WordPress Development

WordPress Optimization Myth: Saving Database Calls

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.

Fetch_feed Not Working With URLs Containing & Symbol

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.

Clearing The Cache When A Widget Is Saved

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.

How To Change The WordPress Post Template Via URL Parameter

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.