[Plugin: Author Avatars List] Get / display excerpt of authors last post

Hi JD,

That’s not a feature I was planning to implement, but if you or someone else does implement it and supplies a patch I’d be happy to add it to the plugin…

A good starting point would probably be to look at lib/Userlist.class.php and maybe at the “biography” option as an example (coding required).

Ben

Hey Ben,

thanks for your reply. Well, in the meantime I’ve hacked it together – bit sloppy but deadline’s looming ??

This is how I gat the data I need:

$psts = query_posts('author='.$user->user_id); // get the authors posts
$teasr = strip_tags ( $psts[0]->post_content ); // content wo tags
$titl = strip_tags ( $psts[0]->post_title); // same w titles
$startPos=0; // just want a short teaser
$maxLength=75; // so truncate content at whitespace...
if(strlen($teasr) > $maxLength) {
	$excerpt   = substr($teasr, $startPos, $maxLength-3);
	$lastSpace = strrpos($excerpt, ' ');
	$excerpt   = substr($excerpt, 0, $lastSpace);
	$excerpt  .= '...';
} else {
	$excerpt = $teasr;
}
$auth_link = $psts[0]->guid; // link to post

This is how I parse it out:

// the continue reading link
$readon = '';
$readon .= '<a class="auth_continue" href="'. $auth_link .'">';
$readon .= '...weiterlesen';
$readon .= '</a>';

if ($biography) $html .= '<div class="biography">'. $titl .'</div><div class="bio_text">'. $excerpt .'</div>'. $readon .'<div style="clear:both;"></div>';

And yes, this all goes into lib/Userlist.class.php at around line 265.

Hope this helps anybody trying to do the same thing!

Greets
JD

Hi johndoeherty,

I used your solution on a network installation but it doesn’t work fine with authors of secondary sites. It doesn’t show title and excerpt of last post of authors.

I solved it adding two lines to your first code line:

switch_to_blog($blog->blog_id);      // first line
$psts = query_posts('author='.$user->user_id); // get the authors posts
restore_current_blog();              // second line

Maybe it will be useful for other people.

Nico.