Author: Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

Shortcode Example: Reviews

Sometimes people want to have reviews mean ‘people leave reviews on my work.’ But the other kind of reviews are the ones where I review other peoples’ works. And for that, I found it helps to have some kind of standard.

Let’s say I’m reviewing a TV show for overall quality but also overall gayness. That is, I want to be able to write up a post and then, at the bottom, put up a shortcode to say “This show is really good but has no gay characters.” To do that, I made a list of the important factors to distill:

Name: The name of the TV show
Summary: A short, 140 character summary of the overall show.
Queer: A 1-5 rating of how queer the show is
Rating: A 1-3 scale (yes, meh, no) for how good the show is overall
Warning: Is there a trigger warning (or CW) to be aware of

The intent is to make it easy for someone to scroll down and find what they want to watch. Right?

The Code

A bit of warning. There are two specific to my site bits of design in here. First are the icons. While I’ve generalized them for you as Emoji, keep in mind you probably want to have your own style here. Second, I’m using Bootstrap, so I’ve leveraged some of their default code. You’ll want to tweak the CSS.

class TV_Shortcodes {

	/**
	 * Constructor
	 */
	public function __construct() {
		add_action( 'init', array( $this, 'init' ) );
		add_filter( 'widget_text', 'do_shortcode' );
	}

	/**
	 * Init
	 */
	public function init() {
		add_shortcode( 'review', array( $this, 'review' ) );
	}

	/**
	 * Reviews.
	 */
	public function review( $atts ) {

		$attributes = shortcode_atts( array(
			'title'   => 'Coming Soon',
			'summary' => 'Coming soon ...',
			'queer'   => '3',
			'rating'  => 'meh',
			'warning' => 'none',
		), $atts );

		$queer = (float) $attributes['queer'];
		$queer = ( $queer < 0 )? 0 : $queer;
		$queer = ( $queer > 5 )? 5 : $queer;

		$worth = ( in_array( $attributes['worth'], array( 'yes', 'no', 'meh' ) ) )? $attributes['worth'] : 'meh';
		switch ( $worth ) {
			case 'yes':
				$worth_icon = '??';
				$worth_color = 'success';
				break;
			case 'no':
				$worth_icon  = '??';
				$worth_color = 'danger';
				break;
			case 'meh':
				$worth_icon  = '?';
				$worth_color = 'warning';
				break;
		}

		// Get proper triger warning data
		$warning = '';
		$trigger = ( in_array( $attributes['trigger'], array( 'high', 'medium', 'low' ) ) )? $attributes['trigger'] : 'none';

		if ( $trigger != 'none' ) {
			$warn_image    = '⚠️';
			switch ( $trigger ) {
				case 'high':
					$warn_color = 'danger';
					break;
				case 'medium':
					$warn_color = 'warning';
					break;
				case 'low':
					$warn_color = 'info';
					break;
			}

			$warning = '<span data-toggle="tooltip" aria-label="Warning - This show contains triggers" title="Warning - This show contains triggers"><button type="button" class="btn btn-' . $warn_color . '"><span class="screener screener-warn ' . $warn_color . '" role="img">' . $warn_image . '</span></button></span>';
		}

		$output = '<div class="bd-callout"><h5 id="' . esc_attr( $attributes['title'] ) . '">Screener Review on <em>' . esc_html( $attributes['title'] ) . '</em></h5>
		<p>' . esc_html( $attributes['summary'] ) . '</p>
		<p><span data-toggle="tooltip" aria-label="How good is this show for queers?" title="How good is this show for queers?"><button type="button" class="btn btn-dark">Queer Score: ' . $queer . '</button></span> <span data-toggle="tooltip" aria-label="Is this show worth watching? ' . ucfirst( $worth ) . '" title="Is this show worth watching? ' . ucfirst( $worth ) . '"><button type="button" class="btn btn-' . $worth_color . '">Worth It? <span role="img" class="screener screener-worthit ' . lcfirst( $worth ) . '">' . $worth_icon . '</span></button></span> ' . $warning . '</p>
		</div>';

		return $output;

	}
}
new TV_Shortcodes();

The Future

I’m thinking about changing the scores from numbers to stars, and adding in a link if the show has been added to the site. But it being a shortcode, it’s reasonably extensible.

Enjoy, and export to your own review sites.

10 April, 2018

Genesis Theme: Anonymize Posts
Actually, I anonymize my pages.

See, I have multiple authors on a site, and one of the things I like is to celebrate them when they post. Awesome. But I don’t want to highlight who wrote the pages on the site. Or who posted the videos. Those are informational and don’t need any ego attached.

When using StudioPress’ Genesis theme, you can edit the post authors by filtering genesis_post_info

The Code
```
add_filter( 'genesis_post_info', 'EXAMPLE_genesis_post_info' );
function EXAMPLE_genesis_post_info( $post_info = '' ) {
	if ( is_singular( array ( 'videos', 'page' ) ) )
		$post_info = 'By the Barbarians [post_edit]';
	return $post_info;
}
```
Now all my posts are by Barbarians!
5 April, 2018
Light Fingered Fish
To explain the joke before we get too far, Jetpack’s contact form was originally called Grunion. The book “Memory” by Lois McMaster Bujold uses the phrase “light fingered fish” to talk about fish who elude hooks.

