Tag: WordPress (Page 154 of 219)

Articles, tips, and resources for WordPress-based development.

Adding More Fields to the WordPress Media Uploader

August 13, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

Last week, I shared a short post on how to include your own instance of the WordPress Media Uploader in your theme or your plugin.

Though it walks you through everything that you need, on aspect of using the instance that I described is that it’s limited. This is fine for certain situations, but there are other times where you may want to grab more information from the user.

Case in point, the post received the following comment:

Now, how do you activate (turn on) the Insert Image via URL feature of the Media Uploader?

Which I thought was a good question especially given that most of us are used to seeing more options in the media uploader than what the previous post described.

Thoughts on Design Patterns in WordPress

August 12, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

Whenever the topic of talking about using WordPress as a foundation for web applications comes up, I always get mixed reactions. That is, I’ll hear anything from how that’s a silly idea to how a person wants to know more (as well as everything in between).

One of the more common things that I hear developers often try to do is to retrofit the MVC pattern around WordPress in order to try to make sense of how existing themes, plugins, and applications work, as well as how they can take advantage of MVC to produce their application.

Don’t do that!

WordPress doesn’t use MVC. It uses the event-driven design pattern. But for whatever reason, this doesn’t stop us from trying to wrap MVC around WordPress. When it comes to design patterns in WordPress, there are other approaches.

There are reasons for why I think this is a relatively common trend, but there are alternative ways to approach development on WordPress, as well.

Tagging Untagged Posts in WordPress

August 11, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

This weekend, I shared how to setup a query to find all untagged posts in WordPress that aren’t tagged with a specific tag. In my example, I opted to use IDs (for no particular reason), but Ross also showed how you can use slugs, as well.

Anyway, there are a number of things that you can do with untagged posts – perhaps you want to remove them, perhaps you want to categorize them, or perhaps you want to apply a tag to them so that they’re stamped with a tag (like one that was not

Find Untagged Posts in WordPress

August 9, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

It’s common for people to categorize or tag their posts when using WordPress. This is true for the average blogger and for those who are using WordPress for its content management features.

For example, let’s say that you’re responsible for working on a site that has an RSVP custom post type and the post types can be tagged for certain types of events.

Tags may include:

Formal
Informal
Wedding
Birthday
Family
Friends
…and so on

Overtime, the database is going to increase in size and if RSVPs aren’t manually entered (that is, they are imported or maybe the database is even inherited and mismanaged), there’s a chance that some of the posts will not be tagged.

If you’re a developer, the odds are strong that you’re going to need to at least locate the untagged posts (and perhaps update them, as well).
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Steps for Soft Launching WordPress Products

August 8, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things with which I’ve just started experimenting is soft launches of product updates. That is, I’m providing updates to users of certain plugins through automatic updates in order to garner feedback – if any – prior to announcing it and launching it to everyone else.

For those involved in the software world, this is nothing new, but for those who are just getting into building products for others or who are looking for ways to test the proverbial waters of their projects without a public announcement for every single release, then this isn’t a bad idea.

Wikipedia defines a soft launch:

A soft launch is the release of a website, hotel, or other product or service to a limited audience. Soft-launching is a method for gathering data on a product’s usage and acceptance in the marketplace, before making it generally available as a hard launch or grand opening.

I think the idea of soft launches, open source, and the general WordPress economy is a really broad topic about which there’s a lot to discuss, but I thought I’d share some quick ideas based on my experience for those who are looking for a process on how to perform soft launches of their work with their existing customer base.