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Monthly archives: September 2009

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Easy Shortcode Permalinks

Easy Shortcode Permalinks

When you are building a theme, and the circumstance comes up where you need to create a link to a specific page hard-baked right into the theme, there is a function you should be using.

Integrating Fading Button Navigation

Integrating Fading Button Navigation

I was talking with Darren Hoyt recently about building a better interactive button1. The goal of the button was to provide three states: regular, hover, and active (pressed). That is standard of any good button, but we were going to integrate some fading effects into it to really making the button satisfying to interact with. Here is a demo, and in this tutorial we’ll show you how to integrate it into WordPress.

Precision Targeting with Custom Action Hooks

Precision Targeting with Custom Action Hooks

WordPress’ powerful action-hook system makes it possible to insert functionality at any point in your theme. Most WordPress themes include some of the built-in WordPress hooks by default. For example, most of us are aware of the two most common WordPress hooks: wp_head() and wp_footer(), which generally appear in the theme’s header and footer sections. These two hooks provide WordPress a location at which to execute various scripts and functions. For example, the wp_head() hook is where WordPress generates a variety of <link /> and <script></script> elements, among other things.

Members: WordPress Plugin

Justin Tadlock takes WordPress user-management to the next level with his new “Members” Plugin. Members improves WordPress’ content-management capabilities by providing some serious “fine-grain” control over the users of your site. The plugin features many functional “components,” which may be selected according to your specific needs. From editing roles and content permissions to widgets, shortcodes, and template tags, Justin’s new Members plugin looks like the ideal solution for your user-management needs.

Global Custom Fields, Take Two

Global Custom Fields, Take Two

Just as I hoped, someone wrote in with a far nicer solution to my Global Custom Fields solution than I originally had. Big thanks to David Hollander for this.

How To: Breadcrumbs in WordPress

I’ve always used plugins for breadcrumbs, but of course rolling your own is always appealing. Gilbert Pellegrom shows us how to do it with our own custom functions.

Editor’s note: 404 link removed.

Create an RSS Feed from Nested Child Pages

Over on CSS-Tricks, I describe a problem I had of trying to create an RSS feed of pages that were buried two deep under a parent page. The standard query_posts can’t go two levels deep with pages, or accept multiple parent pages to run the query. Instead I had to create multiple feeds from a custom template and stitch them together.

Global Custom Fields

Global Custom Fields

Custom fields allow us to attach data to Posts or Pages that we can yank out and use at will in our templates. They are awesomely flexible and single-handedly allow WordPress to be used for about any CMS need. The fact that they can only be used on single Posts can be limiting in some circumstances. Sometimes you wish you could grab a custom value that you can control and is consistent globally, regardless of the current post. In this post we’ll look at a technique to do so.

Easy Custom Feeds in WordPress

Easy Custom Feeds in WordPress

Now that we have seen how to setup Tumblr-style posts, it would be nice to be able to segregate the Tumblr-posts category from the main feed into its own, separate feed. This would enable readers to subscribe exclusively to the Tumblr-posts feed and maybe display it in their sidebar or something.

Including WordPress’ comment-reply.js (the right way)

Web developer and WordPress enthusiast Peter Wilson explains an improved method for including WordPress’ comment-reply.js. His method “checks if the visitor is browsing either a page or a post, if comments are open for the entry, and finally, if threaded comments are enabled. If all of these conditions are met, the JavaScript required for threaded comments is added.”

Serve IE6 Visitors the Default WordPress Theme

Nathan Rice shares an clever technique to serve your IE6 visitors the Default WordPress theme (or any theme, for that matter). He even wraps it all up into a nice plugin that you can use for your site. I think this is a good middle-ground between completely ignoring IE6 and breaking your back trying to accommodate it. You could even design an “all-purpose” theme for IE6 to streamline new site development. Drag, drop and done. (404 link removed)

Embed an MP3 Widget of Any Song (Legally)

Embed an MP3 Widget of Any Song (Legally)

Let’s say you were going to start a music review site where you review individual songs. Words are great, but in this context they aren’t going to mean much unless you have the song right there to go with it that can be listened to. This presents some interesting legal problems. You can’t just upload your own copy of the song to your web server and use some kind of MP3 player on your website to present the song. That is illegal distribution of the MP3 that could get you into trouble. So this tutorial shows how to legally embed an MP3 of any song.

Setting Up a Simple Backup Process for WordPress

Use the WP-DB-Backup Plugin, have it send a copy to your email. This is what we do on DiW and it works great. Part of security is having clean and recent copies of your data in case of failure.

Editor’s note: 404 link removed.

How to Implement Tumblr-Style Links for Posts and Feeds

How to Implement Tumblr-Style Links for Posts and Feeds

Since posting the DiW tutorial on designing a Tumblelog theme for WordPress, several readers have asked for a tutorial on how to setup just the Tumblr/tumblelog-style post links …without having to implement the entire theme.

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