Capturing WordPress Plugin Activation Errors

If you’re developing a plugin and there are any PHP errors/warnings you’ll get a message like this when you activate it: The plugin generated [x] characters of unexpected output during activation. If you notice “headers already sent” messages, problems with syndication feeds or other issues, try deactivating or removing this plugin. You don’t actually see […]

The Correct Way to Roll Cables

This video explains the right way to roll cables, alternating over- and under-hand loops to maintain the natural curve of the cable. Using this method helps avoid knots, makes it quicker to unravel, reduces wear on the cable and makes it easier to get a clean, symmetrical coil. The video is geared towards audio cables, but […]

How to Find a Twitter User’s RSS Feed

Twitter has always offered RSS feeds for user’s tweets, but unfortunately they stopped publishing the URLs awhile back. The feeds are still active, though, so you just have to manually figure out the URL. The first thing you’ll need to do is use this website to find their ID based on their username. Then, just […]

Reserved WordPress URL Parameters

Using a reserved WordPress URL parameter (like “year” or “m”) on the front end will cause a 404 error.

Directory Permissions for WordPress under Plesk/Linux

Jason Diehl describes the right way to setup directory permissions on a Linux box running Plesk so that WordPress can automatically create the directories it uses to store uploads. Basically, you need to make sure that PHP’s safe mode is turned off and that wp-content is owned by apache, in the apache group, and chmod’d to 777.

Overwrite Uploads Plugin

I just checked a new plugin called Overwrite Uploads into the WordPress.org repository. It gives users the option to overwrite existing files when uploading rather than WordPress’ default behavior, which is to add a 1 to the end of the filename, e.g., filename1.jpg.

WordPress Plugin and Theme Security

Mark Jaquith recently gave a good presentation on writing secure WordPress themes and plugins at Wordcamp Phoenix 2011. The notes are also available. The main points are: Protect against SQL Injection by using the API whenever possible (because it automatically handles data sanitization). If the API can’t do what you need, use $wpdb->prepare(). Protect against […]

Body Classes Instead of Conditional Stylesheets

I’m thinking I should create a, ‘Duh, why didn’t I think of that?’ category for this. Instead of using conditional stylesheets or CSS hacks to fix Internet Explorer’s obnoxious lack of support for standards, you can conditionally set a class on the html or body tag and target that in your normal stylesheet. This is better for […]

Light and Clean CSS Message Box Styles

Here are a couple examples of good colors to use for clean CSS message boxes:

Ian Dunn

WordPress Developer

Monthly Archives: March 2011

Capturing WordPress Plugin Activation Errors

The Correct Way to Roll Cables

How to Find a Twitter User’s RSS Feed

Reserved WordPress URL Parameters

Directory Permissions for WordPress under Plesk/Linux

Overwrite Uploads Plugin

WordPress Plugin and Theme Security

Body Classes Instead of Conditional Stylesheets

Light and Clean CSS Message Box Styles