Tag: wordpress

Ministry of Silly Plugins

It’s been too serious lately, and this is the last (planned) post for the year, so what are your favorite, totally useless, plugins?

I wrote one. Rickroll – Changes ever video to RickRoll. It’s useless, pointless, and funny. I don’t actually know anyone who uses it.

For IE6 users, there’s Graceless Degradation which just punishes IE6 users with Comic Sans. Speaking of, there’s also Comic Sans which does it for everyone and Comic Sans FTW which is when you need it on your admin dashboard.

Not enough color? Suzette likes Nyan Cat. Just a great big NYAN on the screen. Otto wrote Unicornify which makes your gravatars Unicorns (and would Gravatar please buy/absorb them and make them real? Please? More gravatar options needed!). Similarly he wrote Rainbowify, for the gaudiest toolbar ever.

Need more snark? My snarky friend Andrew likes Get Snarky – one of the goofiest “Hello Dolly” replacements out there.

Want to live dangerously? Logout Roulette will randomly log you out! One chance in ten is way better than traditional Russian Roulette of course.

Finally, how about a good old fart joke? Farticles farts while you scroll.

Someone might ask “What is the point of these plugins?” To them I say “The same as for Hello Dolly.”

The point of a plugin isn’t always to do awesome things and make your site have every feature it needs. It’s also to demonstrate the exponential extendability of WordPress. To show you the myriad ways you can take a site and make it wonderful. If learning by being silly is what it takes, then by all means, make a silly plugin! A silly plugin, much like the intentionally evil plugins I like to make, serve the same sort of purpose. Teaching people how to do things in a better way.

A silly plugin is way less terrifying than an evil one, though I tried to keep my evil down to a low level of annoying rather than truly evil. You can take the bones of either kind of plugin and legitimately do things that really are not in anyone’s best interests, but you can also take them to see how everything is put together in WordPress.

How have you learned from weird, silly, code?

30 December, 2013
A New Utility
I’m more like Brian Gardner than I care to admit.

I’m often dissatisfied by the feel of a site, my own included, and for a long time I’ve been ‘not quite right’ with the theme here on Half Elf. Oh, sure, it works, and I love the open whitespace, but … I wanted something else. Since I spend a lot of time looking at other sites, and especially Genesis Theme Devs, I had a vague idea of what I wanted. Even if I have no plans to change my site (and frankly I never plan this stuff) I want to be able to help people when they say “I want a theme that does this!”

My checklist:
- Less cartoony
- Font Icons
- Easy to configure front page sections
Begin the hunt!

This was a close race. I’ve been looking at the themes from Web Savvy Marketing for a while, and I was this close to taking one of those and editing it, when I thought “I don’t want a slider.” I will note that if the only thing bad I can say about a theme is that it has a slider, then that theme is doing something right. While I have an idea about that hunter theme or maybe Colin, none of them were quite right. They were all so close it hurt.

Then I stepped back and looked at my list again. Font Icons was easy, since I wrote Genericon’d after all, and everyone else had these photo backgrounds and neatly blocked sections that resized, and while I had something close, I kept screwing it up when I went to edit it. Maybe what I needed was something that stopped me from doing that?

I doodled out a sketch of what I wanted: Title, menu, welcome box, Call to Action section, list of posts. That’s pretty much what it looked like from the top down, so I needed to find a simple, direct, theme that did all that and let me jiggle the CSS if I wanted to.

Enter Carrie

There’s this awesome person I know, Carrie Dils. She fell into my web of friends when she had a horrible experience at a meetup a year ago, and was told she wasn’t welcome to speak because she was someone’s competition. When that post hit my feed, retweeted by a friend I knew and trusted, I remember spinning my righteous anger into full gear and asking this (then) total stranger for information so I could pass it on to the Official WordPress Meetup Peoples.

Before I did that, though, I read her posts (just to make sure she wasn’t on the wrong of this argument, hey, it happens) and found a delightful, intelligent, witty, and skilled theme dev. Themes! My Kryptonite! Carrie (perhaps accidentally) leveraged her situation into talking about collaboration at WordCamp San Francisco in 2013, and by that time she had ended up on my list of awesome people I want to hear from regularly about things.

