•  Fixed the bug that caused an incorrect url for the “Manage->Series” and “Settings->Series” pages.  My fix should work for all future versions of WP.
• Added a fix to allow OrgSeries to work as expected if users customize the location of their wp-content folder (which was made possible with WordPress 2.6+)
• Added fix for any calls made to the ‘wp-config.php’ file in orgSeries (see here for my reference)
• Think I’ve nailed the “future-posts-that-are-a-part-of-a-series-showing-up-live” bug that’s been reported by some users.  If you “future-publish” a post that is part of a series it shouldn’t show up on your live blog to users anymore. 
• And of course fixed the incorrect numbering of parts in the series issues brought on by the new revisions feature in WordPress 2.6+
• There are more fixes/updates in this version as well - you can see the full changeset here.

Thanks for your patience folks (and for the kind words from some of you in the interim )

In the last post, I talked about how you can show off the latest series in your sidebar.  One of the caveats of the latest_series() function/widget is that it only shows one series.  The “latest series” function is just a way of giving readers quick insight into the most recent series you’ve published to your blog and is the easiest to customize.

However, there is another more powerful function included with Organize Series that you can use to output a list of all the series you’ve written where you want that acts very similar to the “wp_list_categories()” template tag in the WordPress core. What that means is that if you’ve already got a handle on how to use “wp-list_categories” then you’ll have no problem with “wp_list_series()”.  Let’s take a closer look:

The Widget

For those of you who are uncomfortable with editing your theme files and who are using a theme with widgets enabled there is a widget included with Organize Series that you can use to output the list of series in your sidebar.

The widget name is “Series Widget” (imaginative eh?) and when you activate it you’ll see that there are some options you can set for the widget (Click on “Edit”).  Here’s a breakdown of what the various options are:

• Widget Title - simply enter what you want to appear as the title of this section in the sidebar.
• Dropdown/List - This controls how the list of series will appear on your blog.  If you select “Dropdown” it will result in a dropdown list of series (which is javascripted so when a user clicks on a series in the dropdown they’ll go to the archives page for that series). I’ll talk more about dropdown lists in the next post.  If you select “List” you’ll get a typical hyperlinked list of series you’ve written.
• Show Post Count - If checked, the number of posts in the series will be located next to each series title in the list.
• Hide Empty Series - If checked, any series that don’t have any posts associated with it yet will not be included in the list.
• Post List Toggle - If checked, when you are on a single post page that is part of a series a list of other posts in that series will display in the widget.

The Fun Way

If you’re anything like me, you like having more fine control over how things appear on your blog.  That’s where the handy wp_list_series(); function comes into play.  The usage of wp_list_series is to insert <?php if (function_exists('wp_list_series') wp_list_series(); ?> wherever you want.  However, the real control comes in when you submit various parameters via the function.

The Defaults:

$defaults = array(
	'orderby' => 'name',
		'order' => 'ASC', 'show_last_update' => 0,
		'style' => 'list', 'show_count' => 0,
		'hide_empty' => 1, 'use_desc_for_title' => 1,
		'feed' => '', 'feed_image' => '', 'exclude' => '',
		'title_li' => __('Series'),'number' => '',
		'echo' => 1
	);

By default wp_list_series() outputs a list…

• ordered by the names of the series
• in ascending order
• that does not show the date/time of the last updated post in the series.
• outputted in “list” style (i.e. with <li> and </li> surrounding each series item.
• that does not show the number of posts in the series.
• hiding series that do not have posts
• using the description of the series as the “title” attribute for the link to each series.
• with no feed or feed image used
• not excluding any series
• displaying “Series” as the heading over the list,
• with no “limit” set for the number of series pulled from the database, and,
• echoed (i.e. displayed) instead of just returning the output (not displaying).

The Parameters

Here’s a more detailed summary of each paramater:

orderby
(string) Sort categories alphabetically, by unique Series ID, or by the count of posts in that Series. The default is sort by series name. Valid values:

• ID
• name - default
• count

order

(string) Sort order for series (either ascending or descending). The default is ascending. Valid values:     

• ASC - default
• DESC

show_last_updated

(boolean) Should the last updated timestamp for posts be displayed (TRUE) or not (FALSE). Defaults to FALSE.

