Tag: WordPress

Categories
Development

Display WordPress Child Pages as a List of Links

After figuring this one out, it’s really easy to do but I did have a hard time since I didn’t bother to check and see if a specific function already existed to do this behavior.

I wanted to display all the child pages of a Page as an unordered list. I initially tried using the WP_Query function to make this work. I tried creating a loop and feeding it some parameters, but kept getting no results.

Upon some further searching I did come across the wp_list_pages() function. I’m not sure why I didn’t begin with this, but for some reason I was set on using WP_Query.

There’s a ton of parameters and some great examples found on the wp_list_pages() page.

Here’s the little bit of code I added to a template to output the child pages as a list. Notice that the parent page’s id is the 32 that you will see as a parameter below. Enter whatever your parent page’s id is in it’s place.

wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&title_li=&child_of=32');

Doesn’t really get much easier that that.

Categories
Development

Output WordPress Gallery In Sidebar

A client really wanted to make use of the built in WordPress gallery shortcode. It’s a really cool built in feature to WordPress that easily allows them to manage basic photo galleries. But we wanted the gallery thumbnails to be generated in a sidebar, not the actual Page or Post.

This took a bit of time to figure out how to do, but luckily it was right in front of me in the WordPress documentation.  I just entered the following in the sidebar.php file (just gallery in the brackets):

echo do_shortcode('[the-word-gallery-goes-here]');

You can add that standard gallery shortcode options to that as well. So simple, I can’t believe it took me as long as it did to figure this one out.

Categories
Development

Automatic WordPress Backup

I just downloaded and installed the very cool Automatic WordPress Backup plugin. It automatically backups your WordPress blog to the Amazon S3 service. Since I already have an S3 account (which is awesome too by the way), this was an ideal solution for me.

Downloaded, install and setup took no more that 5 minutes tops. Not only was this incredibly easy to setup and manage, but it’s great to have backups not on the same server as my host or kept locally either. The only potential drawback would be that your host must be a Linux server, but this of course is not a problem for me.

If you have WordPress blog and an Amazon S3 account then this is most highly recommended.

Categories
Development

Vote My Vote

Vote My VoteI’ve been busy doing some work for a really cool site, Vote My Vote. It’s a really cool community voting site for TV’s most popular shows. You sign up and they go through the hassle of calling in your vote for you. While I rarely watch any of those type of shows, I do have to admit I think it’s a very slick idea.

I primarily assisted with some Joomla development and configuration. Someone had been doing that role before me, so coming into a project that someone had already begun had it’s challenging moments (a white error screen of death for instance). But solving their issues and helping deliver a really cool finished (or very close to being finished) product was very gratifying.

I haven’t met a single member of the team who worked on this site in person, nor even spoke on the phone. It’s really amazing how people from all over can successfully collaborate on a project. I was fortunate to work with an extremely talented bunch of individuals on this project.

The primary tasks I assisted with were:

  • setup and the automatic population of the blog. We used the CorePHP WordPress MU component to help us with this.
  • Community Builder user registration. Ummm, there were moments I despised you Community Builder, but in the end we figured you out and you are doing your job.
  • Pulling in the latest forum posts to their respective areas.
  • Good deal of assist with other Joomla odds and ends. My hands got dirty with much PHP on this project. It was lots of fun.

Check out votemyvote.com, and let anyone you know who’s addicted to those reality shows about it.

Categories
Development

WordPress 2.9 Embeds

WordPress 2.9 was released today, and the upgrade has some very impressive features. So far the coolest one to me and I’m sure that will be for many of my clients is the Embeds functionality.

Now all you have to do to embed something into a Post or Page is to simply paste the video’s URL on a separate line. WordPress will automatically properly embed the URL. It supports most of the popular formats.

Previously I’ve come up with some Custom Fields solutions to do something very similar to this, but building it right into WordPress should make the process even easier. Thanks WordPress, very cool.

Check out all the other WordPress 2.9 goodness.

Categories
Design Development

Playtown Cafe

Playtown CafeFinished up a site a few weeks ago for Playtown Cafe in Boca Raton, Florida. They were looking for a website and overall design package that was unique, fun, and really stood out. Geoff designed a logo for them that really nailed all those requirements.

The site is powered by WordPress, so that the client can easily maintain the site on their own. The client who claimed to be, “horrible with computers” was able to pick up the WordPress CMS in very short time and has really run with it. It’s always great when you can have a client see how easy it is to keep a site fresh and up to date using the latest web technologies available today.

Under the hood this site is using some very impressive technology to power it.

Working with client was a great experience. They had a great idea of what they needed, but also were open enough with creative and tech input that was a pleasure to work with. Check out Playtown Cafe.