I was building a site for my father and he wanted the contact form to redirect to another page. Thankfully you can do this with a filter on grunion_contact_form_redirect_url (see? Grunion? Fish?)

The Code

If you use the official code, then you’re going to need to know two things:

1) What is the page ID you’re redirecting from
2) What is the page slug you’re redirecting to

Yes, it’s weird that you have to know those, but … well. That’s what we’ve got. I tried to come up with a reason why, and I think it’s just that searching for posts by slug is hard.
```
function EXAMPLE_grunion_custom_form_redirect_url( $redirect, $id, $post_id ){

    $redirected_urls = array(
        '123' => home_url( 'contact' ),
        '456' => home_url( 'about' ),
        '789' => 'https://wordpress.org/surprise/',
    );
 
    foreach ( $redirected_urls as $source => $destination ) {
        if ( $id == $source ) {
            return $destination;
        }
    }
 
    // If there's no custom redirect, return the default
    return $redirect;
}
add_filter( 'grunion_contact_form_redirect_url', 'EXAMPLE_grunion_custom_form_redirect_url', 10, 3 );
```
Buuuuut what if you wanted to do it by slug?
```
    $redirected_urls = array(
        'contact'  => home_url( 'contact-success' ),
        'about'    => home_url( 'about-success' ),
        'surprise' => 'https://wordpress.org/surprise/',
    );
 
    $slug = get_post_field( 'post_name', $id );

    foreach ( $redirected_urls as $source => $destination ) {
        if ( $slug == $source ) {
            return $destination;
        }
    }
```
The benefit to this is you can change the post ID and, as long as it has the same slug, you’re good to go. Also let’s say you have a bunch of separate contact pages (contact-me, contact-mom and so on). You could use the logic to redirect all pages that have the word ‘contact’ or ‘about’ or ‘surprise’ …
```
    foreach ( $redirected_urls as $source => $destination ) {
        if ( strpos( $source, $slug ) !== false
            return $destination;
        }
    }
```
3 April, 2018
Types of Related Posts

At it’s heart, related posts are the drive to help people find more content on your site. They serve no other purpose than keeping people on your site by piquing their interest in your words.

But what if I told you there were multiple types of related posts for WordPress?

Categories and Tags

The first type of related posts are really just organization. I have three main categories on this site: How It Is, How It Works, and How To. I also have a million tags, like everyone else. If you wanted to read my thoughts on how things are, or rather why they are, you’d scroll through the category of “How It Works.” If you wanted to see everything I wrote about SVGs, you would check out my tag of ‘svg’ or possibly ‘images.’

The point here is that categorization is a type of related posts. It’s entirely manual, but it’s the best way to say ‘These posts are like each other.’ And they have a fatal flaw. You see, if I wanted to read all the “How To” posts about SVGs, WordPress doesn’t easily cross relate. That is, I can’t list all the items in a category and a tag.

Which is why we have …

Related Posts Plugins

There are two main types of plugins for this. There are the services, like Jetpack’s related posts, that scrape all your posts, toss them into a database, and use some complex algorithms to sort out what is and isn’t related. The other sort scan your posts locally and figure the same thing out.

So which is better? Well. Jetpack requires you to trust Jetpack, or whatever service you pick, with your data. For some people, this can be a deal breaker. On the other hand, if you run it locally, you’re at the behest of how fast your site runs. For example, if it scans your posts live and you have, say, 300k posts, then that could be really slow. Or if it makes it’s own database table, how often is it going to update and cross relate?

By the way, the 300k posts is not an exaggeration. That’s a site I looked at recently.

Alertnative Relations

There’s a secret third option, actually.

I called it Semi Related Posts, and while I did it across post types, you could use the general logic. The concept is that instead of letting your site try and divine relations, you could manually connect them. It does require more upfront work, but cross relating posts by hand gives you the ultimate control.

Of course, you’ll note that I did automate this as much as I could. I’m not crazy you know. If you can find a way to do that, maybe code a way to list 4 other posts in the same category and tags as this post, then you’ve automagically automated the simple.

Until you hit that 300k post limit. Then you’ll have to rethink things again.

29 March, 2018
A Name is Not A Description

One day, you found a app or plugin or add-on for something. It was a feature you always wanted, did exactly what you needed, was well written and supported. It was that panacea of perfection. You loved it. Then you had a computer crash, or a house fire, or moved, and you forgot what the name was. All you could remember was the name was something about what it did. So you decided to Google for it, and quickly found a billion things that fit the bill.

SEO vs Generic

When you’re naming your product or company, you work very hard to think of a name that encapsulates what you are, what you do, and what makes you unique. For example, you don’t name yourself “Shoe Company” and expect people to be able to find you. With very few exceptions (and really only No Name comes to mind), if you want to stand out, you pick a good name where you are prominent.

