How to add Categories and Tags to wp Pages

Historically, categories and tags have always been associated only with wp publications; they are one of the pillars of the classification and search of information in wp, and normally this approach is more than enough for most websites. However, when talking about medium and large size websites, the lack of this technique applied to standard wp pages is not a good scenario.

line markers

The pages, habitually static information not subject to a date (unlike posts), hardly ever need to be classified or searched… they have mostly been accessed through menus but what can we do if we need to add Categories, Tags or even custom taxonomies to Pages? 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…

Strategies for URL redirection in WordPress front-end pages

I know that is not a common situation but sometimes it’s necessary to redirect the current page to another URL. Inside WordPress back-end is relatively simple but from the WordPress front-end templates that shows the Posts, Pages… It’s a little more complicated.

Change direction

In this article we’ll see some strategies for redirecting the URLs, all of them based in using the WP function template_redirectContinue reading…

Additional Fields to the WordPress Media Uploader

In general, WordPress Media Uploader module has enogh data fields for identifying perfectly any of its elements, images, videos or whatever however, some times, you need not just identifying, for example an image, but to add some information about the exact url source, technical data about the place where it was taken, the people that appears in a photo, etc. In this cases, you need to add some more data fields to the WordPress Media Uploader.

How to add additional fields to the WordPress Media Uploader

In this example, we’re going to suppose that we want to add the name of the place where a photo was taken and, for example, the name of the client for who we are working thus, two additional fields because. By the way, if you was thinking in adding fields to keep the technical information of the photo Continue reading…

How to show all post types in Front Page results

Every day more websites use the Post Types extension of WordPress. They are not publishing just (simple) posts but they publish recipes, people profiles, city reviews, testimonials, or whatever you could imagine. It’s fantastic to be able to works easily with all these kinks of different information both in Front End and Back End however, when you access to your Front Page these Post Types aren’t shown in the results list of the main query. Are they shy? What can we do?

Army Photography Contest - 2007 - FMWRC - Arts and Crafts - A Plumpish Proportion

This behaviour is because of the relationship between the kind of executed WP query and the URL that you are typing in your browser. When you register a new Post Type inside your themes or plugins, WordPress automatically creates a new Continue reading…

Changing the user’s Contact Info fields

By default, WordPress still maintains very old contact info fields for users so the most probable is that you want to improve them and, on the other hand, despite of some themes or plugins have already made this change, probably you don’t want either that these improvements depend on one installed theme or plugin but rather they always keep available.

Improving User’s Contact Info

So, in this example, we’re going to develope a simple plugin that makes three different things Continue reading…

Configuring WordPress Automatic Background Updates

Automatic background WordPress updates were introduced in versión 3.7 and since then, this module has been maintaining your installation updated and ready for working however in some cases, you don’t desire that your WordPress installation changes without your permission. Perhaps for compatibility with a special developement addition, perhaps for some non updated but critical plugin or any other reason you do need to control manually the WordPress Updates. If this is your case then go ahead but rather it is much better to leave the maintenance module quiet.

Configuring WordPress Automatic Background Updates

As the official documentation explains about the Automatic Background Update Module, this module has 4 different Types of working. Continue reading…

Showing posts with different templates, the “single_template” filter

Habitualy, the WordPress template hierarchy for posts, uses a simple descendant decision tree for choosing which single_template.php file is going to be used for showing a single post. This decision tree is quite usefull so that, simply creating a .php file called like single, single-posttype, etc., it’s possible to control very accurately which template will be used for showing data.

Normal Decision Tree for Single Elements

However, in contrast of pages that each one can have its own template, ie, they have a very flexible decision rules, choosing the templates for posts is ruled by criterias more restrictive based in sets of elements Continue reading…

How to modify the FavIcon links of the function wp_site_icon in WordPress?

Since version 4.3 WordPress introduces the ability to add a Icon automaticly to your site through the Customizer / Site Identity module. In fact this icon is known as the FavIcon and it is based in a very fuzzy and changing specification that, in addition, depends on the devices to what the favicon is prepared for, so WordPress developers team has logically opted for an very standard HTML output for favIcons. This standard HTML output works but perhaps you want to improve, extend or adapt it to other devices or programmes that are going to read it and use it. (See the next examples).

New Gmail favicon

favicons

Favicon for the Birdies 100 blog

There are several methods for changing this HTML FavIcon output and include improved sentences for its definition, ones more radicals, ones more WordPress code friendly, but in this example I’m going to propouse one method based on the conservative approaches so I’ll use a filter instead of redefine the list of actions attached Continue reading…

Modifying the HTML <title> tag in a WordPress Site

As default, WordPress automaticaly generates quite good HTML <title> tags for the different pages of a website. These HTML <title> tags usually fit well with the content of the page and for us, the human beings, these tags are more than enough for understanding. On the other hand, these HTML <title> tags (hereinafter simply, titles) are also interpreted for the programmes: the browsers just show these titles but web crawlers engines use titles for understanding the global meaning of the content and, depending on them, the pages are classified and included (or not) in the results of a search and this last it’s very important if we are talking about SEO. Good title, good SEO. Poor title… well, you know. So the most probably is that you want to improve a litle bit your HTML <title> Tag. Do you want?

Modifying the html ‘title’ tag

Time ago, for modifying the titles WordPress only offers one posibility, to filter the output of the function wp_title however, since version 4.1, WordPress also offers another possibility, Continue reading…