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SINGLE WEBSITE SETUP

Simple add this to your wp-config.php

MULTISITE SETUP

Use the MU-Domain-Mapping plugin for that.

Enjoy coding …

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We often have some posts that we would like to promote and keep at the first page of the blog. When you are using pagination, the sticky posts will be added to the standard posts, making the post count per page uneven.

If you want to keep your posts per page count consistent, there is a way to do that.

PREPARE PAGINATION

SWITCH QUERY FOR FIRST PAGE

Enjoy coding …

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Sometimes you want to add your own avatar for a user or build your own special predefined avatar selection :)

WHERE ARE THEY STORED

BuddyPress stores avatars in /wp-content/uploads/avatars/ – USERID – /

HOW ARE THEY STORED

BuddyPress hashes the original filename and stores full and thumbnail images in the above directory.

Now go ahead and build your own integration around that ;)

Enjoy coding …

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When using Fullpage.js, overflowing section / slide content will be made scrollable with Slimscroll. If you want to use addons that rely on the natural scroll event, these will fail with Slimscroll. One of the candidates breaking is Scrollreveal.js for example.

I decided to work around that, to allow animations to be triggered when elements become visible or invisible  to the viewport.

ADDITIONAL PLUGINS

You could code the viewport visibility check yourself or use the “visible” jquery plugin.

“This is a jQuery plugin which allows us to quickly check if an element is within the browsers visual viewport, regardless of the scroll position. If a user can see this element, the function will return true.” jquery-visible on Github

EXTENDING SLIMSCROLL WITHIN FULLPAGE.JS

The idea was to extend or hook into slimscroll without touching the fullpage.js codebase. Fullpage.js wraps overflowing content within a fp-scrollable container. Slimscroll itself provides events to track your position within the scrollable area in pixels or when top / bottom have been reached.

TRACK TOP / BOTTOM

TRACK POSITION

MAIN GOAL

  1. Hook into fullpage.js
  2. Track viewport & visible elements (jquery-visible)
  3. Track direction of scroll
  4. Get current position
  5. Assign classes to elements to trigger animations

MY SOLUTION

This is just a crude and simple starting point, but should give you the basic idea. This still needs some throttling, so that its not called on every scroll position.

HTML EXAMPLE

CSS EXAMPLE

Very basic idea to get some transitions working.

Hopefully Fullpage.js will be switching to iScroll natively in the future, as it provides far more options to handle scrollable areas. You can use iScroll now, but you have to disable the scrolling feature within Fullpage.js and call iScroll yourself. Not that difficult to do :)

There is also a WordPress Plugin that wraps Fullpage.js natively with a nice interface (WP_Fullpage) and my upcoming Visual Composer integration, which already uses iScroll :)

Enjoy coding ….

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15. July 2015

WPLMS Extras Addon

I am working on an Addon for WPLMS to automate some of the manual tasks. Will extend the list, as things progress.

  1. Quizes
    – list all
    – show enlisted students + result
    – action: reset auto-evaluation / remove evaluation / change marks
  2. Improved redirects
  3. Extend account menu
  4. Maintenance
  5. Secure languages

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Sometimes you might like to store all language files in your own central location, so that translators have one easy place to access all language files.

Put the above into the functions.php and add textdomain handling for those you want to centralize.

Most current plugins should include the option to store language files to the global WordPress language folder, but that is sometimes just not enough  :) Its all about options ;)

Enjoy coding …

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WPLMS is a Learning Management System for WordPress. Translation files in WPLMS are located in

  1. /wp-content/themes/wplms/languages/
  2. /wp-content/plugins/vibe-course-module/languages/
  3. /wp-content/plugins/vibe-customtypes/languages/
  4. /wp-content/plugins/vibe-shortcodes/languages/
  5. /wp-content/plugins/wplms-assignments/languages/
  6. /wp-content/plugins/wplms-dashboard/languages/
  7. /wp-content/plugins/wplms-events/languages/
  8. /wp-content/plugins/wplms-front-end/languages/

These language files will be overwritten with new files on every update, destroying any custom translation changes.

THE THEME

Move your theme into a child theme and translate your theme there (/wp-content/themes/your-child-theme/languages/).

Make sure that language files are loaded from your child theme. Add the following action to your functions.php and use “vibe” as the domain, not the actual theme name.