This directly relates to SEO, and people’s ability to find you. Ever used Apple Pages or Sheets and tried to Google something? Like “How do I make Pages Templates” perhaps. You often feel damn lucky when you get the right result immediately:

But you’re not Apple, are you? So if you named your product “Foods,” you’d probably have a devil of a time getting ranked so people could find you in search!

Unique vs Memorable

Take a look at WordPress. Pretend you’re looking for a slider plugin. Hush, just come with me here. Now. You remember a really cool slider plugin, but all you remember is it was named something like “Best Slider Plugin.” Yeah. You ain’t gonna find it. Probably ever. But what if you were looking for a lightbox plugin, and you remembered the name as “Foobox Lightbox” … Hang on a second. That’s one you’re going to be able to find. It has a unique name, but better than that, it has a memorable name!

The only reason Apple Pages actually works is that Apple is huge and also the fact that most of us Google “Apple Pages whatever” and not just “Pages.” It’s the same with the Apple Watch. It’s nice they call it “Watch.” We call it the “iWatch” because we have to be able to find it, and they picked stupid generic names. Being Apple, they can get away with it.

To their credit, the name is memorable. It’s not unique, but you will remember it. Even if you remember it as “That stupid Pages app Apple made.” You remember Microsoft Word, but you also will remember WordPerfect, and possibly WordStar. But if you listed four Twitter apps, could you remember what differentiates each one without looking? Definitely unique names, like Tweetbot and Twitterific, and certainly memorable, but in the wrong way.

Names vs Descriptions

Many people make a common mistake. They remember the tools they use on their computers, like “TextEdit” and “Notepad” and they think that in order to be found, the name must be short and descriptive. That’s why we get Notepad++ and iTerm. To an extent, this works. LastPass and OnePassword are going to be memorable and unique and descriptive names. But the longer a product, or suite exists, the more likely they are to corner a market and make it harder for the little people.

Let’s go back to WordPress. You’ve made a great popup plugin and you want everyone to know it. There are roughly 500 plugins that use ‘popup’ or ‘popups’ as a tag. There are 2500 or so plugins that show up for a search on ‘popup’ in the directory. Besides the fact that you really should use the ‘popup’ tag in your plugin, there’s no way in the world you’re going to get your new popup plugin to the top of the list in a day.

But … users don’t look for ‘popup’ or even ‘best popup plugin.’ They look for something else. “WordPress popup plugin with call to action on page exit.” They may simply that to “wordpress popup plugin call to action page exit” but they’re going to look for what they need. And they’re going to remember the plugin named “Wait Don’t Go! Popups” that has a nice plugin description of “Grab your visitors’ attention one more time before they leave your page forever.”

Humans vs Robots

Putting a million buzzwords in your product’s name, the description, and the URL aren’t ever going to make you popular. The only thing that does is bring people in the yard. If they see your website is fill with upsell and hyperbole, they’re going to walk right out again. If they see features and explanations and proof that you are, indeed, the bees knees, they’ll stay. If you have a catchy or unique name, they’ll remember and recommend you to their friends.

And then, then you will be a success.

27 March, 2018
Google Auto Ads
After upgrading my theme, I saw a note that I could add my Google Adsense ID, but “Auto Ads must be enabled in your AdSense account for this feature to work properly.”

Auto Ads?

Auto Ads

A month ago Google introduced a new way to handle ads, and simply that is you don’t have to mess around with placing adds. You put your code in and then you tell Google “Gimme them auto ads!” and they add in … well … ads.

Depending on your options, you can show in-article ads or just section ones, and it comes out looking a bit like this:

Not Perfect

There are some issues with this.

There are obvious pros to this, and mostly it’s that I don’t have to think about where an ad is going to go. I can tell Google “Show a medium amount of ads where you think is best” and walk away. I don’t have to worry about which ads to use. Also they use Google’s ‘what fits with the content’ magic algorithm.

But.

I can’t exclude certain areas.

Which means on one of my sites has an extra hunk of ads in the headers, as Google inserted an ad in each section. And I can’t tell it not to put adds in specific sections. I can tell it not to put ads on specific pages, and with Genesis I can do that from within WordPress, but the options just aren’t quite where I want. Yet.

Setting It Up

Like all
1. In the left navigation panel, visit My ads and select Get Started.
2. On the “Choose your global settings” page, select the ad formats that you’d like to show and click Save.
3. On the next page, click Copy code.
4. Paste the ad code between the < head > and </ head > tags of each page where you want to show Auto ads.
It takes about 20 minutes for ads to show up

If you’re using Genesis themes, upgrade to 2.6 and paste your Publisher ID in the new setting field for Auto Ads, in either the Theme Settings, or the new Customizer panel.

If you don’t want that at all, Gary Jones made a plugin to remove it entirely from Genesis Themes. Though I’d point out you don’t have to use it if you don’t want.
22 March, 2018