Better 'about' page handling

[Eli Carter]

Coming from some ancient version of this plugin, I don't have an 'about' blog post, and don't really want to add one since it will show up as the latest post. The plugin used to put the blog_infotext where it now wants to put the 'about' post, and has moved the blog_infotext to the _bottom_ of the sidebar, which in my case, is way, way down the page.

I can see several possible approaches here, but I'd like to implement something that would be acceptable upstream.

Suggestion 1: In the absence of an 'about' blog post, only show the "This blog does not yet have an 'About' post." message to those with BLOG_CREATE permissions, so it isn't an eye-sore when not created. I think this change should be made independent of the later suggestions.

Suggestion 2a: In the absence of an 'about' blog post, put the blog_infotext at the top of the sidebar.

Suggestion 2b: Allow the use of an 'AboutBlog' wiki page instead of an 'about' blog post. This avoids the 'about' page showing up in a random place in the blog history.

Suggestion 2c: Replace the 'about' blog entry with blog_about, with a suggestion for those who want to use an 'about' blog entry to use the Include macro in the blog_about content to reference it. (This approach would also allow referencing an 'AboutBlog' (or other) wiki page, so has more flexibility... but more implementation work, I expect.

Comments, discussion, etc. welcome.

[Eli Carter]

Make the 'about' blog post optional

[Eli Carter]

I've taken a quick stab at implementing Suggestion 1, see the 'optional-about.patch' attachment. Feedback welcome.

[Eli Carter]

Use blog_infotext in the absence of an about blog post

[Eli Carter]

And a quick stab at Suggestion 2a; if there is no about blog post, fall back to the blog_infotext if it is available. See the 'move-infotext-to-top.patch' attachment. Feedback welcome.

[Ryan J Ollos]

I haven't seen much activity from osimons lately. Maybe we can just add you as a committer?

[Cinc-th]

Note that the templates are now converted to Jinja2 so the patches won't work anymore.

Following are my 2 cents:

• Using the wiki for the About page sounds compelling at first but opens a can of worms because you mix blog permissions with wiki permissions. I'd prefer to keep those areas strictly separated.

• Having the infotext at the bottom of the sidebar is problematic imho because as soon as the number of posts increases it will be out of sight.

My suggestions are:

• Put the infotext always at the top of the sidebar.

• If there is no About post hide the information for normal users with BLOG_CREATE/BLOG_VIEW permissions.

• If there is no About page and the user has BLOG_ADMIN rights show the Create About page... text.

• If there is an About post show the link as usual

Yes, you will end up with mixing the About post and 'normal' posts in the list of posts. But every other solution would need quite some code changes (filtering in the macro or not, filtering in the blog lists or not, ...).

I don't think that's worth it. In the end handling the About post like any other post is even beneficial because the blog reader can notice any changes to the About page in the blog roll.

[Cinc-th]

In 18207:

FullBlogPlugin: rearranged the contents of the side bar. New handling of About post link in the sidebar. See comment:4:ticket:13971.

Refs #13971

[Cinc-th]

I changed the sidebar according to my suggestions in comment:4.

Give it a try. If there emerges a better solution we may change it later on.