WordPress 2.8 is one step closer to being released. The first release candidate is now available: WordPress 2.8 Release Candidate 1. I have been using WordPress 2.8 beta on a few sites now for a few weeks and have not experienced any major issues until now (I just tried to add in tags and nothing happened) – but if you want to take a look to see the changes in action or make sure your plugins/themes all function – download this version (not on production sites unless you are a risk taker).
Ever need to view all options for all your plugins (and standard WordPress options like home URL, etc)?
You can view every option available (and edit most) by going to: http://www.yoursiteurl.com/wp-admin/options.php (assuming WordPress is in the root folder).
So now if you need to look at options, make changes, or see a particular value – you can do so on one page.
There a are two functions that are used quite a bit to conditionally show content on the very front page (home page or page 1 of your blog). First - we had the function is_home(), but in WordPress version 2.5 - a new function was introduced: is_front_page().
You might think both would conditionally only display content on the home page (front page, page 1 of your blog) - but you actually need to use the following code to accomplish showing something ONLY on the front page of your paged blog:
PHP:
-
<?php if (is_front_page() && !is_paged()):?>
-
<p>Show this text only on the home page</p>
-
<?php endif;?>
So - if you want to easily show something on what I would consider the front page - use the code above to successfully achieve that. (This is particularly helpful if you have ads that run speficically on the home page and others that are ROS (run of site).
Further reading:
There are many times when you need to show or get the top most (root) parent category in WordPress - regardless of how many subcategories you might be deep. I have used this logic for page navigation (highlight the top parent tab) - as well as within some custom loops/sidebar code.
They way to do this:
PHP:
-
<?php
-
$parentCatList = get_category_parents($cat,false,',');
-
$parentCatListArray =
split(",",
$parentCatList);
-
$topParentName = $parentCatListArray[0];
-
$sdacReplace =
array(" " =>
"-",
"(" =>
"",
")" =>
"");
-
-
?>
To test this you can simply put it in your header and echo out $topParent and you will see the "slug" of the category.
If you want to see the category name and not necessarily the slug - you can simply echo $topParentName.
SDAC Inc. provided:
- XHTML/CSS/JS programming
- Custom graphic design
- Custom web design
- WordPress theme customization
- Custom AJAX functionality
technologies used:
XHTML, CSS, JS, WordPress , PHP, jQuery
front end:
When creating a web site for my own company - I wanted to make sure the color palette was consistent with the previous designs for brand recognition. I also wanted to make the design as clean as possible and easy to navigate so prospective clients could easily find information and see what we value for layout and web design since those are services we offer as a company.
back end:
Just about every content area within the site is editable by the WordPress admin. I wanted to make something easy to keep up to date and not have to edit any template files when updating text or other content.
lessons learned/random thoughts:
Designing your company web site - which specializes in web development is tricky. It took me a long time to figure out how I wanted to present content, what worked, what would be a lasting design, and what would be something I could live with for some time since I am extremely picky. I also used the grid pattern for a background which was based on the unreleased theme for Mac OS 8.5 which I always admired.
WordPress 2.6.2 has officially been released. The update is primarily a security update along with a few bug fixes (see full list). For more information on WordPress version 2.6.2, read the official WordPress version 2.6.2 documentation.
Download the latest versions of WordPress: WordPress 2.6.2
WordPress 2.6.1 has officially been released. The updated includes almost 60 bugfixes (see full list). For more information on WordPress version 2.6.1, read the official WordPress version 2.6.1 documentation.
Download the latest versions of WordPress: WordPress 2.6.1
SDAC Inc. provided:
- XHTML/CSS programming
- WordPress theme customization
technologies used:
XHTML, CSS, WordPress , PHP, CSS
front end:
The client came to me after purchasing a news theme (Remix) and wanted some customizations (colors, layout) and added logic.
back end:
I added in a lot of custom logic to dynamically control the header image which changes on per category, and also custom logic to the sidebar so the client can easily add related links and have them show up dynamically per category. I added some custom plugins to take care of these issues as well as the images on the homepage. All the customizations make it easier for the client to control the output of content while using WordPress's admin.
lessons learned/random thoughts:
It is wonderful to be able to travel as much as this client did - I look forward to seeing their upcoming trips documented!
WordPress 2.6 has officially been released. The new version includes almost 200 bugfixes (see full list) and now includes some of new features as well like post versioning, drag and drop sorting for galleries, word count, image captions, separation of active and inactive plugins, and more. For more information on WordPress version 2.6, read the official WordPress version 2.6 documentation.
Download the latest versions of WordPress: WordPress 2.6
If you ever wanted to only show the content of the category you were on in the category view of WordPress (instead of the category you are on plus all of it's subcategories - you can easily do so by adding the code below to the template that is used to show your category content
You would start your loop with this:
PHP:
-
<?php $cat =
intval( get_query_var
('cat') );
while (have_posts
()) : the_post
();
if (in_category
($cat) ) :
?>
Put your title, content functions here
and where you normally see the
call, put
to close the additional (in_category) if statement.
This code gets the current category and then only displays categories that are in that category (not sub category)
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