if/then code for article / main page/ category templates

[biggerfish]

On my blog I'm posting articles I write, and reprinting articles from other sources (with appropriate permissions, of course!).

On articles I write myself, I'd like to have the post header to read:

Article Title
posted by [author] on [date]

On reprints, I'd like it to read:

Article Title
Reprinted on (or by Guest Author, etc) [date]

I've seen various code snippets posted here, and I think that using something like:

[john]

I'm having trouble getting a grip on the syntax. A potential problem I see with this is that the Author is ALWAYS going to be me.

If that is true, then it simply won't be possible to use a macro like {if author eq "yourusername" }, you would need to make a decision on something else, perhaps the title.

I guess I can set up a 2nd "dummy" author account, and reprint from there.

That would work. You could also preface titles with a marker like "Reprint: ", then use something like this:

[biggerfish]

[john]

I get the way this stuff works now. I'd rather not adjust the Title, those potentially may show up on other blogs. So I'm going to try the 2nd author approach. I can use external editors like Ecto or MarsEdit to switch between author accounts easily.

There's one catch there... (You knew there had to be one!) I think you need to give full Administrator status to the second poster to be able to use a blogging client like ecto etc. Custom permissions or Trusted Posters are not currently able to post with blogging clients, but they can get the rights via the web interface. Something we'll need to take care of down the road...

But now that I have a few articles, some reprints, some original, how can I change the author's attributes? I suppose It would be easy to just delete and republish from the correct account, but do you know a better/smarter way?

It is not possible to change the author once an article is posted, you would need to delete and repost.

[biggerfish]

[john]

Is there any sort of "custom variable" I can use to do this?

No, there is no way for you to pass in a custom variable.

[biggerfish]

Still having some trouble. I'm trying to differentiate posts among two author names. If author A posts, then the attribute and date line is formatted a particular way. If author B posts, the attribute and line is formatted differently. Here's what I'm trying to code:

[john]

The variable is indeed "author" and not author.name or author_name.

If you are trying to test if the author was "Big Dummy" (author represents the display name not the username) you would code as follows:

[biggerfish]

Problem Solved - posting here for future reference:

[john]

Think of REGEXP as "contains".

So if the author name was "John Keegan" and you tested this way:

[biggerfish]

More kudos to you. I can almost see the light of day here.
_________________
rich graham
www.biggerfish.biz
norwalk, ct usa

[biggerfish]

My "if it's me write this, if it's not, then write this" code works perfectly on the Main Page, and on a specific category template.

But how do I get it to work on the Search template? Search results so the real author's name, not the "if it's not, then write this"

thx
_________________
rich graham
www.biggerfish.biz
norwalk, ct usa

[john]

There is no template for search results so it's not possible at this time to customize the look of the search results.

[biggerfish]

Thanks for the reply, John.

But really: don't you EVER do ANYTHING besides work and provide support? I mean, we all appreciate it, and you go over and above ...but if you get burned out and run away screaming in the streets someday, we'll all be in a lurch.

Please take a break soon. Please.
_________________
rich graham
www.biggerfish.biz
norwalk, ct usa