Kahi’s WordPress Notes

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Single wp-config for web and localhost

Published: On Saturday, August 8, 2009
Pretty usual routine is to develop site on localhost server and after some progress move it online. This transfer is complicated by three not-always-necessary steps.
1. database settings in wp-config.php file are different
2. settings of home- and site- URLs are different (defaultly located in wp_options table)
3. eventually the base-path in .htaccess file is different
First two points can be easily solved by using single wp-config. Especially is the benefit visible at the point #2, when you don't have to browse phpMyAdmin for that 2 particular rows, because these paths are written into wp-config.php file.
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Voted for media features in 2.9

Published: On Thursday, July 9, 2009

On topic of the recent (and today still running) survey on media handling / library / related settings and similar stuff I want to say a little word.

I don't fully understand all of the proposed enhancements, although they were „explained“ in the announcing article as well as at beginning of the survey itself. I think it's sometimes possible to imagine various (quite different) things under each of the definitions.

I can't say how much I a particular feature want, since each feature can be implemented in many ways and the way of implementation can influence my „desire“ for feature very much (I suppose). That makes answering even more complicated.

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Kahi’s Highlight Used Categories, a plugin

Published: On Saturday, March 7, 2009

This plugin allows to highlight used categories – when you're browsing a post (or ev. a page) filed under some categories, these are (in the category list) marked by adding specific class.

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My little experience with the queue of scripts

Published: On Monday, February 16, 2009
- Sometimes you might be surprised, that WordPress/eventually a plugin (from an unknown reason) enqueued jQuery (not speaking about administration but public template!). De-queuing is simple: Call wp_deregister_script('jquery'); before wp_head(); is run, where the scripts are usually printed out from the queue.
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Who owns the function? [from Plugins development series]

Published: On Thursday, February 12, 2009
Once again, I find useful to ~~recommend~~ remind one important practice, when writing a plugin.

Be sure, that user will notice, he's using functions of your plugin.

Life example: In the first project, user did use the get_meta function and expected, it's a core function. It didn't do anything specific. Why should he ever expect, it's part of a plugin? But once he tried to use this function elsewhere, it surprisingly failed, function wasn't found. The (in other ways great) plugin called More fields was missing.

Two ways how to emphasize function's owner:
- prefix function-name with your unique signature (will also lower the risk of name-collision): get_meta ⇒ mf_get_meta
- use a bundling class: get_meta ⇒ MoreFields::get_meta
Actually, WordPress itself should practise this habit too – since any function is in fact a part of a bigger unit.
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Introducing WP “Notes” plugin

Published: On Sunday, January 18, 2009

I had free hour and half today and God knows why I decided to do this plugin. Simple, but extremely useful, in my opinion. For me, it's place to leave notes about future articles, possible topics, ToDos connected with that particular WP site.

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Localhost / Web switch function

Published: On Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Sometimes happens to me, that the (db) content of WP site is simply out-of-sync with the copy running on localhost. I'd like to do some changes, let's say add Pages and since I want to do it fast, I don't care about synchronisation (which means 1. sql dump download 2. sql import 3. modifications in wp_options).

In these cases of unsynchronized databases, I often encounter the fact of different IDs: a new page created on localhost first won't finally have the same post-ID online. Now, I need to use in template a condition like is_page(...) — but I know, it will work either on localhost or on the web. Following simple switch-like-working function can be the solution.

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Dashboard’s Right now / WordPress interface elements

Published: On Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Dmitry at Usability Post started quite interesting discussion to his article A Slip in the WordPress 2.7 Dashboard Interface in which he lightly critisized Right now box, one of the new items on 2.7's improved dashboard. He correctly pointed out, that separation between rows but not columns can easily lead to a misinterpretation of contained information. His thought was confirmed by optinions of a few commenters who indeed were confused by actual graphical implementation of the box.

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And why do *you* need the dashboard?

Published: On Saturday, January 3, 2009

… might sound like a stupid question. Truth is, I don't need the WordPress dashboard and therefore I don't use it. For me, it's simply useless. (That's why I made Dashboard Skip plugin.)

I am quite interested in which point are my needs different in comparison with yours, what is your motivation to use the dashboard (I presume, most people do have a reason to use it). Please tell me, what is the meaning of dashboard – for you.

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Independent Links, a plugin

Published: On Monday, December 29, 2008

What it does

Also means: when you're inserting a link into your post's/page's content and the editor asks you for URL of the target page, you can give it just the number – ID – of that page. Why to do it? Because URLs change, IDs do not.

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