<Blog>

Gigatrees has built in support for both integrated and standalone blogging. If you want to build a standalone blog, don't load a GEDCOM file. Otherwise their configuration is identical. This documentation website is built using the standalone blog option. The build and configuration files needed to create this documentation/standalone blog are included in the installation ( config\docs.xml )and can be used as a template for creating your own.

Standalone Blogging

If you have no need for the genealogy features or the photo gallery, you might want to take a look at BlüeBox, my other website creator for standalone blogs. BlüeBox was derived from Gigatrees' blogging module, but has the added benefit of being completely template driven. The BlüeBox application does not generate any HTML code. All HTML is included is the default page templates. You can create new page template types or redesign the layout of the default templates, giving you much better control over the design, look & feel of your website.

An integrated blog is "integrated" because Gigatrees supports Embedded References that can be added to any post to automatically link to other blog posts, sources, multimedia images and individual profile pages directly without having to manually add HTML anchors. The main advantage of using embedded references to create internal links is that broken links are not possible. When using embedded references, links are created in-situ between the blog post and those records, and in some cases from those records back to the blog posts referencing them. When used with source records, the source citations will appear as footnotes. Gigatrees also permits text-based footnotes that do not require linking to a source record. See Embedded References for more information.

Example

<Blog>
  <SortOrder>               PubDate         </SortOrder>                          
  <ShortDates>              false           </ShortDates>            
  <PrependCategoryToTitle>  false           </PrependCategoryToTitle>
  <EnableFeed>              true            </EnableFeed>            
  <FeedsIncludeContent>     true            </FeedsIncludeContent>   
  <FeedSize>                6               </FeedSize>              
  <FeedSyndicationHours>    1               </FeedSyndicationHours>  
  <IndexSize>               6               </IndexSize>        
  <AbstractLength>          20              </AbstractLength>     
  <MinTagSize>              5               </MinTagSize>            
  <MaxRelatedPosts>         20              </MaxRelatedPosts>       
  <MaxCitationQuoteLength>  200             </MaxCitationQuoteLength>
  <MaxFootnoteQuoteLength>  0               </MaxFootnoteQuoteLength>
  <FeaturedImages>          M1, M2, M3, O4  </FeaturedImages>
  
  <Author>                  
    <Name>                  Bob Bobson                                       </Name>            
    <Avatar>                http://domain.com/media/bob.png                  </Avatar>            
    <Description>           Lives in Bobstown with his wife, Bobbette Bobson </Description>            
    <ContactInfo>           https://thebobsons.com                           </ContactInfo>            
  </Author>

  <Author>                  
    <Name>                  Bobbette Bobson                                  </Name>            
    <Avatar>                http://domain.com/media/bobbette.png             </Avatar>            
    <Description>           Lives in Bobstown with her husband, Bob Bobson   </Description>            
    <ContactInfo>           https://thebobsons.com                           </ContactInfo>            
  </Author>
</Blog>

Options

<SortOrder>
[ PubDate ]
Blog posts can be sorted by reverse publication date ( PubDate ), reverse modification date ( ModDate ) or by record id ( Id ).
<ShortDates>
[ false ]
By default, dates are in the form of January 12, 2001. Enabling this option will display dates in the form of Jan 12, 2001.
<PrependCategoryToTitle>
[ false ]
You can define a single category for every blog posts. Enabling this option will prepend the category to the filename.
<EnableFeed>
[ true ]
RSS feeds are enabled by default.
<FeedsIncludeContent>
[ true ]
Blog posts content is include in the feed by default.
<FeedSize>
[ 6 ]
Use this option to set the maximum number of blog posts to include in the feed.
<FeedSyndicationHours>
[ 1 ]
Use this option to set how often (in hours) feed readers should refresh.
<IndexSize>
[ 6 ]
Use this option to set the maximum size of each blog index page.
<AbstractLength>
[ 20 ]
If an abstract is not provided with the blog post, set the maximum number of words to include from the main post before showing the "Continue Reading ..." link. These abstracts are also used in the feed. All HTML will be stripped from the abstract.
<MinTagSize>
[ 5 ]
Gigatrees treats words beginning with a # sign as a hash tag. Dashes in hash tags are converted to spaces when displayed. A separate index page is created for every hashtag. Hash tags are automatically hotlinked to their index pages. Use this option to set the minimum size allowed for hash tags. This value is overridden by the post-specific setting}.
<MaxRelatedPosts>
[ 4 ]
Use this option to indicate the maxumum number of related posts to include at the end of each blog post. Setting the value to 0 disables related posts. A blog post is considered related if it references the original post. If there are more related posts than the value set here, a random selection will be shown.
<MaxCitationQuoteLength>
[ 200 ]
When sources are referenced, quoted text from that source will be display in a tooltip, limited in length by this value.
<MaxFootnoteQuoteLength>
[ 0 ]
When sources are referenced, quoted text from that source will be display in a footnote, limited in length by this value.
<FeaturedImages>
[ 0 ]
A comma-delimited list of multimedia image ids. Featured images are chosen at random from this list to use as blog posts media images when undefined in the blog post. The media image is shown alongside each post on the index page, and along the top of each post if not hidden. Having a list of feature images will ensure that every post has a media image.
<Author>
This tag indicates the beginning of a new author card. Author cards appear at the bottom of blog posts
<Name>
[ ]
The author's name. It should match one of the blog posts authors.
<Avatar>
[ ]
The author's avatar.
<Decription>
[ ]
The author's description.
<ContactInfo>
[ ]
The author's contact info.
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