Software Engineering in WordPress, PHP, and Backend Development

Tag: WordPress (Page 204 of 219)

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

How To Programmatically Create a Category in WordPress

If you're an advanced developer or just want the TL;DR version of this, skip to the code.

The majority of the time that I’m working on a contract project, there’s a need to programmatically create several parts of the website that occur during theme setup. Often times, this includes creating posts, users, and/or setting templates.

Ultimately, the goal is to make the user’s experience as nice as possible: They install the theme and the site, to a degree, has bootstrapped itself.

As with the aforementioned parts of a site, it’s also common to need to create a category, or categories, during theme setup. WordPress provides two ways of doing so, one of which often results in a PHP fatal error.

Here’s how to programmatically create categories in WordPress and do so without generating any errors.

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WordPress Donations: Is There Shame in Asking?

In light of yesterday’s post and some of the discussion in both comments and offering support for various WordPress projects, I’m curious as to what you guys consider to be etiquette when it comes to asking for WordPress donations.

As I mentioned yesterday, I personally think that we have a personal obligation to provide a level of support for free software that we released; however, at one point is it socially acceptable to ask for a donation.

On top of that, where do you even draw the line?

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WordPress Plugin Support: How Much is Too Much?

One of the nicest things about WordPress is how easy it is for developers to extend its functionality, and how easy it is for users to find plugins that help them enhance their blog.

All conversations about plugin quality and compatibility aside, WordPress plugin support is one area of development that often seems to be rarely discussed (unless I’m missing all the people talking about it!).

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A Case Study on WordPress Projects

For as long as I’ve been on the Internet (well, the Internet as my generation knows it ;), developers and designers have usually maintained some type of display of their work and it’s generally consisted of a listing of projects that they’ve completed with outbound links to said project.

I’ve toyed with the idea of going into detail as to how I’ve built certain projects – you can see this in posts such as how I built Category Sticky Post and Tag Sticky Post – but I’ve never gone all in as I’ve never sold on if it was of any interest to others.

But yesterday, Smashing Magazine ran a bit of a motivational post on Retiring The Portfolio Screenshot and focusing more on “case study” type posts.

This got me thinking about beginning to introduce a case study on WordPress projects.

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