I am very happy to announce the all-new website WPHighEd. I’m hoping that the site will gradually grow into a community of people using WordPress at higher education institutions. Right now, there’s not much to look at, but hopefully that will change in the near future. Until then, here are a few notes:
Quick Tip: Removing “Views” Extra HTML
In some situations, we’re using the Views plugin (affiliate link) to make it easier to create and output extremely custom information. For instance, in one case, we’re using it to set up entirely custom XML feeds that can be quickly and simply tweaked within the WordPress dashboard. While we fully recognize that this isn’t a supported use of […]
See You At WordCamp US 2015?
As you have probably heard by now, the first official national WordCamp will be happening the first weekend in December in Philadelphia. I am extremely honored and humbled to be among the speakers at WordCamp US. I will be sharing a 35-minute presentation overview of WordPress usage within higher education. While I am there, I would love to […]
Quick Tip: Photon and SSL
JetPack includes a module that offloads the images used on your site to WordPress.com media servers. In most cases, this can take a lot of pressure off of your server, and can also help things load much more quickly than they normally would. The Photon modules becomes especially useful when used in conjunction with the Tiled […]
Pulling Images From the Customizer
Recently, I was asked to help figure out why a friend’s new site was causing her browser to basically shut down & drag her entire computer to a crawl. After a bit of quick investigation (thankfully, my computer has a few more resources than hers, so I was able to load the site), I discovered that the […]
WordPress 4.2.3, Shortcodes, and the Future
The WordPress Core team is hard at work trying to figure out how to move forward with shortcodes in the system. They posted an initial draft of the shortcode roadmap earlier this week, and it was met with a lot of discussion (some very productive, some not so much). They went back to the drawing board, and proposed […]
Managing WordPress With Git Part 1: Public Repo Plugins
This is the first article in a series that will deal with the concept of helping to manage your WordPress installation with Git. In this article, we’ll talk about using Git to manage all of your public plugins that reside in the WordPress Plugin Repository. If you do not yet have any plugins in the Plugin Repository, […]
Easter Egg: Dropping Extra Tables When Multisite Blog Is Deleted
I’m not sure why this isn’t more publicly promoted, but, while looking through some of the code for WordPress multisite this morning, I discovered a really helpful Easter egg. If you develop any plugins that add extra tables to a site, you really need to know about this. There is a filter that gets applied […]
Quick Tip: Adding New Feeds to WordPress
Adding a new type of feed to WordPress is actually fairly simple. The main function you need to use is `add_feed()`. The `add_feed()` function in itself is also extremely simple. It accepts two arguments: the “name” of the feed (the slug that should be used in the URL) and the callback function that outputs the feed.
LoopConf: The Best Conference I Won’t Be Attending
For those of you that are passionate about WordPress, especially the technical side of it, there is an upcoming conference that looks like it will be absolutely amazing. LoopConf is being held in Las Vegas in about 2 weeks. At $675 each, the cost of the tickets is more on-par with academic conferences than with WordCamps, but the […]