WordPress Development

CloudFlare vs BlueHost Performance: Is switching worth it?

A few months back (around September 2012), BlueHost and others started advertising--maybe even pushing--CloudFlare to its users. The promise was/is that CloudFlare will speed up your website using a content delivery network (CDN). They say it's a relatively easy thing to set up and BlueHost even has an integrated piece to facilitate it smoothly from with their own control panel. "I'm thinking of switching to Cloud Flare. Is this a good move or can this end up being a disaster? I've not read … [Read more...]

WP Google Fonts Plugin

I had the pleasure of getting involved with the development of the excellent WP Google Fonts plugin by Adrian Hanft starting with version 3.0. Adrian reached out to see if I'd be interested in helping take WP Google Fonts to the next level by integrating it with the Google Webfonts API. Prior to v3.0, the plugin used a list of fonts meticulously and manually updated by Adrian. Since the plugin's conception, the Google Fonts foundry came alive with new fonts being added at an ever increasing … [Read more...]

Relating Posts, Pages, and Custom Post Types in WordPress

I received a question from a fellow WordPress designer/developer recently on how I was able to bring content from related pages and posts into any page, post, or custom post type. "I like the way you pull in posts featured images and also page featured images on the bottom of pages.  It keeps the site hoping.  I wasn't able to find a plugin that would pull in featured images on both posts and pages and all of them seemed to be recent posts or random.  And then I tried to use categories in post … [Read more...]

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) and Site Slowness

I've used the excellent Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) for about a year-and-a-half now on various client websites. Overall, I've found that it works great and has a responsive author who cares about updating and performance issues. Why this post then? Because after experiencing deadly slow post updating and post saving on a client site over the span of more than 60 days, we were finally able to track down that YARPP was causing saving or updating posts and pages to take more than a … [Read more...]

Style Nth Word In a Phrase

The CSS Scenario Recently my graphic designer used a nice styling on a client's webpage headlines--all words in the headline were one color and the last word was a different color. It adds for a nice effect I think. Of course, as the developer I'm the one who has the responsibility to bring that to life. After a few quick searches on Google for phrases like, CSS Style Nth Word CSS style last word, CSS style first word php style nth word, php style first word, php get first … [Read more...]

Hawaii Picture of the Day

I just launched the Hawaii Picture of the Day website. I'm particularly pleased with the widget and iGoogle gadget I wrote so people can add it to their own sites. Here's how the site widget looks in real time: The site concept is simple: post good pictures of Hawaii to help people discover, be inspired, and be refreshed--daily. The site is built on WordPress and integrates tightly with MailChimp for e-newsletter subscribing and sending. Just publish a new post and an email with the post's … [Read more...]

Add A CSS Class to WordPress Insert/Edit Link Dropdown

WordPress Situation Note: This applies to WordPress 3.0.1 versions and prior. Newer versions of WordPress use a different insert link box and this solution no longer works. Want to have a way to format a link in the WordPress content editor box using only the "Visual" tab (ie not having to go to the "HTML" tab and manually type in a class for the link. Solution Add a CSS class to the insert/edit link dropdown menu The Reason Although we (developers and designers) tell our clients that … [Read more...]

WordPress Super Cache and Setting Cookies

WP Super Cache and PHP Cookies Don't Mix Website Development Challenge: Setting PHP Cookies While Using WP Super Cache Solution: Set the cookie using Javascript When I created the First Touch Referral Tracking plugin, it seemed like it should be pretty straight forward: check for a cookie with a referrer and set a cookie with the referrer if there's not one. Then, simply grab the cookie whenever it's needed and calculate a referral coupon code. So, I wrote the code using PHP's setcookie() … [Read more...]