Author Profile: Chris Coyier
Chris Coyier is a real-world web designer who has been reaching for WordPress to power client sites for many years. He subscribes to the theory that not only is WordPress capable of powering any website it is almost always the right choice. His other projects include CodePen and Quotes on Design.
Multiple the_date() Functions Return Empty Date
Inside the loop, if you use the function the_date() to display the date the post was published, you may run into trouble. Specifically, if there are two posts published on the same day, the second one will return nothing for a date.
The Missing Stat: noscript
WordPress plugin for Google Analytics users by Remy Sharp that will start tracking visitors to your site with JavaScript disabled. This is an ever-increasingly important statistic as JavaScript becomes more and more vital to websites. Early adopters of HTML5 know that some JavaScript is needed for Internet Explorer to get the CSS to work properly. Knowing your JavaScript enabled stat may help you decide if you are ready for HTML5.
Plugin Wishes Come True
Just a quick update to the post I wrote about plugins I’m too lazy to write. Steve Whiteley put together a plugin for Subtitles that is exactly how I envisioned it. For my wishes about avoiding widows in post titles, Shaun Inman had the solution years ago. (Shaun’s site is down for me right now, but I’m sure won’t be for long).
Rude Things Plugins Can Do
I heart plugin authors. Their work is generally amazing, a huge benefit to the community, the reason why WordPress rules so much, and deserving of much worship. That being said, plugins can do some pretty rude things sometimes…
Custom Write Panels in WordPress
Function has updated their popular approach to creating custom write panels in WordPress. Now more efficient and more expandable. Write panels are basically ways to add custom fields that are a lot more user friendly than the standard custom fields area.
Editor’s note: 404 link removed.
WordPress Debug Theme
Sometimes you need to see what’s wrong with a WordPress install, and you need to see it fast. I’ve had a set of hacks around for a while to do that, but finally started combining it into a WordPress Debug Theme. This theme is quite simple for now, as it only does a few things, but does them quite effectively.
Visualizes for you all kinds of important data about the page you are looking at. All kinds of fun for us WordPress nerds.
404 link removed: https://yoast.com/wordpress-debug-theme/
Ideas for WordPress Plugins I’m Too Lazy To Write
… or slightly more accurately, ideas for plugins that I don’t know how to write =)
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
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.
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
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.
