May 2012
3 posts
2 tags
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April 2012
4 posts
2 tags
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Page Template Improvements in WordPress →
I think it would be great for WordPress to implement something like this in core. It should be optional, add it to your theme with add_theme_support(), but it would definitely be an asset for folks like me looking to build WordPress sites for non-technically incline clients.
October 2010
2 posts
5 tags
Word Designs →
Check out these designs by Jim LePage. It’s an ongoing personal project of his where he creates a design based on each book of the bible. Right now he’s having a sale for 25% off prints! I got Sarah two for her office, and might be getting more.
March 2010
4 posts
7 tags
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WordPress Post Images →
Here’s a brief how-to on how to get up and running with the_post_thumbnail() on WP 2.9x.
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the_post_image() = the_post_thumbnail()
This is to let you fellow lost souls out there know that the new the_post_image() functionality that was announced for WordPress 2.9 was subsequently renamed the_post_thumbnail(). This was not immediately apparent—I guess since it was never in an official release that way, it doesn’t have to be shown as a deprecated function.
Check back soon for a post on using the darn thing!
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Bug Reporting for WordPress Themers →
I just found this great WordPress plugin by Konstantin Kovshenin, a freelance web developer from Moscow. The plugin places a configurable bug reporting widget on the WordPress dashboard. Go to the link and check it out, I’ll be implementing this on client’s sites soon. This is a great way to keep your clients coming back for support when they need it!
February 2010
1 post
4 tags
WordPress 3.0 to add Menu Management →
This is something I’ve been waiting for for a long time. It looks like full-on menu management will make it into WordPress 3.0, due to be released sometime in May. WooThemes was asked to contribute their “WooNav” plugin to inclusion in core.
Here’s what it currently looks like:
The Trac page for this functionality is pretty bumping, and you can see other proposed UI...
January 2010
4 posts
4 tags
Add a User Interface to WordPress Custom Fields
Custom fields are great for adding additional functionality into WordPress sites. I have used them in the past to set up post thumbnails, for music album metadata, such as artists and album year, to set articles to link to their original sources, and many others.
The problem is, the default interface for adding custom fields is very clunky. The user has to either manually type in the field name,...
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Use Google Libraries to speed up your WordPress... →
After searching for at least an hour, this fell into my lap.
With the wide variety of Javascript libraries that are used across the web today, whenever I’m putting together a site, I always wind up using functionality from more than one, usually because Plugin X uses jQuery and Plugin Y uses Prototype.js or Scriptaculous. The problem here is that these file sizes quickly add up. For...
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Users scroll. →
Yes, the “page fold” does exist in web design, but it doesn’t have as much an impact as many people think.
While it is important to have visually appealing design and attention grabbing content “above the fold,” users are accustomed to scrolling down a page to get to the content they need. In this study, the researchers actually found that less content at the top...
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Crayola's Law →
Thankfully we’re on an accelerated system.
Did you know that according to the W3C, 1% of internet users are still running in 256 colors? Let’s hope they’re not running at 320x200 pixels.
It’s tough to accommodate all users on their myriad platforms and display hardware. These days, I design for 1024x768 pixels or larger. Most of my sites are based on the excellent 960...
December 2009
14 posts
1 tag
Merry Christmas!
We’re sitting on the floor around a dead tree eating candy out of our socks.
“I haven’t studied neuro-receptors in a while.”
– Sarah
Adjust Taskbar Preview Hover Delay →
To speed up work on Windows 7, you can adjust the delay for previews to pop-up in the taskbar. I’ve set mine to 100ms, down from the default of 400ms, which helps me feel like I’m not slowing down to switch windows.
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Power User Tips for WordPress Developers →
Smashing Magazine has some great tips up for adding custom functionality to WordPress for theme developers. The “Adding a Custom Meta Box” section is particularly good, it’s nice to see that functionality explained clearly. Also detailed are custom taxonomies, customizing the built-in help feature and adding dashboard widgets. A good read!
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Flavors.me →
I’ve been fooling around with Flavors.me, a new social-networking aggregation type site. After creating an account, you can pull in data from a variety of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and more, or you can pull in data from an RSS feed. It works pretty well when it works—the developers are still working out some bugs. Definitely a good one-stop-shop for the less technically...
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Friends from Ohio Site →
This is one of my recent web projects. Cross-browser testing is currently underway. The guys from this group really like their new site!
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Show Sub-Pages on Parent in WordPress
This is a bit of code that will can be used as a page template in WordPress. It first displays the parent page, then enters a loop to display all of the child pages. This is really useful for organization in large WordPress-as-a-CMS sites.
Just make a new PHP file in your theme directory and paste in this code:
<?php /* Template Name: Section Listing Page */ ?> <?php get_header(); ?>...
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Get a WordPress Page ID with the Slug
When I develop for WordPress, I start out on my local machine, then eventually migrate to the production server. This works very well, but takes a bit more work when I get to the migration stage. To make it a little easier, I use this little function to eliminate any hard-coded page IDs in navigation links or conditional statements:
function get_ID_by_slug($page_slug) {
$page =...
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Display Full Images in RSS Feed with NextGen
I’ve worked with a number of people who use the NextGen Image Gallery plugin for WordPress. A common problem that folks have with NextGen is that it doesn’t allow for full-size images to be displayed in an RSS feed. The user instead has to click through to the site to see the full images. If you don’t like that, you can use this code to make the full images show up!
Eventually,...
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Mega Drop Down Menus in WordPress →
I recently stumbled across this excellent tutorial for creating a nice mega dropdown menu using jQuery and standard CSS. This is an excellent choice for many sites from a usability standpoint, so I worked up some functionality to add this to a WordPress theme.
Follow the tutorial to create your menu. When you’re finished, you’ll have a nice static menu. Now we can add some magic to...
Amazing.
Kind of ridiculous that I’m having another go at blogging. But, this is a tumbleblog, so things may turn out different. Anyway, I’ll try to document my experiences working as a freelance web developer and graphic designer. Expect to see WordPress snippets, samples of work in progress, and general fun from the web.
Let’s see if this goes anywhere, shall we?