So I thought I’d pop over to her site and see what she’d done with Modern Portfolio (oddly the same theme I was using here at the time). I liked what she did, but it wasn’t quite right for me. I wasn’t enjoying the three column latest posts, since mine kept goofing the alignment with different length post titles and excerpts. But what should my wandering eyes appear? A link to her theme: Utility.

It does what it says

Seriously it does exactly what it says. I picked a photo I took of a palm tree outside my office/gym earlier this year (which a friend was putting on cards for me for something else) and gave the green color a little kick. With built in button CSS classes, I was able to ditch my own and while I do have some of my own custom CSS going on, it’s because I have a couple plugins that need some extra love.

In the end, it worked how I wanted to, and fast. Normally when I change my sites, I get to a point where I say ‘Eeeeh, close enough.’ With this one, though, I spent about two hours (while working, so really maybe an hour) moving widgets around, replacing a couple plugins, and then I said “Oh. That feels right!”

This was, I feel, a choice that was well worth the work.
25 December, 2013

Dashicon My CPTs on the Dashboard

To extend on what I said about how my custom post types are in mu-plugins, and knowing that I like MP6 a lot, I thought I should share how I style my icons for CPTs!

First off, the code to add tables has changed totally so I made this simple look to go through my CPTs (ebooks and plugins) and for each one, make a new item, and add that to dashboard_glance_items:

    // Adding to Right Now
    	add_action( 'dashboard_glance_items', 'halfelf_right_now' );
     
    	function halfelf_right_now() {
        	foreach ( array( 'ebooks', 'plugins' ) as $post_type ) {
        		$num_posts = wp_count_posts( $post_type );
        		if ( $num_posts &amp;&amp; $num_posts->publish ) {
        			if ( 'ebooks' == $post_type ) {
        				$text = _n( '%s eBook', '%s eBooks', $num_posts->publish );
        			} 
        			if ( 'plugins' == $post_type ) {
        				$text = _n( '%s Plugin', '%s Plugins', $num_posts->publish );
        			}
        			$text = sprintf( $text, number_format_i18n( $num_posts->publish ) );
        			printf( '<li class="%1$s-count"><a href="edit.php?post_type=%1$s">%2$s</a></li>', $post_type, $text );
        		}
        	}
    	}

Next I added in an extra function to the bottom of my CPT page for the styling:

    function helf_cpts_css() {
       echo "<style type='text/css'>
               #adminmenu #menu-posts-ebooks div.wp-menu-image:before, #dashboard_right_now li.ebooks-count a:before {
                    content: '\\f311';
                    margin-left: -1px;
                }
               #adminmenu #menu-posts-plugins div.wp-menu-image:before, #dashboard_right_now li.plugins-count a:before {
                    content: '\\f237';
                    margin-left: -1px;
                }
             </style>";
    }
    
    add_action('admin_head', 'helf_cpts_css');

No, really, that’s it. The content info is grabbed from Dashicons and I’m done. Oh and since there’s no book icon, I used dashicons-welcome-learn-more instead. This works for anything I chose to put in Right Now or my menu, so I have consistency.

20 December, 2013

Don’t Say WordPress

This time I’m absolutely 100% serious. Yes, I can be sarcastic and humorous when I talk about WP, but in this case, I’m being honest, and I promise you serious. I work for DreamHost as a WordPress Guru. I’ve been training people, and teaching them one at a time, and in doing so, confirmed a bias I’ve had for years: Tech Support goes blind sometimes.

I don’t think this is really their fault. They have to handle 60 to 100 tickets a day about everything from “How do I reset passwords?” to “My Database is speaking in R’lyehian. HALP!” In order to get through that volume, they look for the key words, the important ones that tell them that this is the problem. And one of those keywords is “WordPress.”

This is not great, because sometimes the problem isn’t WordPress. Like a PHP isn’t running, or the DB is missing, or a hundred other ‘It’s not WP’ problems. Naturally, that means a handful of tickets escalated to me aren’t WordPress at all, and I have to dig into it, and explain why.

