Tag: WordPress (Page 171 of 219)

One of the biggest pain points in working with WordPress templates – or, really, any  PHP and HTML in general – is how we end up jumping from language to language within the context of a single file.

Obviously, this is unavoidable. I mean, the same thing even happens in other frameworks like .NET and Rails, but one of the things that I’ve seen that continually sets WordPress apart (and I don’t mean that in a good way) is that developers often don’t bother to spend time separating their concerns as it relates to the work being done in any given template.

A Vanilla Template File

For those who have been working in WordPress for several years likely know this, and know the frustration this causes.

For those who have recently hopped into WordPress development, there’s a strong chance you’ve likely been overwhelmed with some of what you’ve seen.

It’s a bummer, I know.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

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For anyone who has worked with WordPress on some level, you’re likely familiar with the concept of templates.

In the context of WordPress, templates are the files in which information retrieved from the database is rendered. In other frameworks or platforms, they may also be called templates, but are also often referred to as views.

But for anyone who has done enough work with building web applications, you know that as much as we like to build reusable components on the server-side – be it functions, classes, or whatever else – that we also like to do so with client-side related code, too.

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I think that one of the more underestimated aspects of building solutions with WordPress comes with leveraging custom post types and custom taxonomies.

For those who are currently building products for others – be it plugins, custom themes, or web applications – then you’re likely familiar with how powerful these two features can be.

Specifically, if you’re used to the ideas of models and views, or data objects and a presentation layer (or whatever language your framework of choice uses to describe this information), you can think of custom post types as a bit of a hybrid of models and views.

Similarly, you can think of taxonomies as an easy way to stamp your data – in WordPress, we think of these as categories and tags – but sometimes, I think the terminology may limit us in thinking how we can leverage the features.

Nonetheless, if you’re used to working with WordPress, custom post types, and custom taxonomies, then you’ve likely faced a time when you’ve needed to query information based on a combination of the two.

And though there are a variety of different ways to retrieve custom post types and how they are tagged, here’s one way to grab information that’s stamped with multiple taxonomies.

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This is post two of two on how to upload files in WordPress and created associated meta data. Read the first post here.

In the first post in this series, I mentioned that I’ve been working on a plugin in which the users needs to upload a file to a custom post type without the use of the Media Uploader.

This is basically done via use of an `input` type of `file`, WordPress `nonce` values, and some basic PHP functionality, but if you’d like to read more, then be sure to review the first post.

As mention in the first article, the second part of being able to store files and their associated meta data is so that you can also remove the files (and the meta data) when the user triggers the appropriate action.

Specifically, the plugin must do the following:

1. Verify the request’s incoming `nonce` value
2. Use (or somehow retrieve) the specified meta key for the file to be deleted
3. Delete the file from the file system
4. Remove the database entries – that is, the meta data – associated with the file

Just as in the last article, we’ll take a look at each step and the code required for each, as well.

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You’ve gotta be prepared for the future, just in case you end up there.

For those of you who have read this blog long enough, you know that I’m a big advocate for using WordPress for web application development.

No, I don’t think it’s the end all, be all of foundations for web applications, but it’s one that shouldn’t be overlooked depending on the nature of your requirements.

Anyway, a friend of mine recently contacted me asking what I do to future proof WordPress when I begin to use it build applications on top of it. Specifically, he asked what steps I take when working on projects that may end up breaking with the next WordPress upgrade.

Since I don’t recall ever sharing the steps and tools that I use, thought it would be good to cover here.

Note that these aren’t all the things that I do or that can be done (and I’m sure you guys have some great suggestions, too), but these are the things that came to mind that I’ve found to be absolutely critical.

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