MyFeedList Properties Tutorial

Please read first

You likely have seen the big Properties field on the Feed change form and wondered what it was. This short tutorial will teach you all about properties that you always wanted to know.

Before starting this tutorial you might want to read the Template Tutorial, cause the properties and the template system are closely related.

Let's start with [if_prop_name] [end_prop_name]

We all know the Box subtemplate (if you did read the Template Tutorial), one of the available tags in the Box subtemplate is [box_title]. This tag is replaced by the title of the blog. You have a feed box which contain ultra cool items and you really want that surfers give special attention to this box. You can do that by place a little text that says "Hot!" after the box title.

When you place "Hot!" straight in the template after the [box_title] tag then every box would have a title with "Hot!". That's not what we want, we only want one box with "Hot!" after the title.

Lets go to Templates in menu > HTML tab > make sure setting "Use the HTML template" is enabled > select Box in the menu with label "Part of the template that you wish to change". Now the Box subtemplate appears in the big field, try to find the tag [box_title] (it should be somewhere at the top). Now place the following code right after the [bot_title] tag.

You might noticed that this looks like a conditional tag ([if_isfeed] [if_isbox] [if_isnew]). And in fact it is a conditional tag, but not a standard one, it's a property tag. The above code means "if a box has defined a property 'hot' then the 'Hot!' is displayed".

Don't forget to press the Change button to save your changes to the Box subtemplate. Now lets try if it works, go to a feed box (Feeds in menu > click a feed title > Feed change form appear). Now enter:

in the Properties field and press the Change button. Now go to your feedlist (click Preview link in the top right corner). As you can see the box that has "hot=1" as property now has "Hot!" behind the box title. Try adding "hot=1" property to another feed and preview your feedlist again, now you should have 2 boxes with "Hot!" behind the box title. Fun isn't it!

Let's continue with [prop_name]

There is more! Let's go back and change the box subtemplate again, now add the following code after the [if_isfeed] tag:

Save the changes and change the feed in which you have defined the "hot=1" property. Place your mouse in the Properties field after the "hot=1" text and press Enter, now type:

Now the properties field should say:

The formatting rule for properties is: one property on one line. Press the Change button and Preview your feedlist. Now the feed box you just changed should contain a little red star with the text "My Favorite!".

Important: you can name the properties anyway you like, just don't use spaces or special characters. For example: [prop_titlextra], [prop_ultrahot], [prop_specialone].

The default properties

Now you have one box which has "My Favorite!" at the top. Great! But what if you want the text "Oh just a normal box" at the top of all the boxes. You can change every box and add a property like:

But that would take a really long time and we don't have much time. Lucky for you cause you can set default properties that apply to all boxes. Then after you defined those default properties you can go to the boxes which need a something non default property and define the properties of that box. Let's define a default property so that all boxes have the text "Oh just a normal box" at the top.

Go to Settings menu > find the setting "Default properties for a Feed box" and fill in the code:

Press the Change button and Preview your feedlist. Now all feed boxes will have "Oh just a normal box" at the top.

Finally

In this tutorial we defined properties for feed boxes, but the same method applies to normal boxes (Boxes in menu). The default properties for normal boxes are in the field "Default properties for a normal box".

Have fun and experiment with this powerfull feature. You can for example add little picture in all the box titles and a special picture in the box titles that need special attention. It's easy and fast with the properties feature.