How to create an AJAX call in WordPress step by step

WordPress essentially works thanks to PHP language that gets the requests from users and admins, processes these requests and finally constructs the results as HTML pages, ie, PHP sends to you the pages that you see in the browser. Request, process, results; it’s simple. Sometimes however, you need control some elements of the screen after the HTML page has been sent and displayed: a special message on the screen after a checkbox has been checked, the change of an image depending on a select field, etc. and you don’t want to make a new request again. You want that these little elements change on the screen without repeat the whole process of request, process, results… In these cases you need to use the AJAX technique.

The first historical reference to AJAX technique (Roman Villa at Halicarnassus, 4th century AD)

Beyond this more than dubious historical reference of the previous illustration 🙂 , AJAX is a technology of developement supported by javascript and designed precisely for doing these kind of tasks, ie, to comunicate the client site to the server side silently, without a complete requests, just with the execution of a concrete funcion or module on the server side with a few concrete results. Continue reading…

Creating a Table of Contents for your Pages

WordPress has got the hability to work with nuclear posts and also with posts that can contain other posts, ie, posts with hierarchical structure, the pages. Today we’re going to see how to create a hierarchical list of the second ones, as an index of pages, Table of contents (TOC), etc.

Panzerbaum

As default, WordPress supports two different kinds of elements: posts and pages. The basic difference between them is that the first ones are treated as individual elements and thus, when WordPress displays a collection of them, this will be just a long linear list of elements (like the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, for example) meanwhile the second ones have got a hierachical structure, ie, each element can contain (to point to) elements that have also got hierarchical structure and can contain (to point to) other elements and so on, in consequence, when WordPress displays a collection of them, it should be always presented as a tree and never as a list. Continue reading…

Creating WP help tabs in admin, plugins or themes pages

WordPress has got a help manager very simple, just a couple of functions, so you can easily use it for creating help screen for your own developements. Learn you step by step how the WP help manager works, and how to use it.

Creating WP helps for your plugins and themes

But before beginning to create our own WP help pages, first we should see the internal structure of the WP help manager that, basically has just got two modules. Continue reading…

Plugin reCAPTCHA in WP comments form plugin

reCAPTCHA in WP comments form plugin is an ANTISPAM tool that adds a Google reCAPTCHA field inside the comments form of your WP theme when the user is not logged in preventing fraudulent or deceptive comments.

The plugin also introduces a second verification process that detects the unauthorized direct accesses by spam robots to the WP comments system and allows you to decide what you want to do with those comments.

Finally, the plugin has got an optional forced javascript output mode that lets you to add a reCAPTCHA field also in old WP themes that didn’t use the new WP form comments functions but they make a direct output of its own comments form.

 See plugin details »

How to detect when get_template_part() WordPress function fails

Nowadays, in most of modern WordPress themes, the function get_template_part() is one of their essential elements. It just takes review the structure of, for example the last official themes (…, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen), to realize that WordPress themes have evolved, from a structure quite monolitic to a structure driven by content and formats. And one of the keys to this evolution is the get_template_part () function.

silent diversity

get_template_part() it’s actually an invaluable element of any modern WordPress theme that through its two parameters allows us to select dynamically what .php file (what part) is going to be loaded for displaying the current page (see the official documentation for further information) however, one of its characteristics is that Continue reading…

Selective enqueueing of WordPress scripts and styles through conditional loading

Both in front and back end, WordPress themes and plugins usually enqueue styles and scripts; the real cornerstone of the our work. Security systems, communications, silent or programmed operations, intelligent data process… Most of these common operations have in their backgrounds the loading of scripts and styles. Today we’re going to see how design a selective loading of these components.

Big, big tires

Habitually, the loading of scripts and styles is made by themes and plugins through the functions.php and the /root-plugin-folder/plugin-name.php files respectively. In both cases, usually there is (are) a little function in these php files that programmes the loading of all of these essential components. Continue reading…

Using Post Formats with your custom WordPress Post Types

Since versión 3.1, WordPress introduced a new theme feature called Post Formats that, basically, allows us to divide a regular WordPress Post Type in subsets based on the nature of the information that a post includes, ie, you can have regular posts, but you can also have posts that specifically contain a video, or an image, etc. In case of the Post Type post, most of the popular WP themes already includes support for styling its Post Formats but, what can we do for using Post Formats in case of our custom Post Types?

macarons

The proposed method is quite easy and it simply extends the habitually used technic for dealing with Post Formats inside WordPress templates, in other words, we’ll create a refined system for loading the content-{$post_format_slug}.php subtemplates. Continue reading…

How to change the WordPress post updated messages of the edit screen

WordPress posts edit interface has got a good information messages system for all user actions. It doesn’t matter what is the done action, WordPress talks to us: draft saved, post updated, published… Actually, it’s a perfect information system if regulary you only publish posts or sometimes a new page, ie, if you have just got a blog but, when your website has other kinds of information (films, cats, recipies, products…) WordPress keeps saying “post updated” and in fact, you are editing an actor’s profile, or a recipe, or whatever, but not a post… Would not it be awesome that WordPress says “Actor profile updated”, or “Recipe improved” or any message more like the natural language? So, if you don’t want that WordPress talks like a machine, you need use post_updated_messages.

Some examples of WordPress post updated messages on the edit screen

I’m sure that if your website talks about recipes, or actor profiles (whatever that is not a post), you are used to use the WP function register_post_type but probably you don’t know that there is another option that works together with register_post_type that allows us also to change the information messages related with these new kinds of information Continue reading…