Plugins are specialized classes of code that run to produce content specific to the article in which the plugin is assigned. Baltic Content Framework includes several built in plugins.

Basics

Plugins are a type of content that can be assigned to an article. Unlike assets (images, mp3 files, etc.) and sections (html and/or text), plugins do not belong to one particular domain. They belong to the system, and may be assigned to any article in any domain.

There are two general types of plugins: (1) article plugins which are assigned to an article or articles, and (2) system plugins which are assigned at the domain level and have the potential to affect all articles in the domain.

Most article plugins accept parameters and will run under default parameters if you don’t specify any. You specify parameters on a per-usage basis. That is, you can use the same plugin in different articles (or in the same article) with different parameters to produce different results.

Include Article

This plugin includes another article or articles inside the current article. It can be used to present highlighted articles on the home page, or to create an abbreviated list of articles with their teaser content and a link to view the full article.

Create Toc

This plugin is used to create a table of contents from a folder or folders. It is similar to the Include Article plugin, but is meant for generating a TOC only. It provides fewer fields to the template.

Include Author

This plugin enables you to include information for any of the article's contributors. It can generate their name, bio, and photo. When configuring this plugin for use, you can specify which type of contributor for the article to display. For instance, an article can have a primary author, a secondary author, a translator, an editor, etc.

You can configure multiple instances of the plugin on a single article to display information about various contributors. If you configure an Include Author plugin to display a particular type of contributor, but that type has not been assigned, the plugin simply ignores it.

Author Display

This is a specialized plugin that displays information about a single author or contributor. Because authors are not articles, when you enable the linking of an author name to their detail page, the link goes to a single article that you establish for the purpose of displaying author information. This article receives the author alias in the url and uses that to display that particular author’s bio, photo, and list of articles to which they have contributed.

The article that you establish to display author detail is a special purpose article, and needs to use the Author Display plugin.

Embed Video

This plugin enables you to embed a video. It currently supports only You Tube. To embed a video, you insert this plugin into the content for your article and set its id property to the id of the video you want to display.

Prev / Next

This plugin generates links to the previous and next articles in the same folder. If there is no previous, or no next, that link is omitted. It is generally used in situations such as this documentation to provide links at the bottom of the article to the surrounding topics. Of course, as with any content, you can place this plugin wherever you want: at the top, at the bottom, or both.

Tag Display

This is a specialized plugin that is used in conjunction with the Baltic Tag Processor plugin described below. It is used to display a list of articles with a specified tag. You only need to add this plugin to the special purpose article that you establish for this purpose.

Site Map

This is a specialized plugin that generates an XML site map. You generally would only assign this plugin to a single article such as

https://example.com/sitemap

When assigning this plugin to an article, be sure to set the article’s template to a bare template, and set the article’s content type to application/xml.

Baltic Comment Processor

This is a system plugin. It is assigned at the domain level to support the built in commenting system. If you turn off this plugin, comments will not be presented or supported in any way. You still control which articles are able to receive comments.  This plugin runs in the context of all articles (you only need to assign it at the domain level), and examines the settings of the current article to decide whether or not comments are allowed.

Baltic Tag Processor

This is a system plugin. It is assigned at the domain level to provide support for article tags. This plugin is responsible for rending tags on articles, along with the links that go to the special purpose article that displays other articles with the same tag. If you turn off this plugin, article tags are not generated.

Baltic SEO Processor

This is a system plugin. It is assigned at the domain level to provide support for specialized SEO meta tags. It currently supports twitter tags only.