I put together a .gitignore file that will exclude all WordPress core files from your repo so that only your themes and plugins will be uploaded – this works recursively, so that it will ignore all the copies of WordPress you have in the sub-folders of the repo.
Tag Archives: Productivity
WordPress: Add plugin settings link to Plugins page
When building a plugin that has its own settings page, it’s often handy to create a link to the settings page straight from the Plugins list – this saves users the time it takes to find where exactly your plugin appears in the admin menu. Here is a simple code snippet that creates the settings link for you – all you need to do is tell it where to go.
Some handy WordPress debugging tips
If something goes wrong with your WordPress install due to a faulty plugin or some bad PHP code, it can often be tricky to work out exactly what the issue is an how to fix it. Here are a couple of helpful functions and snippets that you can use to fix a number of WordPress issues.
Make your WordPress content editor use HTML by default
A quick line of code to ensure that your WordPress content editor will always land on the HTML tab by default. This will ensure that your HTML tags & attributes are never stripped automatically.
Create a (free-ish) custom URL shortener
I, like many other people, recently created my own URL shortener that I use for links to pages on my website as well as sharing any other links I find. It was actually surprisingly easy to get setup thanks to a handy service called YOURLS, so I thought I would share the process here.
Experiment: Streamlining my online content using ifttt & tumblr
Near the end of 2010 a great little tool was launched called ifttt – the genius abbreviation of ‘if this then that’. It’s purpose is to connect together all the different online services it can or, as they put it, ‘put the internet to work for you’. I managed to get a beta invite to use the service shortly after it launched and since then I have been using it to make my life that much easier.
Creating shortcodes in WordPress
WordPress shortcodes are a handy way to add standardised or dynamic content to any post or page. Once you have used them for a bit you will start to realise just how powerful they really are. Here is a guide on how to create shortcodes that you (or your clients) can use.