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Using TimThumb Part 4: Moving the Crop Location
Moving the crop position around is by far the most popular feature that has been requested for TimThumb. And today it has been officially released!
To be honest the cropping code was something I had put off as I wanted to keep things nice and easy to use; but then a month ago I found a comment on the TimThumb Google Code page that gave me a nice simple method for adding the alignment code.
Using TimThumb Part 3: Image Filters
So far I have documented the basic TimThumb functionality, and how to resize images that are on external domains and now things can get interesting. In this part I will talk about some of the features that have been available for a while, but never officially documented - Image Filters.
Image FiltersWhen I talk about image filters I mean the types of effects you can get in Photoshop or most other image ...
Using TimThumb Part 2: External Websites
Of all the TimThumb feature requests the most popular are being able to crop an image from a specified location, and being able to load images from external websites. Resizing images from external images was added at the start of 2010 and seems to be working really well.
Like all things TimThumb I tried to make it as easy as possible to use the external images feature, however I had to keep security ...
Using TimThumb part 1: Getting Started
TimThumb has always been built with simplicity in mind. However there are a few things it can do that have not been exposed before.
Inspired by a comment from RBhavesh I have decided to write a series of posts in which I will show you how TimThumb should be used - and introduce some new functionality.
In this post I will discuss the basic usage of the script - the minimum parameters to ...
The Green Zone
Let's get this out of the way quickly. Yes this is Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass, but it's not the Bourne Identity. Not close.
One similarity the two films share is the shaky cam stylings. It's everywhere, even more so than the Bourne films. Thankfully this doesn't bother me at all but I know a couple of people who have issues with motion sickness and I'm pretty sure this would have triggered it rather quickly.
From a factual point of view the ...
Easy WordPress Updates: Store FTP Info in wp-config.php
Saw an interesting blog post on Twitter today about storing WordPress FTP information in wp-config.php. The article was written in German so I sent the author an email to ask if he'd mind me translating it. Phil, the author, very kindly said yes - so my translation is below.
Since the addition of the automatic updates in the WordPress core became available, there has been the possibility of FTP data in the backend. Then ...
Sumo Gamer
A couple of years ago Sumo sent me a Sumo Omni bean bag to review. It was fantastic for relaxing on, in particular for sitting around and playing video games or watching movies. But now its time for something new. The Sumo Gamer.
On paper the Gamer is smaller than the Omni. Width and depth are less, but the height (and so the volume) more than make up for this... in ...
Hints and Tips to Make Your WordPress Development Easier
Recently I was contacted on Twitter by Josh Fialkoff how I develop WordPress themes, and I thought the answer would make for perfect blog fodder.
I used to work entirely on my local computer, with apache, mysql, and php installed (XAMPP on Windows, MAMP on Mac), however working like that made collaboration really tough so I decided to move online, and that's what I am going to ...
Improve Your Blog, Revisit Old Content
Recently I have spent some time trying to improve the page views on my website.
Rather than trying to increase the promotion and links I have focused on the site itself, looking at how I could improve the content itself to improve SEO and increase the amount of pages each visitor views.
My goal with these improvements is to try to set up myself as a WordPress and Web Development 'guru', and to increase my subscriber list. So I am focusing ...
Lowercase p, dangit! WordPress Controversy
There has recently been a new piece of code added to the WordPress core which makes sure that people spell WordPress correctly - automatically correcting misspellings (ie. making the P in the middle uppercase).
On its own this seems harmless enough but there has been a lot of talk in the WordPress community about it over the last couple of days. Summed up the key issues are:
The plugin is breaking urls such as links and image paths WordPress is modifying content without ...Screenflow and My First Screencast
I recently recorded my first screencast for Pro Theme Design showcasing the new features for my WordPress theme Elemental.
To make my life easier I purchased a copy of Screenflow for my Mac. Screenflow is designed specifically for recording and editing screencasts. It has a wealth of features and is really simple to use. It's not perfect but is well worth the money and saved me a lot ...
The Wolfman
The Wolfman is a remake of a classic horror movie. Re-imagining the story and bringing the special effects bang up to date.
On paper the cast sounds great. Anthony Hopkins rarely disappoints, Benicio Del Toro already looks wolf like, and Hugo Weaving is just plain awesome. However the decision to make Benicio the son of an Englishman, even one who has lived in America, is just strange. His accent never quite seems to go away and I ...
Facebook Hackathon 2010
Today I am at the London Facebook Hackathon 2010. A bunch of developers in London are going to build Open Graph apps, and then show them off to some Facebook Execs. The best will be presented to Mark Zuckerberg tomorrow.
Unfortunately I am between a rock and a hard place. I don't want to do a presentation (can't stand them) but I do want to win. Regardless I'm going to do my best and see what happens.
Below is a gallery of ...
WordPress Caching, part 3: Custom Caching Library
When building Elemental (WordPress Theme) I decided to develop my own, very simple, caching plugin to help speed up the theme.
There were a few reasons why I did it but the main ones were:
I was doing things with public apis that have an hourly request limit, so I had to build some sort of data cache. Whilst wp_super_cache and W3 Total Cache are well known there's no guarantee people will use it. I thought it would be interesting to learn how.How to Remove the Google Background Image
Today Google have changed their homepage to show off their new photographic wallpapers (copied from Bing).
Now I'm as much of a Google fan as most web designers are (ie I like them and use all their products) but I don't like these images.
Thankfully Google realised people might not want the backgrounds and included a (slightly complicated) way to remove the background image. Apparently the images are ...
What do you want me to write about?
?
Part of improving my website involves me wanting to write about the sort of things you want to read about.
If you could take 1 minute to answer 1 quick question then that would really help me to work out what to write about next.
To give you some ideas I've written quite a few posts about WordPress recently, some of the most popular are below:
10 WordPress query_posts tips you probably don’t know Creating Your Own WordPress Permalink ...Inception – Awesome New Movie Trailer
Just seen the latest trailer for Christopher Nolans next film, Inception. It looks absolutely awesome. I've liked so many of his films, it's great to see his creativity continue.
The film seems to have influences from all over and still be something totally new. The things you can do with computers these days are amazing, it seems there's no limit to the imagination - and this film seems to do some crazy stuff without it looking cheesey or ridiculous. ...
CSS Only Button – Redux
The other day a post was published on Hongkiat showing how to make a button using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) only. However it was misleading, the CSS only button also used JavaScript, and an image or 2. It was actually a really simple button so I thought I would rebuild it myself and explain what I did and why.
Note that to get the full effect you need to use a webkit based browser, Chrome or Safari will do ...
Optimizing Binary Moon
Recently I have spent quite a bit of time noodling around with different settings and functionality on Binary Moon.
I have been altering elements positions on the page, adding and removing things, and changing how things work. All in an effort to improve the user experience and to, hopefully, increase the number of people who visit the site.
This isn't something I've ever done before. Previously I have always gone with my gut ...
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 ...
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