Comments: 24
Hugely helpful. Thank you!
Steve McKinney 11 years ago
You're welcome! It was fun, and the default 'date added' sort order had been bugging me since I joined. :-)
You go on writing these and I'll even end up learning rudimentary Javascript after all. :)

Have to echo Anna's below warning, though. BookLikes's editor eats any non-HTML code contained in a post (even if entered via the "HTML" popup screen) as soon as you reopen the post to edit it. I hope you've saved this one in Notepad somewhere ... (if not, I'd do it before/if ever you do choose to edit)! I'm Js-illiterate, but it's happened to me a couple of times when trying to play with CSS in various posts over the weekend. Whereupon I decided that any and all CSS I'll be using on this site will go straight into the main blog code, too ...
One piece of advice - don't even try to edit this post! It will eat your HTML code! Just saying...
Steve McKinney 11 years ago
Ugh, live and learn! Next time I'll take your advice and use pictures.
Steve McKinney 11 years ago
You know, the whole business of having to use pictures instead of html for code examples really sucks. It creates additional overhead all around: more overhead for the author to create screen captures, and more overhead for BookLikes' servers to serve them up. Not to mention which you can't copy and paste a picture of of a code snippet into your page template. Okay, rant complete.
I post pictures and below whatever would be in > and it works for me.

There actually is a site that allows you to share code: http://pastebin.com/

Example of a post that uses that option: http://pagefault.booklikes.com/post/457427/diy-spoilertags-
Steve McKinney 11 years ago
Pastebin seems like a great solution -- I'll have to try using it next time. Thanks! :-)
Steve McKinney 11 years ago
BTW I sure hope I didn't come off sounding like I didn't like your suggestion to use pictures to work around the embedded html issue. If so, my apologies! I was feeling grouchy about the issue itself, not your helpful suggestion.
Nah, I don't feel offended. I usually do things the hard way. Everyone should simply do what they're most comfortable with. Which is why I, for example, don't use Stylebot, but rather mess with the HTML code itself. I like it that way. But Pastebin is amazing, and if I need to give people long pieces of code again, I'll certainly use that too!
Oh, cool, thanks for sharing the pastebin link, Anna!
- the magic of books - 11 years ago
Yay - earlier I was digging our my settings trying to find a way to sort - turns out I needed this :) Thank you so much.
Sock Poppet at Play 11 years ago
I am learning so much. Thank you, wonderful person, for taking so much time to share your knowledge so that ignorant socks like me can look like the coolest socks in the drawer!
Question from a complete computer idiot--I followed your guide (and thank you!) but the only line I could find that resembled what you said I was looking for said {% if blog.isSiteShelf %}
Steve McKinney 11 years ago
Had you completed the first four steps successfully?
Well, on the customize page, I was able to add the 'shelf sort by' box with the options and the 'shelf order' box by ascending and descending.
Steve McKinney 11 years ago
Okay, sounds like the first four steps worked then. So I'm assuming (let me know if I'm mistaken) that you are on step 5. And you say you found a line that reads {% if blog.isSiteShelf %}? That sounds right, so far. Does what you see below that not match what I have in my post?
Fun With Books Blog 11 years ago
Thank you
Steve--sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. Too tired to play with BL. I had typed the code that looked different, but I see it didn't transfer on my post. In step 5, where you say Located the blog.isSiteShelf, I don't see that line. It just says . The and the rest is exactly the same. So I was trying to figure out if this was an older post that no longer applied, or am I in the wrong section (i don't see anything else that comes close) or missed something in the steps 1 to 4. Thanks for all your efforts on this--its impressive and helpful.
oh, I see. my < marks don't translate. That should read:
So I see % if blog.isSiteShelf %
But mine does not have a (h3 class = menu entry), only a (h3). All the rest is the same. Sorry for all these posts. New to BL, obviously!
Steve McKinney 11 years ago
No worries about all the posts; I'm happy to help. :-) And yeah, sadly, html code doesn't show up in comments (it's problematic in blog posts too). If I'm understanding you correctly, you've found the {% if blog.isSiteShelf %} ... {% endif %} section, and it looks just like the one in my post *except* that your 'h3' tag is missing the class="menu-entry" attribute that mine has. I believe that must be because you've chosen a different 'theme' than the one I am using. That shouldn't be a problem; leave your 'h3' tag alone, and just replace the 'a' tag it contains with the one from my post. Let me know if that's not clear, or if you have any other questions.

When I have time I'll update my post to clarify that the template code may look slightly different depending on the theme being used. Thank you for bringing that to my attention!