h3", rollup="off" (exact category match, no sub-categories).

EP Blog is also available as a Box plugin — place it in a Block via the Theme Editor to render the index without shortcodes.

Categories

Define them once in settings, one per line, as a plain name (News) or slug|Name (dev-notes|Dev Notes). Indent a line to nest it under the one above, up to three levels deep. Two-space, four-space and tab indentation all work.

News
  Product updates
  releases|Releases
dev-notes|Dev Notes
Guides

Filtering by a parent category includes everything nested beneath it, so News shows the posts filed under Product updates and Releases too. Put rollup="off" on [ep-blog] if you want an exact match instead.

The settings screen shows the tree exactly as the plugin read it, so an indentation slip is obvious straight away rather than a surprise on the front end. It also flags duplicate slugs, nesting deeper than three levels, and lines it could not use.

Category archive URLs

Switch on Category archive pages and every category gets its own page and URL:

/journal/                    your index page
/journal/category/news/      the News archive
/journal/category/releases/  the Releases archive

Each archive is an ordinary PageMotor page, which is the point. It carries its own title and meta description for search engines, its own Open Graph card when shared, a place in your sitemap, and room for your own introduction above the list. Edit them like any other page.

Archive URLs are flat whatever the nesting depth, so moving a category under a different parent in settings never breaks a URL you have already published.

The pages are created and repaired for you, and are never deleted. Remove a category from settings and its page stays put, so any links to it keep working; the settings screen tells you which pages are in that position so you can decide.

On a parent category’s archive, its child categories appear as a “Narrow to” row so readers can drill down without going back to the full list.

Settings

• Categories. One per line, Name or slug|Name; indent to nest.
• Category archive pages. Give each category its own page and URL. Off by default.
• Archive URL segment. The path archives sit under, category by default.
• Blog index URL. The page carrying [ep-blog]. Category and tag links on single posts point here.
• Posts per page. 5 to 20.
• Excerpt length. Short (160), medium (240) or long (320) characters. A hand-written excerpt on the post always wins over the generated one.
• Date format. Four formats, day-first or month-first.
• Author byline. Show or hide the author on posts and in the index.

Feeds, comments, scheduling

• With EP RSS 1.1.6+ active, your post feed is at /feed/rss/post (Atom: /feed/atom/post).
• EP Comments works on posts exactly as on pages, including the per-page toggle.
• EP Scheduled Content publishes post drafts automatically at a future date and time.

API

list-posts (public): returns live posts newest first with URL, date, author, category, tags and excerpt. Optional category, tag and limit arguments.