Tag: WordPress (Page 148 of 220)

One of the things that’s nice bout working with post types – custom or standard – in WordPress is that it’s really easy to hook into the serialization process in order to handle the data. This means that we have the ability to sanitize, format, read, access, modify, verify, etc. all of the data with the post type and with the post type’s meta data before it’s written to the database.

WordPress has a pretty consistent way of displaying error messages throughout the application. Really, it’s pretty consistent in how it displays all types of messages – success, updates, and errors – throughout the  system.

Let’s say that you’re working with a WordPress meta box, several of its fields are required, and you want to:

• verify the input has been specified
• either display an error message if it’s not specified
• or write the data to the database if it checks out

The serialization process is pretty standard stuff, but if you’re looking to make sure required fields aren’t empty and that a error message is displayed whenever they’re not entered, then you’ll need to do some additional work.

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If you’re in the business of building themes for fun, for clients, or for purchase within a marketplace or your own store, then there’s a chance that there’s some type of functionality that’s unique to your theme that should be activated whenever the theme is activated.

In my experience, this is something that’s typically unique to niché WordPress themes because they tend to have specific features, customizations, and so on that are relevant to their theme.

Case in point: Let’s say that you’re working on a niché theme that has a number of widgetized areas, but also has very specific widgets for said areas. That is, upon theme activation, you want to make sure that each widgetized area is clear so not to bust up the layout.

In other words, you need to programmatically deactivate WordPress widgets whenever the theme is activated so that the layout of the theme looks as it should when the user activates it.

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One of the things that I like about open source the most is having discussions not only about how a person goes about doing something, but why they’ve chosen a particular route over an alternative.

Yes, reading books, articles, and other material from prolific, well-known, and respected programmers matters – I’m definitely not saying that we should throw that out – but there’s a lot that can be learned from peers who are sitting a couple of tweets, emails, or gists away from you.

Though I generally enjoy seeing how other people have approached their work and understanding the rationale behind it, I’m also pretty open about how I approach certain problems if for no other reason that the garner feedback from those of you who take the time to update gists, add comments, and so on.

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