Category: Projects (Page 21 of 33)

Posts introducing, updating, and covering various projects to which I’ve contributed or that I maintain.

Including a WordPress Page Template in a Plugin

March 7, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Note that this plugin is just a working proof-of-concept. Do not use this in a production environment.

One of the challenges of working with templates within the context of WordPress plugin development is that there’s no easy way to bundle templates with your plugin and register them with WordPress.

Template are usually relegated to theme development. And rightly so, correct?

After all, page templates are used to provide layout and presentation which is precisely what themes are meant to provide.

But if you’re working on a larger, more complex plugin that introduces custom post types, page templates, and other advanced functionality then there may be a use case in which bundling templates with your plugin is necessary.

I’ve hit up against this exact issue in a recent project, so I thought I’d share the basics of how I solved the problem, and then provide an example plugin to make the process of registering page templates with WordPress themes a bit easier.

Tag Sticky Post Updated To 1.2

March 1, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Earlier this week, I received a following forum notification in my inbox regarding Tag Sticky Post:

I’ve downloaded the plugin Tag Sticky Post that will allow me to stick posts depending on which tag I’m currently browsing in my blog. The tag that will be checked is from the post’s custom_field “tag_sticky_post”. So, if I go inside the post and set post “A” to stick on tag “1”, if I go to http://www.myblog.com/tag/1 the post “A” will be shown on the top with a custom css class (to highlight it). So far so good.

The problem is that the plugin can’t seem to work when I’m browsing archives for 2 tags at the same time, like the example I gave above:

Example: http://www.myblog.com/tag/tag1+tag2

You can view the entire post here.

This prompted an update to the plugin that I’ll discuss in more length in another post, but first note that this particular use case provided a perfect example of the type of enhancement that fit with the vision of the plugin.

So yesterday, I officially released Tag Sticky Post 1.2.

jQuery Konami Code: Add The Cheat Code To Your Site

February 28, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Be sure to check out the latest release of the plugin!

One of the things that I love about working on side projects is that they can be just as complex or simple, or as fun or mundane as you want them to be.

Case in point: A couple of years ago when 8BIT was first getting started, we had a really simple landing page, but we had the idea to incorporate something fun.

Considering we all group up during the 8-bit era of video games, we opted to incorporate the Konami code into our site. So I wrote a small jQuery plugin that makes it really easy to include the cheat code into your site or web application.

Simply put, it’s the jQuery Konami Code.

A Look at The UI Design Process in WordPress Plugins

February 22, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

I’m no designer. I don’t aspire to be one, nor do I claim to be one that; however, I am interested in the topic and enjoy seeing the work that others do as well as following blogs, articles, books, etc. on the topic.

Though user interface design is a bit of a different field, it hits much closer to home for me than other types of design. After all, a user interface is basically the face of the code that we’re writing.

And if we’re not careful, then we’re going to continue perpetuating the stereotype that developers do not care about design.

I’ve spoken previously about sharing case studies on WordPress projects, and though I don’t have a full project to share right now, I thought it might be fun to look at some I’ve been working on and the evolution of a particular user interface that evolved from a first pass, to discussion, then from mockup, to implementation.

Including a WordPress Page Template in a Plugin

Tag Sticky Post Updated To 1.2

jQuery Konami Code: Add The Cheat Code To Your Site

A Look at The UI Design Process in WordPress Plugins

Tipsy Social Icons Now on GitHub