Head over to the WordPress plugin repository to download it (and rate it)!

The widget control panel

For now, I’m posting a Sugar I made for Espresso. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Espresso (by MacRabbit) is a web developing program that I’ve been trying out. It’s been the only thing sweet enough to get me to switch from Coda. Extensions for Espresso are called Sugars.

I made a Sugar for WordPress template tags. There had been some interest in one on the MacRabbit forums, but none had been made yet. I figured I’d give it a shot.

It contains CodeSense/auto-completion for all the WordPress template tags listed here. I haven’t done the conditional tags yet, and there are still some core functions left out. Rest assured they will be included in an updated version, soon.

Updated in version 1.1:

• Added all the functions in the Function Reference (includes conditional tags)
• Added snippets:
  • The Loop
  • A custom loop
  • Dynamic page title (404/archive/page/search/etc.)
  • register_sidebar function & parameters
  • HTML stylesheet link
  • Theme info header for style.css
  • Quick reference of query_posts parameters (a huge commented section of code, listing the parameters from the query_posts Codex page)
• Fixed weird autocomplete behavior after typing an underscore (either not continuing to complete, or starting the match over again)

Here it is:

Download WordPress.sugar v1.1

Download Colorboxes
at the WordPress Repository.

ColorBoxes admin view

ColorBoxes is my latest WordPress plugin, allowing users to easily insert alert-style messages (just like the one above) at the top of any page or post. Just like SimpleMap, this plugin was born out of a need on a client’s website. I needed a foolproof way for these alerts to be made without going into the HTML editor and making <div> tags with custom classes.

It works by setting post meta values, just like a Custom Field would. It’s lightweight, fast, and easy-to-use. Go ahead and download it here!

I recently had the privilege of rebuilding the website for Minnesota Voters for Animal Protection, and developing the site in WordPress opened my eyes to a lot of tricks, shortcuts, and standards that I hadn’t used before.

In the spirit of learning new WordPress development techniques, I thought I’d share the ten resources I use the most. These cover a lot of best practices that are a great baseline for solid plugin & theme development. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. WordPress Template Tags

This might be the most-clicked bookmark on my computer. It’s such a fantastic, quick reference to look up the arguments/syntax/existence of almost any WordPress function.

2. WordPress Coding Standards

I feel lucky that my coding style matches that of the WordPress team almost completely; I had very few adjustments to make. Developing for WordPress in their coding style makes your code easier for others to read and modify later (if you’re making open-source stuff). Also, if your style is all over the place, this will help you achieve consistency.

3. Plugin Resources (from the WordPress Codex)

I keep this bookmarked because it links to the pages in the codex I refer to the most. The list of filters & hooks, and examples of their syntax, is especially helpful for me.

4. Best practice for adding JavaScript code to WordPress plugins

This is the most concise and easy-to-follow guide on this topic that I’ve seen.

5. Advanced Power Tips for WordPress Template Developers

Smashing Magazine is a fantastic place for finding useful, plug-and-play code snippets that might change the way you develop forever.

6. Advanced Power Tips for WordPress Template Developers: Reloaded

More great stuff from Smashing Magazine, this time focusing mostly on the admin area.

7. Posts tagged “WordPress” on Smashing Magazine

I wanted to list a lot of these posts, but then my entire list would have been Smashing Magazine articles! Here’s their list of WordPress posts.

8. WpRecipes.com

Like Smashing Magazine, there are a lot of code snippets here that work very well for specific things.

9. Digging into WordPress

This website is a great resource for unlocking more advanced, CMS-like functionality in WordPress. Their book is one of those I mentioned at the beginning of my post.

10. Google

This might be how I learned 99% of what I know about WordPress development, whether directly or indirectly. You’d be surprised at how quickly you can find what you need by searching for a function name or throwing “wordpress” in front of your keywords.

Refer back to these sites often! The blogs update frequently, and the codex entries are great standards to keep bookmarked in your browser.

1. Use the $wpdb object for all database queries

If you only read and follow one of these tips, make it this one. Setting up database connections with mysql_connect over and over again is a waste of code. If you’re in anything other than a standalone processing script, $wpdb is ready to go with just one line of code:

global $wpdb;

(If you are using a standalone script for something, just include two files to make $wpdb work: wp-load.php and wp-includes/wp-db.php.)

There are different functions for the $wpdb class to make different kinds of database queries (see the WordPress codex page for details on them all).