• 1 (true)
• 0 (false) - default

style

(string) Style to display the series list in. A value of list displays the series as list items while none generates no special display method (the list items are separated by <br> tags). The default setting is list (creates list items for an unordered list). See the markup section for more. Valid values:     

• list - default.
• none

show_count

(boolean) Toggles the display of the current count of posts in each series. The default is false (do not show post counts). Valid values:     

• 1 (true)
• 0 (false) - default

hide_empty

(boolean) Toggles the display of series with no posts. The default is true (hide empty series). Valid values:     

• 1 (true) - default
• 0 (false)

use_desc_for_title

(boolean) Sets whether a series’ description is inserted into the title attribute of the links created (i.e. <a title=”<em>Series Description</em>” href=”…). The default is true (series descriptions will be inserted). Valid values:     

• 1 (true) - default
• 0 (false)

feed (string)

Display a link to each series’  rss-2 feed and set the link text to display. The default is no text and no feed displayed.

feed_image

(string) Set a URI for an image (usually an rss feed icon) to act as a link to each series’ rss-2 feed. This parameter overrides the feed parameter. There is no default for this parameter.

exclude

(string) Exclude one or more series from the results. This parameter takes a comma-separated list of series by unique ID, in ascending order.

title_li

(string) Set the title and style of the outer list item. Defaults to “_Series”. If present but empty, the outer list item will not be displayed.

number

(integer) Sets the number of Series to display. This causes the SQL LIMIT value to be defined. Default to no LIMIT.

echo

(boolean) Show the result or keep it in a variable. The default is true (display the series organized). Valid values:     

• 1 (true) - default
• 0 (false)

By default, wp_list_series() generates nested unordered lists (ul) within a single list item (li) titled “Series”.

You can remove the outermost item and list by setting the title_li parameter to an empty string. You’ll need to wrap the output in an ordered list (ol) or unordered list yourself.  If you don’t want list output at all, set the style parameter to none.

If the series list is generated on a Series Archive page, the list item for that series is marked with the HTML class current-series. Each series item also has the class series-item and series-item-{series-id}.

...
<li class="series-item series-item-5 current-series">
  [You are on this series page]
</li>
<li class="series-item series-item-6">
  [Another series]
</li>
...

You can style that list item with a CSS selector :

.current-series { ... }

Usage:

Let’s give an example:

Say you wanted to show the three most recent series you’ve posted, with the number of posts in each series indicated, not including the crappy “101 ways to watch paint dry” series that you wrote.  First, going to the “manage->series” page in your WordPress Administration you find that the series id of your “101 ways to watch paint dry” series is 33,  equipped with this information here’s the code you would write:

<?php wp_list_series('orderby=id&order=DESC&show_count=1&exclude=33&number=3'); ?>

It’s that simple!

Without further ado, here’s the changeset for version 2.0.7 of Organize Series (you can download this version by clicking here):

Minor Changes:

• Removal of extraneous html from series.php and seriestoc.php template files.
• Updated readme.txt for suggestion to copy customized series.php and seriestoc.php files to theme directory.
• Added missing < /div > to seriestoc.php file to fix “98%” of the typical default installations of this plugin.
• fixed a potential bug with the get_series_toc() function/template tag.
• Fixed a few spacing, code structure errors throughout the files.
• Changed the “title” attribute for the get_series_toc() link to something a bit more friendly.

Major Changes:

• Fixed bug affecting installs of Organize Series on blogs with a subdirectory in their blog address (i.e. http://www.myblog.com/blog/). In these setups the Series Table of Contents page re-direct wouldn’t work. This bug also affected custom seriestoc urls set on the Series Options pages with a multiple slash structure (i.e. the default is \series\, but if you used \series\seriestoc it wouldn’t work). Many thanks to Ken Carlson for his help in getting it fixed.

2.0.6 - Fixes a pretty major bug with the custom rewrite/permalink structure for series archives. This bug only shows up if you use certain prefixes to your custom permalinks such as /archives/...rest of permalink. Hat tip to Edward for the catch and fix.

2.0.5 - Contains the following bug fixes:

• PHP error that was reported on the Manage Series page affecting certain installs.
• .rss validation warning for series archive feeds thanks to this post
• some typo fixes with readme.txt file
• updating readme.txt to reflect that Organize Series works with WordPress 2.5.1