WordPress

This is my dumping grounds for all things WordPress. I’ll post themes, plugins, tutorials, and hacks under this topic. Have a look around. There’s plenty for everybody.

PHP Namespaces For WordPress Developers

It seems like ages ago when I stopped working with PHP 5.2, which is currently the minimum version to run WordPress. One of the primary reasons for this for me as a developer was to use PHP namespaces, introduced in PHP 5.3. There are many other useful features brought to … Continue reading →

A few days ago, a WordPress theme author lamented that all the one-word names were taken. I wanted to refute his assertion by showing some captivating, dazzling, and alluring words were still available. I came across 32 Of The Most Beautiful Words In The English Language in my quest for inspiration. As creators, we have to think beyond mundane keywords like magazine, business, one page, etc.

In What’s so bad about HTML Comments as structure?, Greg Schoppe explores the problems of using HTML comments instead of an existing standard like JSON in the upcoming Gutenberg editor for WordPress.

In my morning JavaScript JavaScript reading, I’m catching up on arrow functions. The ES6 In Depth: Arrow functions article by Jason Orendorff is a good rundown of how they work.

I’m also still exploring James K Nelson’s tutorial on React’s Most Basics, which runs you through the core of what the React.js framework does without having to understand Babel, JSX, or anything else. Just plain JavaScript.

Vision for the theme directory: Part 1

I’ve now been involved in some form or another with the theme review team at WordPress.org since late 2010. Some of that has been as an author, reviewer, and administrator. I’ve been a part of every aspect of the process. I’ve been frustrated as a theme author. I’ve been worried … Continue reading →

Settings wrappers for plugins and themes

I’ve seen many methods of retrieving settings in themes and plugins over the years. Everything from an object property buried somewhere I can rarely find to a global variable wrapped by a function set up by a global variable. Suffice it to say, I’ve seen it all. Over time, I’ve … Continue reading →

How to remove the customizer CSS option

Now that WordPress 4.7 has been released, most people will notice an “Additional CSS” section in the customizer when they update. This is an awesome feature and a perfect use of the customizer. It’ll be great for the vast numbers of users who just need to add some basic CSS … Continue reading →

Using WP_Query properties instead of an iterator

Sometimes, when running through a post loop, theme authors need to do something special, depending on the current post in the loop or the total post count. For example, displaying ad space between the first and second post. Or, as in the screenshot above, displaying posts with drastically different markup … Continue reading →

Designing better nested comments

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with nested comments. I like the idea of finding replies to comments without having to scroll up and down the page. I hate how unruly they get when more than two or three levels deep. In my most recent theme, Extant, and the newest … Continue reading →

Post format support for custom post types

When building the Custom Content Portfolio plugin, I needed to add post format support to my portfolio project post type. Generally speaking, this is a pretty easy thing to do. However, I wanted to limit the possible formats to only those that made sense for portfolios. This tutorial will walk … Continue reading →