On average, I find that using $wpdb saves two to three lines of code for each time I make any sort of database query. For example, this:

$name = mysql_real_escape_string($name);
$result = mysql_query("INSERT INTO $myplugin->categories_table (name) VALUES ('$name')");
if (!$result)
    die("Could not insert into database. ".mysql_error());

turns into this:

$wpdb->insert($myplugin->categories_table, array('name' => $name), array('%s'));

One of the most important reasons to use $wpdb instead of mysql_query is that it automatically protects the database from MySQL injection attacks. More details about that are on the codex page as well.

2. Call jQuery using wp_enqueue_script

One of the most frustrating things I’ve seen responsible for my WordPress plugins not working is that other plugins are calling jQuery the wrong way:

<script src="../../../wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

WordPress has its own way of handling calls to jQuery (and other common Javascript libraries). It’s called wp_enqueue_script. This is how WordPress would have you call jQuery in a plugin:

wp_enqueue_script('jquery');

So if WordPress itself needs to load jQuery, or an additional plugin calls it in this way, then it’s only loaded once, and it’s loaded in no-conflict mode. This means that there won’t be two jQuery scripts of different versions competing for attention. And if you prefer an external reference to jQuery (such as the one from Google Code), there is a method for doing that in a WordPress-friendly way, too (see step 2 on this linked page).

3. Use unique class & function names

If you have a function in your plugin called “load()”, then what happens if another plugin is activated on a user’s blog that uses a function called “load()”? Well, crap explosions happen. Plugins break. Solving this problem is easy: name all your functions something unique to your plugin. My personal method is to come up with a two- or three-letter representation of my plugin (like “sm” for SimpleMap) and use that as a prefix to all my function names. For example:

sm_display_map()

Easy as pie.

4. Prep all text for localization from the get-go

Even if you don’t include any translation files with your plugin, someone out there might want to write one for you (or for themselves). It’s pretty tedious to go back through your existing code and prep the text for translation, so make it a habit right away. First, you have to pick a key for your plugin’s translation files (this is usually just the plugin name or slug). Then you have to surround any text that gets displayed to the user with the following code:

__('This is the text to be translated.', 'PluginKeyHere');

Note: ‘PluginKeyHere’ would be the key you picked. For example, in SimpleMap this is ‘SimpleMap’.

The double underscore at the beginning will return the translated string to PHP. If you want to echo the string, instead of adding echo before the double underscore, you can use this shorthand:

_e('This is the text to be translated.', 'PluginKeyHere');

More details on localizing your plugin can be found in the WordPress codex.

5. Write a good README file

This is something I highly recommend. When I’m searching for a plugin to install, an inadequate or poorly written README file will often make me go back to my search results and keep looking. Writing a good README file shows that you care about the people using your plugin. If you treat it like it’s just a step WordPress forces you to take to submit a plugin to the repository, it’s going to make you look like an ass, and users won’t want to try your plugin at all.

To top it off, Mark Jaquith has recently released a plugin that makes good use of your README files on your own blog. It’s called I Make Plugins, and it automatically populates pages on your blog to promote the plugins you’ve created. You can see it in action here on Aliso the Geek.

Well, that’s all for now. More tips are sure to come in the future! If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment and share them!

[simplemap]

If you want to show only specific categories, you just need to do this:

[simplemap categories=4,12]

…where 4 and 12 are the ID numbers of the categories you want to show. The ID number of a category is automatically generated and will be shown in the Manage Categories screen for easy reference.

Also, categories are just better in general now; if you change a category’s name, it will update it in all the affected locations. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s much better than it used to be.

Tags are done, as is the ability to search them. The search now looks in the name, description, category, AND tags.

I found a great CSV processing class that should improve that functionality tenfold. Hopefully my beta testers will help confirm this!

In order to get these changes out there, I’m not going to include custom map markers in 1.2. They are next on the list and will come in 1.2.1. I’m really pushing myself on this and I’m hoping to get the beta out in the next day or two. Keep in mind that the beta should NOT be used in a production environment, because there’s no guarantee that it’s free of bugs and defects.

In light of this, I am working on a support forum for SimpleMap. I’m using the awesome Simple:Press forum plugin for it. I’m extremely impressed with Simple:Press so far—I’ve seen my husband set up other forums in the past, and this install was so much easier than any of those. The level of control and customization blows me away, especially for a completely free plugin!