THE PLUGINS

Use the global language folder for the WPLMS plugin translations. The WPLMS plugin loader checks, if a global language file actually exists :)

  1. /wp-content/languages/plugins/vibe-de_DE.mo
  2. /wp-content/languages/plugins/vibe-customtypes-de_DE.mo
  3. /wp-content/languages/plugins/wplms-assignments-de_DE.mo
  4. /wp-content/languages/plugins/wplms-dashboard-de_DE.mo
  5. /wp-content/languages/plugins/wplms-events-de_DE.mo
  6. /wp-content/languages/plugins/wplms-front-end-de_DE.mo
  7. +++

POEDIT

I suggest using Poedit, as it allows you to do the translation on the Desktop. It also offers options to update your file with an updated WPLMS language file, allowing you to add new translation strings if needed :)

PREPARE

A. Create the structure for the update and download new PO files from WPLMS

  1. /wp-content/themes/wplms/languages/
  2. /wp-content/plugins/vibe-course-module/languages/
  3. /wp-content/plugins/vibe-customtypes/languages/
  4. /wp-content/plugins/vibe-shortcodes/languages/
  5. /wp-content/plugins/wplms-assignments/languages/
  6. /wp-content/plugins/wplms-dashboard/languages/
  7. /wp-content/plugins/wplms-events/languages/
  8. /wp-content/plugins/wplms-front-end/languages/

B. The target structure / your current language files

  1. /wp-content/themes/your-child-theme/languages/de_DE.mo /.po
  2. /wp-content/languages/plugins/vibe-de_DE.mo /.po
  3. /wp-content/languages/plugins/vibe-customtypes-de_DE.mo /.po
  4. /wp-content/languages/plugins/wplms-assignments-de_DE.mo /.po
  5. /wp-content/languages/plugins/wplms-dashboard-de_DE.mo /.po
  6. /wp-content/languages/plugins/wplms-events-de_DE.mo /.po
  7. /wp-content/languages/plugins/wplms-front-end-de_DE.mo /.po
  8. +++

C. Open your current .PO file from target structure

wplms_trans_1

D. Update with new and matching .PO file from A. (Catalog -> Update from POT file)

This will check for new or obsolete strings and update your language file.

wplms_trans_2

wplms_trans_ 20.13.19

E. New strings added

wplms_trans_4

F. Obsolete strings removed

wplms_trans_3

G. Save and upload updated .PO + .MO files from target structure to server.

Again, make sure to use the global language folder and the child theme languages folder !

Panic time after updates is over :)

Enjoy coding ….

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TWIG allows you to use regular expressions within its templates, this makes it possible to easily check if a post is sticky in Timber for WordPress.

TWIG MATCHES OPERATOR

Comparisons in TWIG

TIMBER TEASE-POST.TWIG

This is the template that is called within the loop on the index.twig to show each post.

The post.class holds the full set of classes assigned to a post, which includes the class “sticky”. We do the match magic and you can use that to style your sticky posts differently ;)

WHAT IS TIMBER?

“Timber helps you create fully-customized WordPress themes faster with more sustainable code. With Timber, you write your HTML using the Twig Template Engine separate from your PHP files.

This cleans-up your theme code so, for example, your php file can focus on being the data/logic, while your twig file can focus 100% on the HTML and display.”

WHAT IS TWIG?

Twig is a modern template engine for PHP

  • Fast: Twig compiles templates down to plain optimized PHP code. The overhead compared to regular PHP code was reduced to the very minimum.
  • Secure: Twig has a sandbox mode to evaluate untrusted template code. This allows Twig to be used as a template language for applications where users may modify the template design.
  • Flexible: Twig is powered by a flexible lexer and parser. This allows the developer to define its own custom tags and filters, and create its own DSL.

Enjoy coding …

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When building plugins or addons, sometimes we need to save custom files within WordPress.

These can be custom JavaScript or CSS files that a user edited and are loaded to override core functionality.

In most cases inline styles and scripts are an option, but not always the most elegant way. Everyone has to decide that for themselves. (wp_add_inline_style) Not talking about performance between inline and external files here :)

Another option is the wp_head action:

WHERE

Many ask where can or should I save files created within a plugin.

  1. In the plugin folder ? Bad idea,  as that folder will be deleted on each upgrade of the plugin.
  2. In a separate plugin, just for those extra files. That is an option, but many webmasters prevent writing to any other folder than the upload folder. Also adding a blank plugin to just add upload folders is not really optimal.
  3. In the upload folder itself. Just like the name says, its the main folder to upload files to!

SECURITY

When dealing with file creation and uploads, security is always important. That relates to any other platform doing similar operations. A folder created within a plugin directory is not less or more secure than a folder created in the upload directory.

Its important to have the correct file and folder permissions set:

  1. Files should have permissions not higher than 664 (start at 644)
  2. Directories should have permissions not higher than 755 (start at 744) Try what works. The lower the more secure :)

There is a detailed article about permissions over at WordPress as well.

When it comes to creating files in PHP the term cross-site-scripting often comes up. When the system creates a file it is owned by the webserver and on a shared hosting account those files could be altered by another user on the same webserver. This could allow them to inject malicious code and compromise your sever.

That is why the WP_Filesystem was created, to make things more secure and make sure that the owner of files is correct.

CREATING FILES

WordPress provides a nice clean interface to create folders and save files to the upload folder. Here a simple example from one of my current projects.

Prepare the filesystem

Get upload dir information and prepare directory to save to

Check if file exists, create folder, delete similar and save.
In my case I am adding a custom key and the page id to the file.

If the direct way is not possible, you can also use or force the FTP approach
(request_filesystem_credentials).

This will check for the ftp credentials and request them with a form if needed.

This is just a very rough outline of how to do it, but should get you started.

Enjoy coding …

 

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