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 »

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…

Examples of adding fields to WordPress Metabox

A few days ago, we was talking about how to construct a WordPress metabox for a couple of fields, today we will extend that example with several examples of code for adding different kinds of fields.

Examples of adding fields to WordPress Metabox

The fields of a regular WordPress metabox are almost always constructed using a <p></p> HTML tag so, in general, the main structure of any field for a metabox should be like this. Continue reading…

Your plugins ready for WordPress PolyGlots

Perhaps, you are writing a new WordPress plugin and perhaps, you do want to translate it… If this is your case, there are two approaches: to translate the code via a code translator programme, for example PoEdit, or to use the translations WordPress system called PolyGlots.

Close up of the Rosetta Stone replica

In the first case –translating via an external programme– you just follow the general i18n WordPress developement recomendations for local languages but, if you have choosen WordPress PolyGlots plataform then, in addition to the general i18n rules, you have to do some little changes in the code of your plugin. In fact, there are not a lot of changes to do, just a few ones. Continue reading…

Plugin Spanish Quote of the Day

Spanish Quote of the Day automatically shows a random formatted notable quote in spanish inside your WordPress Themes. The spanish quote is collectted by random from todopensamientos.com’s database therefore it’s not necessary that you have your own database of quotes; Spanish Quote of the Day gives them to you. Simple put the widget Spanish Quote of the Day in any of your theme sidebars; its operation is automatic. See plugin details »

Constructing WP themes or plugins that take into account future gender translations (2)

Few days ago I began a serie of articles about how to design a WordPress Theme that facilitates that in the future it is possible to make a translation that takes into account the gender. In the first article I suggested a little technique to mark the Post Type (and for extension Taxonomy) objects including a new property that keeps the gender of the object and that depends on the translation today I’m going to extend this technique also for the labels of the Post type inside the Admin interface.

The #superhero bathroom at  @CommonDesk #fordtx #digitaldallas

As we saw, the core of the first proposal consists of adding one more line inside the array that is used to register any post type Continue reading…

Checkbox fields in WordPress Metaboxes a solution for NULL values

Talking about forms, one of the most common issues is that checkbox fields don’t return any value when they are not checked. We just receive their values -usually TRUE- when they are checked but if they are unchecked they ‘say’ nothing. What can we do?

Checkbox fields in WordPress Metaboxes a solution for NULL values

This behavior of checkboxes fields is not an error, long time ago they was designed in that way (they are silent) however, in most cases,  this behaviour is a problem because the lacking of value doesn’t allow developers to know whether there is not actually a value, or if the value is actually FALSE. There is not difference between NOTHING and FALSE so Continue reading…

How to add a Metabox. A step by step approach. add_meta_box

The WordPress posts edit Tool is not an unique compact module that shows all the boxes that appear on the screen but it’s a set of different little modules –called metaboxes– working together. A little module controls the title, another one controls the visual editor, another one defines the publishing options and actions, another one is for the Post Format… the Categories, the Author’s post, etc. The reason of this modular design is to allow developers to introduce easily new boxes (or remove some ones) in the Edit Screen.

The Edit Screen of Posts and its different Metaboxes

So thanks to this modular design, we can create our metaboxes for adding new functionalities or data to the WordPress Posts Continue reading…

Constructing WP themes or plugins that take into account future gender translations

Actually, there is not a simple solution for avoid the gender issue if you are translating a WP theme or plugin to languages that take into account the gender for selecting the words of a sentence. Simple, try to substitute the gendered words or expression for others that feet into the sentence without too many problems… But if you are not translating but creating a new theme or plugin you can use a simple set of techniques –better maybe suggestions–, that will allow future translators for dealing to this kind of problems with better results. Let’s go to see three simple proposals.

Rest area

But, before to go to the solution, let me show you a tiny example of this kind of gender issues. Continue reading…