Archive for May 2010
WordPress caching, Part 2
As I mentioned in WordPress caching part 1, WordPress has built-in caching that can be hooked into by plugins such as W3 Total Cache and Batcache (developed by Andy Skelton who is employed by Automattic).
In this article I am going to explain how I make use of WordPress internal caching - also know as the persistant cache - to speed up my site (and in turn Elemental).
What the persistant cache does ...
Add Website Favicons to Your WordPress Comments in 5 Minutes
Anybody who has been following my website will know that I like to use free services to reduce my development time wherever possible - and this post is no exception. I am going to show you how to use a little known Google service to find the favicon for a specific website and then use that favicon on the trackbacks of your blog.
What is a favicon?A favicon is the tiny icon you can see in the url bar at the ...
6 Tips to Build Better WordPress Themes
If you want to make WordPress themes, for clients, to release for free or to sell, then there are a lot of factors you need to take into consideration. Below are some hints and tips that should help ease your development process.
1. Think Like a UserIf you are building a theme for yourself, or for a client, this isn't quite so relevant, but if you're building a theme to sell (such as my themes on Pro Theme Design), or ...
file_get_contents : An Alternative to cURL
In my post about cURL the other day Matt mentioned that file_get_contents is a simpler method to use, and in many ways he's right.
file_get_contents is a PHP functions that gets the contents of a file. Unlike cURL it doesn't require any configuration so you can simply call it as so:
$data = file_get_contents('http://url_to/get_contents/from');There are some disadvantages, a big one being that some webhosts block the function, but for really quick data retrieval this function is perfect.
Using file_get_contents the ...
How to Integrate Twitters @Anywhere with your WordPress Comments
Last week Twitter released @Anywhere, a system for more easily integrating Twitters features into your website. I'm a bit of a fan of Twitter so decided I wanted to add it to Binary Moon, and on Saturday I released the first version.
The first place I saw this functionality was on Webmaster Source, so I asked Matt if he would share his code with me - and very kindly he said yes. I then integrated the functionality into my ...
How to Add Widgets to your WordPress Themes
Adding widgets to a WordPress theme is a fantastic way to make things really easy to customise for the people who use the theme. Below is a really quick explanation of how to add them to your own themes.
Creating widget areas is actually really simple - there are only two steps in the process. The first is initializing the widget area, and the second is inserting the widgets into your ...
Just Added Twitters @Anywhere to Binary Moon
Thanks to some pointers from Matt at Webmaster Source I now have Twitter @Anywhere functionality on Binary Moon.
If you post a comment you can include your Twitter username in the comment, and it will then be added to your comment. I suspect I will change how this is laid out/ designed in the future but it all works perfectly as it is. The functionality is actually built into my WordPress theme,
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