Complete Series Post Loop

Introduction

In the previous lesson we created a section with a post loop builder to display a grid of the 6 most recently published books.

Great idea in theory but we were on a Dylan Danger book post and the Latest Releases all displayed Village Detective books.

Even if the books were in the same genre it may be preferred to show the reader all the books in the series from the book they are currently looking at.

The idea is that if a visitor sees there are multiple books in a series in a genre they enjoy they are more likely to invest time and or money in that first book and beyond.

Complete Series Post Loop Builder

We’ve already done most of the work to get what we need so this will be similar to the set up from the last lesson when we create the Latest Releases section

Add a new section

• I could duplicate the latest releases section but we will start with a fresh section to help build muscle memory
• First delete the Latest Releases section
• Add a New Section
• Use the Wide Section Preset
• I’ll name this the Complete Dylan Danger Section

Add a Dynamic Heading

Instead of something generic we want the heading to be specific about which series is being displayed.

• Add a H3 heading
• Map the heading to the Post Terms dynamic data
• Configure the post terms options to Series
• Edit the Advanced options
• Prepend the Dynamic Text with Complete (including a space at the end)
• Add a text element below the heading
• Change the text to read ‘All the books in the series in reading order.’

Add the Post Loop Builder

• Add a Post Loop Builder under the heading
• Choose Other Books Max as the Global Block
• Open the Query sub-tab
• Click custom
• Edit query
• Set post type to books
• Posts per page to 6
• Set Conditions to ‘Has Taxonomy’ ‘is all of’ ‘Dylan Danger’ 
• Order by Ascending Date
• Click apply
• Go to the Design Tab
• Use the Book Grid Preset
• Click Save

And we are done.

Excerpt we’re not.

If I go to the live Dirk Volcano site and click on a Dylan Danger series book the Book Grid at the bottom looks great, it’s really doing it’s job.

But

When I go and look at one of the Village Detective books. Not so much. Now we are looking at Thriller books from a different series being shown on my cosy mystery novels.

No problem.

Adding Conditions

First we are going to add a condition to the entire Complete Dyland Danger Section to only show when the series name is Dylan Danger.

• Click on the Complete Dylan Danger Section
• Click on the element’s settings tab
• Go to conditions
• Add the following condition
• Has Taxonomy is all of Dylan Danger
• Click Apply conditions

When I go back to the work in progress site and click refresh on the Village Detective page the complete Dylan Danger section is gone. When I go back to Adventure Danger the section is back where it belongs.

Conditional Series Display

We also want a complete series display on Village Detective Books.

• Duplicate the Complete Dylan Danger Section
• I’ll rename it to the Complete Village Detective Section
• Edit the Condition inside the Settings tab for the new section
• Change the Series Name from Dylan Danger to Village Detective

We’ve just told this section to only appear when the Book post is assigned the series name of Village Detective

• Click on the Post Loop Builder Inside the new section
• Edit the query
• Change the Taxonomy from Dyland Danger to Village Detective.
• Apply the updated query

All the books in the grid should change from Dylan Danger to the Village Detective

• Click Save

When I check Book posts for each series only the matching Complete Series sections are displayed.

If you have more than two series just repeat the steps for each series you have.

If you have a mix of series novels and standalones create a ‘Standalone’ entry in the series name taxonomy and use that to only show standalone novels in the book grids for standalone novels.

Summary

And that’s the final lesson in the Books Custom Post Type module.

This has been a longer module but I hope I’ve been able to share with you the power of custom post templates in Breakdance especially with custom fields.