Before my coworkers think I’m pointing figures or blaming them, I really don’t. It’s a volume thing, and it’s got to do with how the customer presents the error. If they tell you “My WordPress site is down, I’m getting an error 500 on all pages!” you think “Oh, it’s probably .htaccess or they’re using too many resources.” Those are the most common causes after all. After that, you start getting messy and into weird things like “PHP memory is set too high, causing WP to crash” (which I didn’t even know you could do to be honest until November). And sometimes it really takes someone who knows how WordPress works to put the pieces together and determine “Oh! This is it!”

However, hands down, when I’m working with Multisite and I see someone say “My wildcard subdomain isn’t working!” and the ‘error’ page they get is not a WordPress styled 404, I will tell them “DO NOT mention ‘WordPress’ or ‘Multisite’ to your host. Tell them this:” and here’s my copy/pasta:

I’m trying to set up a wildcard subdomain, so anything.mydomain.com will pull the files from mydomain.com, however I’m having problems. I’m getting a server error instead of seeing the content on my site. Is there a trick to setting this up on this server?

Now some hosts will look and say “Oh well you’re using WordPress, that’s why.” and I want to kick them a little. No, that’s not why. When you go to a subdomain and get the server error (like subdomain not found) or worse a DNS error (like Google saying the domain doesn’t exist), then the problem is not, and cannot be WordPress.

That’s why it’s really important to present your error in the best way possible. The most accurate to the actual problem. Of course, if you have no idea, then you should just be honest and say what you did. If you really, truly, didn’t do anything, though, be prepared for someone to ask “Are you sure? You didn’t change a setting on the dashboard?” And sadly this is because a lot of people lie, a lot of people misrepresent the facts, and a lot of people play dumb. There is a very small percentage of people who will come back and say “You know, I may have done something, but I cannot remember what I did.” I like those people a lot. They’re my people. They admit they may have, but they can’t recall.

WordPress FauxGo (yes, this is the FAKE logo)
Sadly all those people who aren’t quite as truthful screw it up for the rest of you, which is why there’s a time and a place to point at WordPress, and there’s a time and place to not do so.

How do you know the difference? Well you have to think. Is what you’re trying to do something you do with a plugin or theme? Did it happen after you made a change to your site’s settings? It’s probably WordPress. However if you’re trying to do something outside of WordPress, like domain mapping or wildcard subdomains or creating a database? Then don’t mention WordPress.

It’s counter-intuitive, I know. I’m telling you to be honest and say what you did or what you’re doing, but at the same time I’m telling you to leave out what might be important information. And that’s why you have to think. Is the error a WordPress error? Learning that takes a long time, so for a lot of rookies, the easier question is “Does the error happen without WordPress involved?”

Let’s go back to that subdomain thing. Turn off Multisite. Does the same problem happen? Probably not WordPress. So don’t bring it up just yet. Now if they ask “What are you trying to do?” or why, tell them. “I’m trying to setup wildcard subdomains so I can use it with WordPress, but at this point, I’m not even getting a WordPress error.”

Of course, it’s not always that simple. Like what if I told you that, on Multisite, not getting the CSS to display on subsites could be a server error? That’s when you get to say:

My complex .htaccess rules don’t seem to be honored by my server. Is AllowOverride set to either All or Options All in the httpd.conf (or equivalent) file?

Notice how I didn’t mention WordPress? This is because I know that if my .htaccess rules are right, the problem’s not me. Unless of course my host blocks that on purpose because they don’t want to let me run Multisite on a shared box.

It’s not cut and dried, it’s not ‘If this, then that!’ But what it is, is education and thinking. As long as you can learn what is and is not WP, you’re on your way to knowing when you ask about WordPress problems, and when you ask about server problems.

16 December, 2013
Make It Pretty

This one is a visual.

