Jose M Castaneda

Tag: theme

  • JavaScript in PHP

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    Jose
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    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

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    Jose
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    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…

  • My gripe with widgets

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    Jose
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    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

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    Jose
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    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…

  • Making a Portable Object Template for your WordPress theme or plugin

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    Jose
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    Yes, a bit of a lengthy title but I feel will get the point across and it is after all what I’m wanting to share with you today. A what now? A .pot ( or a Portable Object Template ) file is what WordPress uses and many PHP programs use for translation purposes. There are…

  • Making a few commits

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    Jose
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    Let me give you a little bit of a back story first. 2 years ago I began posting on the WordPress.org forums to help people out. I would only post on things that I knew for sure I knew the answers to or would help out. It felt like it at the time. Who knows…

  • Child theme friendly post-formats

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    Jose
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    It’s no surprise I will always preach the making of child themes. Part of the reason is because you can make modifications without losing all that when it comes time to update the parent theme. I mean nothing more exciting than having to recall what files you changed, what code you added, deleted to brighten…

  • Getting the image count in WordPress

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    Jose
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    A long time ago I had a bit of an issue on how to get the image count from a post. At the time there wasn’t a way that I could think of to properly getting all the needed information; but then again I didn’t know as much as I do now. I wanted to…

  • You don’t know text

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    Jose
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    Okay, maybe you do but what I’m talking about is a different kind of text. I’m talking about text strings in PHP code. Text strings What are they? Why do they matter? Well, they matter in themes that you want to make public or share. Oh, and plugins as well, I guess. If you’re into…

  • A whole new widget experience

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    Jose
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    If you haven’t already then go check out and read the proposal made by Weston. When I first saw this I nearly peed my pants from joy. It was that amazing. Being able to see the widgets live is going to be a huge thing. Not just for theme developers but for plugin developers as…