All the Fables posts are now switched over to the new system.

They were the smallest set that gets its own custom post type, so it was the easiest to pull out of the giant regular “post” pool. I know this probably doesn’t seem like a big update to most of you (besides the fact that I have to change them book by book at this point) but it does mean that I can now tag Fables characters in the books, for example, and you could generate lists by those tags.

I gotta figure out some way of converting all the regular post tags to DC Universe Character tags before really moving the bulk of the DC books.. so those will probably be last (although any new reading order placements will also be moved as I place). But I’ll have the majority of the others moved fairly soon.

5 Comments

Quick update: The reviews are all now successfully moved to the “Review” custom post type.

Comment!

These are the books just added to the Recommended Reading Order and related lists:

Light Brigade

The Warlord: The Savage Empire

Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali (Deluxe Facsimile Edition)

Legion of Super Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga (Deluxe Edition)

Dead Romeo

Milestone Forever Book 1: Meta Fictions

Milestone Forever Book 2: Hardware Escape

All Star Comics Archives Vol. 3

Superman Archives Vol. 5

Wonder Woman Archives Vol. 2

Batman: The Dark Knight Archives Vol. 4

The Plastic Man Archives Vol. 1

The Comic Cavalcade Archives Vol. 1

The Seven Soldiers of Victory Archives Vol. 2

All Star Comics Archives Vol. 4

Superman Archives Vol. 6

Wonder Woman Archives Vol. 3

Batman: The Dark Knight Archives Vol. 5

Also, they are the first comic entries to use the custom post type infrastructure successfully (without losing all the metadata during the transfer, anyway.)

That means a couple things. First of all, the slugs will be different – all DC books will follow the “http://www.tradereadingorder.com/dc/book-name/” format, for example. Marvel books would be /marvel/book-name/. This is totally different from before, but it’s possible you didn’t notice.

Old permalinks might have a little trouble, but they should be able to redirect.

The backend functionality is different though – they’re not all being placed under /comics/ which is good for the caching, because that would eventually hit a limit on the amount of files able to be in one chache folder.

Also, it means the “next” and “previous” book links will not be conflicting with other lists. So even if a fables and buffyverse book has a similar reading order id (ie, date) they won’t be under the “next” link. And you won’t be seeing blog posts appearing under the next links either.

But that also means that those links will be out of date a bit as we go through and change all of the existing entries to the custom structure, which, as of this time, needs to be done on a book by book basis. Groan.

Well, better now than later!

I also fixed the header so it counts any “post_type” and not just ones that are under the “post” post type… so all the books in the database should be included in that number.

It may go without saying, but if you notice that anything isn’t working for these books, say not showing up in reading orders or data not showing correctly, let me know. But I think everything is finally set.

'post_type' => 'attachment',

6 Comments

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about how some people like to collect books in Hardcover and some like to collect books in Softcover. We’ve already got any hardcover that collects things differently in the database (Chronicles and Archives, for example, often cover the same content but in different ways or amounts per volume. Ditto for showcase.)

But there are also a lot of books that have the same release in hardcover, then again a few months later in softcover. But not every book. So if someone wanted to only collect dc books that have a hardcover version, they would have to go through every one and check the amazon listings right now.

So I want to mark it in some way. DavidTai over at the DC Archives Message Board just sent me his hardcover list, which will make my life a little easier in this respect!

The first thing I need to do is add another amazon link field so if a book has two editions you see “Amazon” and “Amazon HC”. Or maybe “Amazon SC” and “Amazon HC.” I also want to figure out a way to only show whichever it is – so it doesn’t show an unworking link for one or the other (kind of like the links for reviews don’t work on most books on their data pages right now. I’d like to fix that too!)

That shouldn’t be a big deal, it’s just adding another custom field.

But also I think people will want to be able to filter lists by this information. For example, I might want a list of Batman books that are hardcovers. Or I might want to see Elseworlds titles released in prestige format. So I’ll have to create a custom taxonomy just for this so when filtering is working people can make lists based on different sets of data – “Superman Elseworlds Hardcovers from the Modern Age” for example.

I’m not sure what to call this one, though. Here is the information that it might contain for a book:

Prestige Format

Softcover

Hardcover

Oversized

Slipcase

Digest

I can’t think of any others off the top of my head. Somethings could be combined – you could have an Oversized Softcover (like Batman Black And White Vol. 2 or Birth Of The Demon) or you could have a Hardcover with Slipcase (like the Deadman Collection).

Should we call this taxonomy tag set “Binding” or “Edition” or what? There might be a better word I’m just not thinking of right now.

Should it just be “Publication information” and include “Black And White” or “Newsprint paperstock” or stuff like that too?

8 Comments

The following 10 books have been added to the database:

Light Brigade

The Warlord: The Savage Empire

Dead Romeo

Milestone Forever Book 1: Meta Fictions

Milestone Forever Book 1: Hardware Escape

Legion of Super Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga (Deluxe Edition)

Tom Strong Deluxe Edition Book 1

Tom Strong Deluxe Edition Book 2

Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil (Deluxe Edition)

World’s Finest (Deluxe Edition)

They’re currently sitting in the Unplaced Books list. This brings the site up to date (matching my offline database, at least) – so now I can concentrate on moving books from the Unplaced list into the reading orders.

I also added Tom Strong Deluxe 1 + 2, World’s Finest, and the Shazam Deluxe to that Deluxe Edition Listing post.

Comment!