Archive for 2008

Suggestions for writing flexible and usable plugin

February 5th • 4 Comments • Under: Sidenotes • Tags: , ,

After the release of Custom Function Widgets plugin I also wrote about it in the WordPress support forum. Fellow forum contributor Otto42 (author of a very similar plugin: ExecPHP) had very interesting things to say regarding the plugin development in general. Really worth reading and discussing.

WordPress Plugin: Custom Function Widgets

February 4th • 23 Comments • Under: WordPress • Tags: , ,

Custom Function Widgets logo Many of the WordPress plugin authors don’t offer widgets, but only raw PHP functions (or hooks) which you have to insert into the theme’s template files. As the number of functions increases it becomes harder to manage it all, especially if you decide to uninstall some of them or add new ones.

It is especially inconvenient for those who are not so savvy, or don’t want to edit theme files. Moreover, if one decides to change the theme, the edits have to be repeated all over again.

Therefore, I made this Custom Function Widget plugin which allows you to create sidebar widgets without ever touching the theme’s files and use these widgets in any theme you like. Read more »

Singer/songwriter Martin Confused — acoustic and absolutely fantastic

February 1st • No Comments • Under: Sidenotes

Martin Confused (Mārtiņš Dambis) Martin Confused is an amazing singer/songwriter from Latvia whom I discovered only today. Download and listen to his two latest songs “Too late” and “Boy who never cried” at martinconfused.lv or watch him perform at NokiaOpenStage.lv. p.s. Turns out that we share the same surname — his real name is Mārtiņš Dambis.

Take-away photo and image positioning CSS styles for blogs — idea for a plugin

January 28th • 5 Comments • Under: Design Suggetions, WordPress • Tags: ,

Illustration: CSS Take-Away WordPress plugin After reading Kim’s comment regarding the Morning Racer theme, I had an idea of how to achieve a consistent image and photo placement in a WordPress blog even if you decide to change the theme.

The solution would be a plugin which would provide a “standard” set of CSS classes for styling different image (and other element) positioning.

The great thing is that you could use these CSS classnames with any theme you like as long as you have the plugin enabled. It would be also possible to specify a prefared classname prefix (for example, kd-wide, mo-withborder-a or pa-image-a) so that the plugin’s CSS doesn’t mess with the theme’s CSS. It could also contain CSS styles for lists (like the “flat” and “spaced” ones used on this blog), “important” messages, etc.

A kind of a portable image positioning thing. And you wouldn’t have to learn new CSS classnames or image layout ideas offered by different theme authors.

What do you think? Maybe you have a suggestion of other items (apart from images and lists) that you would like to have special styling.

Got a meta in a heada’ — supporting standards and welcoming IEn where n = 1…∞

January 25th • No Comments • Under: Sidenotes • Tags:

So instead of writing another post about how good or bad the proposed IE’s meta tag is, I actually added it to the <head>. Some say — you don’t have to, if using HTML5, while I say — do IE6 and IE7 know what <progress> is?

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