That little donation module in the top-right corner of the Simple:Press site is a pretty great idea. I might be adding something similar soon… we’ll see.

I’ve made it a PHP function, so if you want to use it, just put the function into your functions.php file in your blog’s theme. View the function after the break.

color_split_page_menu

This function has four parameters, only the first of which is required.

string color_split_page_menu(string $class_name [, bool $return = false [, bool $show_home = false [, bool $delete_space = false]]])

By default, the function generates a page menu that is echoed (displayed), does not include a link for “Home,” and preserves the spaces between the words. It will be in an unordered list that is wrapped in a div with the class “menu.”

$class_name (required)
This will be the class that the first word is wrapped in:
<span class="class_name">Word</span>

$return (optional)
If set to true (or any value other than 0, false, or null), the function will return a string instead of echoing the results.

$show_home (optional)
If set to true (or any value other than 0, false, or null), it will include a link to “Home” at the beginning of the page list.

$delete_space (optional)
If set to true (or any value other than 0, false, or null), it will delete the spaces between words in the list (for example, AboutMe instead of About Me).

To generate the page menu in a theme, just enter the following PHP wherever you want the menu to show up:

<?php color_split_page_menu('highlight'); ?>

Replace “highlight” with whatever class name you want on the span around the first word. Add the other three parameters if you want to. Style accordingly.

Click below to view the code (copy and paste it into a PHP file to use it): 
color_split_page_menu.php

That being said, I’m nearing a point with SimpleMap where my work on it will be a little more sporadic for a while. I’ve been working on it almost every night, and as I get closer to being done with 1.1.4 (and closer to starting 1.2) I feel that soon, there will only be bug fixes to worry about for a while. After 1.2 I don’t plan on adding any more major features. 1.2 will definitely bring more functionality to the location categories, including the ability to assign custom map markers for each category and to hide/show certain categories on your map.

In the relatively near future, I’m considering either opening up SimpleMap’s issue tracker to the public, or adding a support forum, so that there’s a more organized way of keeping questions, answers, bugs, and fixes online. I may not be developing new features for SimpleMap after 1.2 (at least not for a while), but I will still provide support as best I can.

The reason I’m thinking so seriously about this is because I’m starting another project. It’s something big, something involving WordPress that’s bigger than just a plugin. I am hoping to have it done by January 2010, or at least in beta by then. It will be a paid service, and it has a very specific target audience in mind, so a lot of the people using SimpleMap might not necessarily be interested in it. Anyway, it’s huge, it’s exciting, and it needs my time and attention if it’s ever going to get done. I’m working with my husband on it, and it will ultimately be a Barrett Creative product.

I don’t want to give much more away, so that’s it for now. Rest assured that you will see sneak peeks of the new project every now and then… and I will still be here for any and all SimpleMap questions. I do plan on concentrating on it as much as I have been until 1.2 is released. 1.1.4 is close enough to done that it should come out this week.

What I have planned for the next release, so far, is the following:

• Make latitude & longitude directly editable in the Manage DB screen
• Prevent address from overwriting manually entered latitude & longitude
• Fix bug where choosing a state of “None” messes up the directions link and shows in the map display
• Add ability to enter custom state/province values (this might replace the existing drop-down list)
• Fix/prevent all issues with displaying the map overlays (info bubbles, markers, etc.) that are caused by a theme’s CSS
• Fix sizing of the info bubble so it expands properly when a location name takes up more than one line
• Add ability to automatically load all locations, regardless of distance from the default location
• Add ability to change the number of results returned (currently it is limited to 20), including choice to have no limit
• Add new phrases to the main translation file (.POT file) and include new translations with the official release

Also, the ability to add a location by clicking on the map (instead of entering an address or latitude/longitude) might be coming in the next release. WebMago has volunteered to write this code for the plugin, so whether it’s in the next release will mostly depend on timing.

One issue I won’t be addressing in the next release will be the performance of the plugin when importing large CSV files (more than 200 records). I’ve already poured a lot of hours into trying to figure out a new solution, and I ran into a dead end. (Anyone who might have ideas on this—I would LOVE to hear from you! Let me know if you’d like to help or offer some advice, and I’ll give you more details on where I ended up with that code.)

Are there any other bugs people have found, or any other features that could be better than they are? I welcome any and all feedback!