WP Remixx

I have been looking far and wide for the best examples of WordPress theming in recent months.  Many of you have probably been doing the same for a lot longer.  I am fortunate in that I have found an impossibly awesome theme, in fact a theme framework that has impressed me with its powerful approach to theming WordPress. Out of the box, Thematic is sleek and beautiful.  It is based on a few precedent technologies, most notably the Sandbox theme foundation, and also Blueprint and Tripoli.  It pushes those great technologies to another level for the WordPress theme writer.  It is widget-ized to the hilt giving you the ability to plug in widgets all over the theme rather than just the sidebar like most do. One of its finer aspects it that it is conceived as a framework, built for easy extensibility through the creation of child themes or "templates" as WordPress.org labels them.  If you haven't explored that aspect of WordPress theme development, Thematic gives you the best platform I have seen for a jump point. The author, Ian Stewart, of ThemeShaper.com, has done brilliant work on this framework and has been very generous in helping me explore its power.  The concept ...  Read More

From wordPress.org: With 2.6.1, we’re continuing our trend of releasing a maintenance release shortly after a major release in order to get fixes for the inevitable “dot zero” bugs into your hands without a long wait.  If you’re happy with 2.6, however, keep on using it.  You need not upgrade to 2.6.1 if 2.6 is getting the job done. 2.6.1 offers several improvements for international users.  Styling of the admin for right-to-left languages is much improved thanks to the efforts of the Farsi and Hebrew translation teams, and a mysterious gettext bug caused by certain PHP configurations is now fixed.  For IIS users, 2.6.1 fixes several permalink problems. Image insertion problems in the Press This feature experienced by IE users are also fixed. Of note to everyone is a fix for a performance bug in the admin where those with a lot of plugins would experience slowness on some pages. Check out the full list of over 60 fixes to see if 2.6.1 has something to offer you.   A full diff and list of changed files is also available.  Download 2.6.1 and enjoy.   Read More

With a little code and a lot of ingenuity, Sheldon Lendrum has come up with a slick solution to a big problem for users of WordPress 2.6. With the release of WP 2.6, a lot of great new features were added.  One particular feature has been met with mixed emotions at best, and outright derision from many.  Now that you can track revisions, which is a staple of many CMS products, you have a means of comparing differing versions of a post, maintaining a complete audit trail of changes, and even rolling back to an earlier version should you need to. However in most environments, especially those where only one or a couple of people maintain a WordPress site, maintaining every revision of a post is more often than not severe overkill.  Worse, it is a source of massive database bloat and also consumes unnecessary processing time if the feature isn't necessary for your particular site.  Granted, auto-saving posts can be a life-saver and having the ability to track revisions is a huge leap forward... for those who need it.  Something as simple as a toggle in the Dashboard to control whether saving revisions is enabled or not would have been a ...  Read More

You can add a live administrative toolbar to your live site with just a little PHP and HTML code and a few lines of CSS. Sure, it's easy enough to have multiple browser tabs or windows open while you are switching between a "live" view of your site and the administrative functions of the WordPress back-end.  But i have found it easier if you just put links to the back end right on the front page of the site itself, and only have them visible if you are logged in. This is not rocket science, but for the little effort required, the payoff in accrued time savings and reduced hassle are worth the 5 minute investment to hook this up. Rather than break down the code in this post, I will post the code and give you the quick rundown.  You can unzip the admin-toolbar.zip file located here and cut and paste it into your project, or depending on your needs, shred it and use it in an alternative way, such as in the sidebar. The rundown is this: the code in admin-toolbar.php should go somewhere as close to the bottom of your header.php file as possible.  There is a quick call to wp_get_current_user() ...  Read More

Deprecated functions and features are code that has been marked as obsolete.  Functions and global variables in WordPress, like in other technologies are marked for removal at some future point in time (deprecated), but remain functional for a period to prevent code from breaking and give you an opportunity to properly fix them.  Eventually, deprecated functions will likely be removed from the code base, and at that point they are often referred to as 'breaking changes'.  Breaking changes are a good thing because it is proof that the developers of the API are moving the code base forward and improving it. In addition to writing a lot of code, we read a lot of it and have noticed that a lot of people are writing new code with deprecated functions and global variables or are letting old code lay dormant without repairing it.  In the short term this is not a huge concern, but it is significant.  One example you will see very frequently is the use of get_settings() rather than its successor get_option().  Both essentially do the same thing, which is to retrieve the value of an option from the wp_options table by its key. When get_settings() is removed from the ...  Read More

Wacom tablets rock and this is the best of their current lineup. The Graphire3 was a nice starter pen/tablet, but once you experience the Intuous3, you will see the difference for yourself. I have found it to be a very natural and comfortable device to use and its pen action to be smooth and precise. The pen itself is thicker than the Graphire3 with a nice grip and the tablet is sleek. Overall the quality of the product is unquestionably high; weight, balance, material surfaces are all top notch and the construction is completely solid. With the latest drivers installed, you have absolute control of the functions and behaviors of the device and you will enjoy a great experience with this product. The only problem I have with this product, as with all Wacom products, is that it is a tad expensive. It seems a bit highat over $300, but I after having used it, I have to admit I would spend it all over again if I had to. The 6x8 size will be ideal for most people. They make much larger models but as you can read here and elsewhere, the problem with the larger sized tablets is that you ...  Read More