Here’s what my WordPress toolbar looks like on WP 3.8 on a site where I show Jetpack Stats in the bar:

And here’s what it looks like on a site where I don’t show the stats:

And here’s an even worse menu:

So what does this tell you? As a developer, you need to spend some time making sure your menus look nice. I already went to the Jetpack blokes about this, but the real crux here is ‘toolbar menu items get janky.’

This has always been the case, of course. It’s just a little more prominent in the MP6ified world, and it is getting better, but what needs to happen is plugin and theme developers who add in toolbar menu items take stock of how their items are used.

The obviously easy fix is to use wp_is_mobile() to check if the device is a mobile one and if so, simply not show the menu item. After all, the odds of someone needing to adjust SEO via the toolbar on a mobile is slim. An exception might be emptying cache for that page, and for them I suggest an alternative. When you really do have a major use-case for a toolbar menu item on mobile, have it degrade via wp_is_mobile() to show just an icon on mobiles. For caching, I’d use [genericon icon=”trash”] (there’s one for Dashicons: dashicons-trash).

I know this one’s really crazy short, but it’s one of those things that really needs a reminder. You’ve got to test your toolbar additions! WordPress 3.8 is due out three days from this post. Get on it!

9 December, 2013
eCommerce Dream
At the end of my WordCamp San Francisco talk, I said I had a dream. A dream about a plugin that can share an inventory between WordPress sites on a Multisite Network.

Imagine, if you will, a store with a physical products (Geisha dolls). The store has a bunch of different types of dolls. The store has satellite stores, one in Ariel (their flagship store) but now one on Bellerophon and another on Whitefall. While the Companion-Style dolls sell well on Ariel and Bellerophon, the Cowboy-Style ones sell best on Whitefall. Also each store has a different kind of clientele.

So the Dollhouse Store makes a website, and then using Multisite, makes another site for each location: whitefall.dollhousestores.com and so on (or maybe whitefalldollhouse.com even). At first, the webpages are just a list of the local store products, come and buy them here, photos of the locale, employees, and local events. Then they decide to sell stuff on line. But they only want to list items for sale under specific criteria.
1. All items for sale are stored on the network admin
2. Each store can select what products they have at their store
3. Each store controls product volume.
4. Stores can request more product from homebase
Now of course they could have a separate store for each site, but they want to manage what possible items could be sold online, so having that controlled by the network makes sense, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile another store sells cows. All the cows live at Persephone, and are shipped out to Jiangyin and other stores. They’re doing well with everyone going to cowship.com, but they too want to have jiangyin.cowship.com and so on. Each store lists what cows are for sale that live well in each location because Holsteins’ don’t like Bellerophon, who knew? This way, someone on Jiangyin can order Holsteins but not Texas Longhorns. Obviously they need to control which product can be sold at each location, same as the Dollhouse, but they also have a different problem. Their product amounts must also be stored in one location and shipped out from there, so they want to make sure they don’t oversell their cows.

Their criteria:
1. All items for sale are stored on the network admin
2. Network admin controls absolute amount of products
3. Network selects what products they have at each store
4. Orders per store base product volume on the network amount
These are pipe dreams. Today there is no plugin that ‘shares’ an estore across multisite sites on a network. You can’t even do it with ‘digital’ products which now that I say it aloud, I think Pippin should totally get on that.

Today, all sites are separate, and since estores have their content saved per-site, there isn’t an easy, friendly way (if there is at all) to pull data between sites in a way that preserves shopping carts and such. I wish there was. I get asked about this at least once a week, and I have to say “Today, there is no plugin that can share an inventory between WordPress sites on a Multisite Network.”

But this is a complicated thing. Multisite itself isn’t actually built to handle that kind of thing, since the network doesn’t have posts or pages. You’d have to dedicate a site on the network to the shop and pull in content from there, which of course has a switch_to_blog() overhead penalty. I can’t even begin to get past the paper thoughts I have here.
6 December, 2013

Tag: wordpress

Ministry of Silly Plugins

A New Utility

Begin the hunt!

Enter Carrie

It does what it says

Dashicon My CPTs on the Dashboard

Don’t Say WordPress

Make It Pretty

eCommerce Dream