Tag: WordPress (Page 182 of 219)

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

WordPress Directories: inc and lib

August 14, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

In the previous post, I spoke briefly about WordPress directories. Specifically, I talked about placing files in an `inc` directory whenever building a theme. This lead to a comment by Richard that I thought was worth covering here:

In the theme folder, sometimes I see people use “lib” to include theme assets and other times I see them use “inc”, as you’ve done here. Is there a reason for one vs the other?

I gave a short response in the comments, but thought that this warranted a longer form explanation to share my perspective, and to hear what you guys have to say, as well.

The WordPress Theme Customizer: Adding a New Setting To An Existing Section

August 13, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Since the release of the WordPress Theme Customizer, my team and I have been more and more interested in using it as a way for users to make changes to the appearance of their theme without the use of the dashboard.

As powerful as the dashboard is, the “Appearance” section creates a disconnect between what the user toggles (or selects, or inputs, etc), and what they see on the front end.

The Theme Customizer mitigates that issue.

The thing is, there are a few nuances that come with implementing it in your theme. Though I’m not trying to cover everything here, the point of this post is show how you can introduce a new setting into an existing section.

Not Everything Can Be a WordPress Plugin

August 12, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things that I – and most developers, designers, and implementors – love about WordPress is how easy to is to implement new functionality through the use of plugins.

Yes, I’ve shared at length my thoughts on the plugin economy and it’s not coming from a point of disdain. Of course not. It’s coming from a place of appreciating something, wanting to see it being made better, and simply sharing gaps in experience.

But a second thing that I’ve begun to notice is that people want plugins for everything – even things that I believe should remain core business logic.

How To Enforce Adding a Single Widget in WordPress

August 8, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

For a recent project, I needed to introduce functionality that added a widgetized area to the header of the blog, but only allowed a single instance of a specific widget to be added: the “Search” widget.

Since the dashboard for the widgetized areas are driven the by jQuery and jQuery UI libraries, the implementation is almost completely written in JavaScript, and although I know there may be some criticisms about only allowing a certain type of widget in a widgetized area, here’s how you can enforce adding a single widget in WordPress.

A Reference of WordPress Utility Functions

August 8, 2013 / Tom

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One of the nicest things about Twitter is being able to curate who you want to follow, listen to, and engage with as far as your interests are concerned. Truth be told, I wouldn’t know half the people that I saw at WordCamp or that I’ve done interviews or hangouts with were it not for first meeting them on Twitter.

On top of that, being able to answer other people’s questions, chat with others who are far more experienced or who offer alternative ideas, or who provide useful resources is an big plus.

No complaints on something like that, right?

Case in point: Paul Underwood is someone that’s often sharing a lot of great material – not long ago, he shared a great post on a number of useful WordPress utility functions.