The updates to the admin UI in WordPress 3.2 are pretty great. I love the new interface. The only thing I didn’t love was the loss of the blocky header and footer of the admin section—that was the easiest and fastest way to customize the look of the admin area for client’s sites (or for [...]
A couple of days ago, my plane tickets were purchased and my hotel reservation was made. I’m headed to WordCamp Chicago! Brave New Media, the company I work for, is sending me along with our other (awesome) developer, Jerry Kramer. I’ll definitely be tweeting throughout the event, and you can expect a post or two [...]
I’ve followed all the hubbub online about WPMU Dev‘s copyright infringement on Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin. There are some people taking sides, and I haven’t vocally been one of them until now.
For those who don’t know about the antispambot() function in WordPress, it automatically obfuscates email addresses so it’s safe to use mailto: links. It turns email@example.com into email@example.com . Cool, huh?
I could endlessly tinker with Bolts, adding one more feature or making one more change before release, but then it would never reach 1.0. So, without further adieu, here it is: Bolts 1.0 It’s not perfect, but nothing ever is. Please enjoy using it, and I welcome any and all feedback! The fact that Bolts is [...]
I’ll just come out and say it: I write my blog posts in the visual editor. Yes, it may be blasphemy for a developer to do that, but I just don’t care. I like seeing the post I’m writing come to life as I’m writing it. Since I’m such a fan of the visual editor, [...]
I received a lot of feedback on my Settings API tutorial (thank you so much!) and a few people found some bugs. There was also confusion on how to reference these options in the theme. Well, I have an updated class file and answers to your questions in this post!
For the past several months, I’ve been working on developing a parent theme to use for Barrett Creative’s upcoming premium themes, as well as for client and personal projects. It’s called Bolts (as in “nuts and bolts”) and it’s meant to make theme development swift and simple. It’s got some cool extras built in, like [...]
Update 11/15/11: The sugar is now compatible with Espresso 2! Download version 2.0 below. (Thank you for this, Diego!) Update 3/7/11: I’ve updated this to include several functions that were missing from autocomplete. Download version 1.3 below. Here it is! I finally updated my Espresso sugar for WordPress 3.1. I rewrote the functions list to include [...]
Before I begin, let me say thank you so much to all the people who have used my WordPress sugar! I feel very honored to have given the WordPress developer community something truly useful. WordPress 3.0 introduced a ton of new functionality — and a ton of functions and variables to go with it. WordPress [...]
Most theme developers know how to make a custom 404 error page—it’s as simple as including a template file in your theme folder. It’s just as easy, however, to customize the maintenance and database error pages that are automatically generated by WordPress. Most WordPress bloggers have seen these by now: Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. [...]
[toc type=bullets levels=3-6] Download the files (updated June 5, 2011) This post is based on part 1 of this tutorial, so read it if you haven’t. We left off with a theme options class, My_Theme_Options, that had all the behind-the-scenes work complete. The next step is the HTML.
[toc type=bullets levels=3] The WordPress Settings API has been around for a little while, but I haven’t used it until now. I highly recommend it. It does a lot of work for you and is still flexible enough to create custom-styled options pages (with a little jQuery). Once you’re done with this tutorial, this is [...]
I’ve been working on my own WordPress theme framework for the past several months, and it’s getting closer and closer to completion every week. A few months ago, after I had finished writing all the code for the framework’s theme options page, I learned of the WordPress Settings API. I initially ignored it because I [...]
Remember back when I wrote a post explaining how to make a dynamic duotone-effect pages menu in WordPress? Well, I turned it into a widget. Now even the not-so-code-savvy can put a chic duotone page menu in their sidebar. Head over to the WordPress plugin repository to download it (and rate it)!
Here’s a WordPress Sugar I made for Espresso. For the non-Mac or non-coders: Espresso 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.
ColorBoxes is my latest WordPress plugin, allowing users to easily insert alert-style messages 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.
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.
Just like many fellow programmers out there, when I first started publishing my own code for the world to see and use, it wasn’t the greatest. I didn’t fully understand the WordPress API and all the tools it had to offer. I have since learned a lot about how to write WordPress plugins “the right way”—the most efficient, clean, and safe way, that is. WordPress has functions, classes, and hooks that work right out of the box to make plugins easier to code and less risky to use. Here are a few of my favorite tips.
I just posted SimpleMap version 1.2b3 to the WordPress repository. This update fixes a few bugs and adds a couple of niceties.
I have barely had time to work on SimpleMap lately, but I’m hoping to get a lot done on it this weekend to get 1.2 out of beta. For the benefit of anyone using the beta, here are the bugs I’m aware of.
Head to the WordPress repository to download it! Please check out the Beta Testing Forum if you want to participate.
I made some incredible progress on version 1.2 over the weekend (I used a couple of vacation days from work, so yesterday was really the end of my weekend). The ability to have multiple maps with only specified categories is DONE. I haven’t fully tested it yet, but that’s what a beta is for! The [...]
SimpleMap Support Forums are now live! Click on the “Forum” link in the header to get to them. You can post in the forums without having to register, but you will have to provide your name and email address. I will leave the comments open on the SimpleMap page for now, but I strongly encourage [...]
The number of comments on the SimpleMap page has now surpassed 150. I am so grateful for all of the feedback I have gotten from users! The downside of this is that the issues/bugs users have reported are sometimes getting lost in the sea of comments. Even though I’m keeping track with my own issue [...]
My husband needed something for a client’s website that I’ve seen in several places: a navigation menu that has a duotone effect, where the first word is a different color than the rest of the title. It took some work, but I whipped something up that does the trick. (There might be an easier way [...]
I’ve been using Lighthouse to track my changes/bugs for SimpleMap, and it’s amazing. My workflow is so much better, and it’s easy to keep track of things. 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 [...]
Yes, it’s another post about SimpleMap… I swear that other development insights and code snippets will be in my posts in the near future, but for now SimpleMap is taking up most of my dev time. This is more of an announcement and invitation for suggestions than anything else. What I have planned for the [...]
It has been brought to my attention that SimpleMap 1.1 (and 1.1.1) was completely broken in all browsers but Safari. First of all, I’m really sorry about this; second, I’ve got a fix worked out that I will release tonight in 1.1.2. In the meantime, here’s the fix that you can apply yourself: In js/functions.js, [...]
This turned out to be a behemoth of an update! Here are the biggest new features: Support for international locations (any country supported by Google Maps) HTML description for each location Custom categories for locations Improved admin interface Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to use Google Maps API version 3 yet, which means you still need [...]
For those of you waiting for the update, I’m sorry I didn’t get it finished over the weekend. I have been trying to solve the problem of large CSV imports stalling the browser, to no avail. Even though I’ve found a way to import large files extremely fast, it still has to process each line [...]
Thank you so much to everyone who has commented or emailed with errors and feature suggestions. It has helped me fix a lot of things I would not have seen otherwise! Also, a big thank you to Thorsten and Fernando for the German and Spanish translations, respectively. These will be included in the 1.0.6 release [...]
SimpleMap version 1.0 is launched! Here is some eye candy for you: Check out more on the plugin’s home page or on the WordPress.org Plugin Repository!
At Brave New Media, we’re working on an intranet-style site for one of our big clients. We’re using a combination of WordPress and a custom web-based file management software to build it. The Sales department of this company is divided up into a number of teams, and the user accounts in WordPress needed to have [...]
I’ve posted some of my WordPress plugins on my WordPress Plugins page. More will be added in the next few days as I get them packaged up for public use. Enjoy, and stay tuned!