Jose M Castaneda

Category: WordPress

  • Working with the WordPress Customizer

    —

    by

    Jose
    in ,

    Recently the Theme Review Team chose to make the customizer as the format of creating theme options. I love it! Yes, I was in favor of it. I have my reasons. I know there are some people that still don’t fully grasp the customizer and most likely won’t. All good! Some take a little more…

  • Fun with template tags: comment_form

    —

    by

    Jose
    in ,

    This time I’ll focus on the comment_form(). Neat, fun and with plenty of hooks and filters. The code Like usual we will look at the core code of the comment_form. There are approximately 230 lines of code that make up this template tag. Does sound like a lot, right? Yes, but when you look a…

  • Fun with template tags: comments_template

    —

    by

    Jose
    in ,

    On my last post I talked about dynamic_sidebar and some uses. It was a fun little experiment I wanted to do and share. Yes, I said experiment. That is how I learn. I read, do and then share. I know I’m not the only one that does that. This time I dabbled with comments_template(). Yes,…

  • Fun with template tags: dynamic_sidebar

    —

    by

    Jose
    in ,

    The last couple of weeks I’ve been reading the core code more and more. I like it. Came to the conclusion I really don’t know every hook or filter. I don’t claim to though. I like knowing enough to make a functional theme or even a plugin. Yes, I’ve been recently dabbling with one but…

  • Using the_post_thumbnail

    —

    by

    Jose
    in ,

    For some time I’ve noticed one thing that many people like doing. Recreating core functions. One being the_post_thumbnail(). The reason it drives me crazy is because it means maintaining more code in your theme. Why would you do that to yourself? One of the common things is to wrap it in a conditional check and…

  • JavaScript in PHP

    —

    by

    Jose
    in ,

    Lately I’ve been seeing a few themes that like to include and devote an entire file to JavaScript. There is a reason I don’t like this. Biggest one is because it creates bad practices. Yes, I understand you want to pass some variables between the two languages but there are better ways. What’s super cool…

  • Displaying multiple pages on one

    —

    by

    Jose
    in ,

    Every so often I come across a theme or an implementation I like and wonder how it is being done. I like to dig behind the scenes on themes and see how they do things. Taking things apart to see how they work is a great way to learn. One neat little tidbit I learned…

  • Validating your theme’s settings and options

    —

    by

    Jose
    in ,

    You’ve made a theme and it has all the options you want to include. The next step is making sure that user input is the right information or at least what you are looking to use. Why? Security is a big thing and I mean a big thing. If you think it’s not I will kindly…

  • My gripe with widgets

    —

    by

    Jose
    in

    Yes, I don’t like widgets. Okay that is not entirely true because I am using a few but it’s not what I’m referring to. What I’m referring to is when themes include widgets. Themes that include widgets for contact forms, testimonials, group -or team- members of a company. Dare I say it? Newsletter widget. Cue dramatic…

  • Why a theme’s changelog is important

    —

    by

    Jose
    in

    Having some history is a good thing and knowing what changes were made and why is even better. That is one of the reasons that I love seeing a changelog when I look in a theme’s folder. Supposing they have one. Not all themes are created equal It’s true. When I speak of themes I generally refer to…