Articles Anywhere 8.2 has been released, adding the ability to automatically create resized images and more.

Articles Anywhere is the powerful Joomla plugin that allows you to insert articles anywhere on your site based on any filters, place specific data (like title, text, images, custom fields, etc) and have full control over how you want to display the articles.

Watch the new Video Tutorial on Articles Anywhere Pro below, and read on for the written details on the new features.

Here is a breakdown of everything that has been added with Articles Anywhere 8.2.0:

Image Resizing PRO

The Pro version of Articles Anywhere now has the ability to automatically create resized images with your specified width/height, instead of outputting the original image files.

Settings

You can control the default behavior of the "Resize Images" feature via the Articles Anywhere system plugin settings, with three alternative options:

  • No
    Don't resize images
    Images will NOT be resized when setting width/height attributes in [image-...] data tags.
    The original image file will always be used, and will only be shrinked to your specified dimensions..

  • Standard (default setting)
    Only resize when dimensions are given
    Images will be resized and output based on the width/height attributes in [image-...] data tags.
    If no width or height attributes are found in the data tag, the original image will be used.

  • Yes
    Always resize images
    Images will be always resized and output.
    If no specific width or height attributes are found in the data tag, images will be resized based on your default settings.

In any case, you can also individually override/force this setting in a specific [image-...] data tag by adding a resize="..." attribute with either a true (Yes) or false (No) value:

[image-fulltext resize="true"]

In the settings, you can also set the quality of the resized images, and select the filetypes to do resizing on (gif, jpg, png).

Resized image files are stored inside a subfolder of the location containing your original image.
By default, the folder name is resized, but you can customize it however you want.

Note that only internal images hosted on your website will be resized. External images will not be resized or saved, and the original external images will be used regardless of the settings.

Data Tags Syntax

When resizing images via the [image-...] data tag, you don't need to specify both width and height attributes. You can also just specify one, and the image will be resized maintaining its aspect ratio.

[image-fulltext width="240"]

Resulting in:





When you specify both width and height attributes, resized images will always be created with the exact width and height, meaning that if proportions are different, the image will be cropped to fill the specified dimensions.


[image-fulltext width="240" height="240"]


Resulting in:






Filtering Images from content PRO


The Pro version of Articles Anywhere also gives you the ability to place images that have been placed inside the content of the article's text.
To place the first image, simply use [image-1]. To place the fifth image found in the content, use [image-5].


Now, when placing images from content, you are also able to filter images by adding a filter attribute. This will then only return the image matching your filter.


Let's say the first image in the article is cats.jpg, the second guineapigs.jpg and the third is pigs.jpg.
Using [image-2 filter="pigs"] will show you pigs.jpg, as that is the second image matching the filter.
 
 The Filter attribute supports Regular Expressions.
For example, to only show the first image from the article that contains either 'dog', 'hound' or 'pug', you can use: [image-1 filter="(dog|hound|pug)"]


Output Random Image PRO


You can even use [image-random] to output a random image from the content of the article.


This makes it possible to do cool stuff like this:


[image-random width="130" height="40"][image-random width="30" height="40"][image-random width="80" height="40"]
[image-random width="200" height="80"][image-random width="40" height="80"]
[image-random width="60" height="60"][image-random width="40" height="60"][image-random width="140" height="60"]




(Refresh the page to see the above images change on every pageload)


And more...


Various other improvements and fixes, including:


    

  • Adds ability to also use include_child_categories="true" when excluding categories
    • 

  • Adds ability to use the NOW value on date fields in the filters
    • 



Read the Changelog for Articles Anywhere 8.2 for the full list of improvements and fixes that have been made in the new release.


For a complete overview of all the features included in Articles Anywhere, head over to the full Documentation.