More Than Scratch The Surface » WordPress

WordPress Optimization Myth: Saving Database Calls

Stephen Cronin — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:04:56 +0000

Tonight I read an article on WPTuts+ titled 10 Quick Tips: Optimizing & Speeding Up Your WordPress Site. For the most part it’s a good article with lots of great tips, but there is one tip which is just plain incorrect:

Using a constant instead of get_option('home'); saves a database call.
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Fetch_feed Not Working With URLs Containing & Symbol

Stephen Cronin — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:06:22 +0000

I recently came across a strange problem with the fetch_feed function in WordPress not working with URLs containing the & symbol. The URL was being passed to fetch_feed via a shortcode parameter, but fetch_feed couldn’t find the feed.
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Clearing The Cache When A Widget Is Saved

Stephen Cronin — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 08:14:22 +0000

WP Super Cache has a setting which allows the cache to be cleared when a post is saved. I needed to clear the cache when a widget is saved. It turned out to be surprisingly easy.
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wordpress.tv Download Link Script

Stephen Cronin — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:44:58 +0000

I’ve been watching a lot of videos from WordPress TV lately. There is some absolutely cracking content on there! However, I really wanted to be able to download videos. There wasn’t a download link, so I wrote this Greasemonkey script to add one.

Download

This script can be downloaded from Userscripts.org

Why Download Vidoes From WordPress.tv?

I mostly consume WordPress.tv content from my Android phone.

I don’t want to watch it over my … [visit site to read more]

How To Change The WordPress Post Template Via URL Parameter

Stephen Cronin — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 09:06:00 +0000

Have you ever wanted to be able to serve up an alternative version of your posts, perhaps tweaking the layout or even the content of the posts? Not all the time, just in certain circumstances?

I’ve had two cases recently where I’ve needed to do this. My solution: to change the post template when a certain URL parameter is added to the URL. … [visit site to read more]

How To Add Site Speed For Google Analytics In WordPress

Stephen Cronin — Thu, 05 May 2011 07:28:07 +0000

Yesterday, Google announced the addition of Site Speed to Google Analytics, which adds a page load time dimension across a range of reports. Great! Lets get it working with our WordPress sites.
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Thoughts On The New WordPress Podcast – daWPshow

Stephen Cronin — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 11:51:00 +0000

In case you missed it, there’s a new WordPress podcast in town: daWPshow. Fantastic! I think it’s great that people are willing to put their time into creating content about WordPress! Now, with that out of the way, I’m going to lay down some tough love for the show.

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Shorter Shortlinks – If You Have WWW In Your Domain

Stephen Cronin — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 14:08:59 +0000

Earlier today, I read a post by Stephanie Leary about the shortlink functionality introduced in WordPress 3.0. Afterwards, I felt I should share the code snippet that I use to make my shortlinks even shorter.

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Practical Theme Support For WordPress 3.0 Menus

Stephen Cronin — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 06:50:51 +0000

I’ve read quite a few articles on theme support for the new Menu functionality introduced in WordPress 3.0. However, these have all been theoretical rather than practical. I wanted a real life, working example, including support for users on older versions of WordPress. In the end, I wrote it myself.

WordPress Theme developers, listen up! When updating your themes to work with the new menu functionality, you need to make sure that it still works with older versions of WordPress.

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The Solution To The Lack Of WordPress Beta Testing

Stephen Cronin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 03:23:24 +0000

While catching up on some old podcasts, specifically Episode 82 of WordPress Weekly, I came across a discussion about WordPress beta testing. The discussion centers around the problem of bugs not being caught during beta testing because there just aren’t enough beta testers.

To me, the solution seems straightforward – but that may be because I worked in the software industry for 10 years and have experience in software release management, so I’ll take the long path and set the scene properly.

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