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…

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…

Using Social Icons -socicon- Font

More or less a week ago, we was talking about the font genericon, principally for constructing wonderful social menus. Genericons is a good font but if you need really add a lot of social profiles, it’s probably that you don’t find the most unknown or inhabitual profiles. If this is your case, your icons font is Socicon Font.

Using Social Icons -socicon- Font

SocIcon font is a very good font that includes more that one hundred of social profiles icons: the most known that you probably can find in any other icons font but also the most unknown, rare… So, it’s actually a good options if your website has a strong social character.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…

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…

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…

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…

Using the Post Type description in WordPress Themes

Sometimes, especially in the case of an items list, apart from the header/title of the list, we would want to add some text as an introduction for these items: a global suggestion, perhaps a couple of interesting links, a descriptive or in detail approach about the items, a definition, etc. When the items to list are inside a Category or a Tag, to add a header with description is obvious because, simply taking a look to the screen for editing terms, all of us know that they have a description but, do you know that post types have also got a description, and that you can use it in your themes?

An example of using the Post Type description in WordPress Themes

Yes, in the same way that with the terms of a taxonomy, WordPress Post Types have also got a field to add a description thus, you can use this property of the Post Type object to introduce any text that you want and 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…