form

User Submitted Posts lets your visitors submit posts and images from anywhere on your site and from anywhere on the page. User-submitted posts optionally include tags, categories, post title, and author name & URL. Submitted-post status can be set to draft, publish immediately, or publish after some number of approved posts. User Submitted Posts (USP) also handles multiple image uploads, custom URL redirects, and much more. And the easy USP Settings Page makes setting up and fine-tuning a breeze.

Let your visitors submit content

User Submitted Posts makes it easy to display a public post-submission form virtually anywhere on your site. Use the USP shortcode to display the submission form in any post or page, or use the USP template tag to include the form anywhere in your theme design. Visitors may then use the form to submit posts to your site. Depending on your preferences, user-submitted posts may include the following input fields:

• Author Name
• Author URL
• Post Title
• Post Tags
• Post Category
• Post Content
• Image upload(s)

Using the Settings Page, you choose which fields to display, min/max number of images, min/max image size, redirect location, error messages and more. User Submitted Posts makes it easy to setup just about any type of user-submitted functionality for your WordPress-powered site. Here are some examples of how the USP plugin could be used:

• Public Submit a Link form with tags
• Simple Submit News form with post, title & author
• Use as Contact Form that allows image attachments
• Use as an Image Uploader, maybe with tags, title or whatever

Once a user has submitted a post, it’s saved as a “Draft” by default, but may optionally be set to “Publish Immediately” or even to publish if the author has “x” number of approved submissions. The plugin also displays a User Submitted Posts button at the top of the Posts Page that lets you filter all user-submitted posts/drafts with the click of a button.

Features

• Let visitors submit posts from anywhere in your site
• Posts may include title, tags, category, author, url, content & image(s)
• Display submission form anywhere on the page via shortcode or template tag
• Redirect user to anywhere or return to current page after successful post submission

Image Uploads

• Optionally allow/require visitors to upload any number of images
• Specify minimum and maximum width and height for uploaded images
• Specicy min/max number of allowed image uploads for each post
• Includes jQuery snippet for easy choosing of multiple images

Customization

• Control which fields are displayed in the submission form
• Choose which categories users are allowed to select
• Assign submitted posts to any registered user
• Customizable error and upload messages

Post Management

• Includes template tags for easy display of post attachments and images
• One-click post-filtering of user-submitted posts on the Admin Posts page
• Saves as custom-fields with each post: name, IP, URL, & path info for each uploaded image
• Set submitted posts to any status: Draft, Publish, or publish after some number of approved posts

Installation

1. Upload the user-submitted-posts directory to your plugins folder
2. Activate the plugin in the WordPress Admin via the Plugins Page
3. Go to the User Submitted Posts Settings page to customize the plugin
4. Display the submission form using template tag or shortcode:
   • To display the form on a post or page, use the shortcode:
     [user-submitted-posts]
   • To display the form anywhere in your theme, use the template tag:
     <?php public_submission_form(true); ?>
5. By default, the form width is 300px. To change the width, do the following:
   1. Open the CSS file: /resources/user-submitted-posts.css
   2. Edit the first rule block with the desired width, like so:
      div#usp { width: 300px; } /* <- CHANGE FORM WIDTH */
   3. All other styles are relative to that width, so no other changes should be required (continue reading for more info about styling the form)

USP Template Tags

The User Submitted Posts plugin provides several additional template tags for greater flexibility.

Display image attachments for submitted posts

This template tag displays the images attached to user-submitted posts:

<?php post_attachments(); ?>

The post_attachments template tag prints the URLs for the specified image attachments. It accepts the following parameters:

<?php post_attachments($size, $beforeUrl, $afterUrl, $numberImages, $postId); ?>

$size         = image size as thumbnail, medium, large or full -> default = full
$beforeUrl    = text/markup displayed before the image URL     -> default = <img src="/
$afterUrl     = text/markup displayed after the image URL      -> default = " />
$numberImages = the number of images to display for each post  -> default = false (display all)
$postId       = an optional post ID to use                     -> default = uses global post

Return an array of attached images

This template tag returns an array of URLs for the specified post image:

<?php get_post_images(); ?>

Check if a post is a public submission

This template tag returns a boolean value indicating whether the specified post is a public submission:

<?php is_public_submission(); ?>

Styling the Submission Form

By default a CSS file is included with the submission form. It includes some basic styles for uniform structural and font display, but you will probably want to customize the look and feel of the form by adding a few styles of your own. The stylesheet includes all available selectors and is located in the following directory:

/user-submitted-posts/resources/user-submitted-posts.css

jQuery/JavaScript

Along with the stylesheet, an external JavaScript file is included on any page that displays the submission form. This file is located in the following directory:

/user-submitted-posts/resources/user-submitted-posts.js

By default, this file contains only a jQuery snippet for multiple image uploads. If you are customizing the form with additional jQuery/JavaScript, this is a convenient place to do so.

Screenshots

Here are some screenshots of the USP Settings Page, Posts Page, and Edit Post page:

• Plugin Settings 1
• Plugin Settings 2
• Custom Fields
• Filter-Posts Button
• Submission Form

Demo and Download

• Check out the USP Demo
• Download User Submitted Posts from the WordPress Plugin Directory

Update: Someone reported the USP Demo as an “attack site” – so the demo is down until Google removes the alert.

© 2011 Perishable Press

Read more: http://perishablepress.com/user-submitted-posts/

Read more: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/WOyGzLBBxVQ/