Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings

WordPress, web development, and world domination.

Blog Archives

Theme Hook Alliance: Sidebar Edition

Jul132012

Recently, Doug Stewart (@zamoose on Twitter) announced the Theme Hook Alliance. This is an attempt to create an ad-hoc standard for new action hooks in WordPress themes. You see, there are some standard actions that WordPress themes are supposed to include: wp_head(), wp_footer(), get_sidebar(), and comment_form() are all good examples. By using these standard action hook template tags, plugin developers can inject extra info into a content page without explicitly editing your theme’s files. This makes … Continue reading →

QueryPosts.com: A New Resource for WordPress Developers

May072012

If you spend any time coding plugins or themes for WordPress, you know the value of a good reference for WordPress API functions. That’s why you should go take a look at QueryPosts right now, and bookmark it. At the time of this writing, you can lookup all most (for now) functions in the WordPress core, or you can browse by just the new functions introduced in WordPress 3.3 (I’m sure that this will update when … Continue reading →

Opengraph Metadata Bookmarklet

Oct102011

I was working recently on adding Facebook Opengraph metadata to a website, and wanted a quick way to debug the information. I created a javascript bookmarklet to quickly view the information from the meta tags on the page. I thought it might be useful to other web developers, so I figured I’d share it here. Opengraph Meta Drag that link to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar. Then on any web page, click it to view the … Continue reading →

How I backup my database

Sep292011

I run several WordPress sites on my servers, including this blog, which has content going back over 10 years. While I’m not too worried about backing up all the files (I can always install a fresh copy of WordPress on a new server and be up and running quickly, sans old images and such), my content is quite precious to me. For a long time, I ran a nightly perl script which dumped my databases … Continue reading →

Review: WordPress 3 Plugin Development Essentials

Jul142011

I recently received a copy of WordPress 3 Plugin Development Essentials from Packt Publishing. This book was authored by Brian Bondari and Everett Griffiths, who run the TipsFor.us site together. I also noted that one of the technical editors was Paul Thewlis, who wrote WordPress for Business Bloggers, which I reviewed here previously. I’m always eager to check out new programming books that come my way, and that’s especially true for books that cover WordPress … Continue reading →

New Theme (in progress)

Apr252011

Welcome to my new theme. It’s not done yet, but I’m making it available so that others can help me improve it. Read more about the details to learn what features it includes, what remains to be done, and how you can help, if you’re so inclined. Continue reading →

Competitors “Taking Aim”

Mar242011

Open source CMS projects like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla! provide web publishing tools that give users the freedom to modify the system and own their data in ways that proprietary systems don’t offer. BC Gurus, a consultancy specializing in Adobe’s Business Catalyst (a hosted turnkey web publishing product), “took aim” at Open Source CMS’s, kicking off a proposed series of articles with a video showing two BC Gurus people at a firing range, using WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla! logos as targets. The communities for these projects were, understandably, not happy about it. Continue reading →

Snowpocalypse 2011

Jan102011

Atlanta’s first snow of 2011, and the second of the season, since we had a White Christmas.