Blog post owner not visible.

In D7, when viewing a blog post, there is nothing on the page which displays who's blog the post belongs to.

- There is no indicator in the title

- There is no indicator to the extra top menu area (where the title is displayed)

- There is nothing in the breadcrumb area

- There is nothing even within the post itself which shows who made the post

- There is no name/avatar

The ONLY thing at all which gives anyone an idea of who made a blog post is to click the "Back to Blog" button but, even then, there is not a single bit of display to indicate where that button will lead to.

-- This is is a major design flaw for the Blogs module.

Similar issue (but not as bad) exists in the Videos module.  For example, when viewing an album, there's nothing on the page to indicate WHO the album belongs to.  You already have this info in the code & the ability to generate links from that info, why not allow for that info to be displayed on the page?  I'm already hearing feedback from users that this is a major confusing thing for them - people really do want to know who things belong to - posts, videos, images, etc.  When they can't figure that out, it essentially breaks the usability for them and their experience is deteriorated.

In the blogs. The author, thumbnail and various other things that are displayed depend on where the blog is being viewed. You can over ride the viewtype in modules\boonex\blogs\classes\BxBlogsSearchUnit.php

You can change this.

$sAuthor = '';
if ($this->iPostViewType==2) {
$sAuthor = getProfileLink($aResSQL['ownerId']);
$sAuthor = '<a href="'.$sAuthor.'">'.$sOwnerNickname.'</a>';
}

To This.

$sAuthor = '';
if ($this->iPostViewType>0) {
$sAuthor = getProfileLink($aResSQL['ownerId']);
$sAuthor = '<a href="'.$sAuthor.'">'.$sOwnerNickname.'</a>';
}

This will force the authors name to appear on the line just below the blog title.

There are other things that can be changed. Over riding one area may affect another so you will need to check every area of the site where a blog can be viewed including the admin panel.

deano, OK, just so I have this clear: I did notice a commented line view type which states "2 with author name; 3-without link at title and with image; 4- with member icon" but nothing on how to actually set the view type or how combine the options.

In your example, you have "if ($this->iPostViewType>0) {" but how do I define a specific view type to begin with?  I understand now how to override whatever view type is set, but it's hard to tell what exactly a "viewtype" is or what context it's set in.  Is "viewtype" a global Dolphin construct related to permissions or something else?

Separately, which segment affects the page title?  (for the title tag in the page head).  I see $aResSQL['title'] but I'm not sure that's it...

I have not looked at this enough to be able to answer that. I was just pointing you to the script the code it is in with an quick hack to force the display of the author.

I also do not know what the view type is. I suspect it is how the blog is to be displayed based on what page it is being viewed on. For example, when viewing in the blogs section in admin, it shows a thumbnail with a clip of the blog itself rather than the full blog.

But i am not sure.

There is also the templates in the template folder itself which can also effect how the blog is displayed and what is displayed.

Forcing it didn't work at all, there's no change.

Made the edits, cleared the cache, made sure cache was cleared, refreshed the page with CTRL+F5, no change.

I know it works. I tested it.

http://www.deanbassett.com/blogs/entry/Mysterious-Sarah

There is a link to a blog on my site where the author shows up on the line just under the blog title.

The edits that made it work are:

/modules/boonex/blogs/classes/BxBlogsModule.php

Line 1031, changing:

$oTmpBlogSearch->PerformObligatoryInit($this, 3);

to:

$oTmpBlogSearch->PerformObligatoryInit($this, 2);

And, in:

/modules/boonex/blogs/classes/BxBlogsSearchUnit.php

Around line 300 change:

if ($this->iPostViewType==4) {

to:

if ($this->iPostViewType>=2 && $this->iPostViewType<=4) {

so that $sOwnerThumb gets a value.

This does resolve the thumb & link of the owner showing up right around the post title but no changes on the title of the page or top menu extra title.  Those are more global items I'm not sure how to change.

http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/ticket/1838

Thank you so much for adding that in to the ticket system.