Tag: WordPress (Page 200 of 220)

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

Hello Dolly – Episode 1: The Empire Strikes Back

December 31, 2012 / Tom / 0 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, my team and I published the first episode of Hello Dolly largely as an experiment to see if we had anything worthwhile to contribute to the podcast-space regarding WordPress.

In fact, the episode was such an experiment that we named it Episode 0.

But based on the feedback via comments, tweets, and emails, it was clear that you guys were interested in the podcast, and so we wanted to publish the first official podcast before the end of the year.

Today, we’ve done just that.

Quick Tip: Handle When save_post Is Called Twice

December 27, 2012 / Tom / 0 Comments

If you're an experienced developer, you may wish to skip to the code.

If you’ve ever done any work with building a plugin or building a feature of a theme that includes a custom meta box or that includes functionality that is fired on the save_post action, then you’ve likely seen WordPress save_post called twice.

The thing is, this is expected behavior, but because of how it’s used, you may not always want your code to execute until the user actually clicks on the save button.

So here’s a quick tip on how to properly manage the case when save_post is called twice.

How To Find The Permalink By Slug in WordPress

December 26, 2012 / Tom / 0 Comments

If you're an advanced developer, then you may want to skip directly to the code.

As soon as you begin working on an advanced plugin or an application in which you try to maintain some form of solid cohesion (or even an API), then you end finding that there’s a function you need that isn’t available in the Codex.

This isn’t unique to WordPress. Any programming language that has a rich API ultimately has a set of solid features that allow you to build upon them to write more power functions.

For me, I try to publish most of my helper functions here on the site. It makes things searchable, available, and even available for code review for the more critical readers :).

Case in point: In a recent project, I needed to find the permalink by slug in WordPress and there wasn’t a function available to do exactly that, so here’s what I ended up doing.

Change the Email Sender in WordPress

December 18, 2012 / Tom / 0 Comments

If you're an experienced developer, you can skip to the code by clicking here.

If you’re in the business of hosting WordPress-based sites or at least managing WordPress-based sites, then it’s likely that you’re also responsible for managing email accounts or how email is relayed from the site and the server to its visitors.

And depending on the nature of your setup, this may not be a problem; however, if you’re operating on some type of hosted solution, some type of managed hosting, or aren’t using a third-party solution such as Google Apps, then there’s a chance that site visitors are receiving emails from their favorite WordPress-based site with incorrect or unclear email sender information.

Case in point: I manage a site where comment notification emails were being sent with the following formation:

[ Site Name ] [My Email Address] via [Server Name ]

Obviously, this is okay if it’s my site, but a client’s site? Negative.

Dynamically Creating a Custom Stylesheet For WordPress Plugins

December 13, 2012 / Tom / 0 Comments

For more technical users or to skip the the background explanation, skip directly to the code.

One of the challenges that comes with building WordPress plugins is supporting the conflicts that ensue with other poorly coded plugins and/or poorly coded themes.

It’s just the nature of the beast.

When it comes to addressing the way a plugin or widget looks on the frontend, I’ve often advised users to modify the plugin’s stylesheet in order to achieve the results they want.

Unfortunately, this is problematic for a number of reasons.