It’s pretty easy to check if a Jetpack module is active:
$jetpack_active_modules = get_option('jetpack_active_modules');
if ( class_exists( 'Jetpack', false ) && $jetpack_active_modules && in_array( 'your-module', $jetpack_active_modules ) ) {
// Do something
}
I added support for Jetpack Infinite Scroll on a theme of mine that uses Masonry recently.
Since I couldn’t find any good code snippets or recommendations for how the callback should work I wanted to share a couple methods I tried. If anyone has improvements or recommendations, please let me know.
All of these examples use the “post-load” javascript event that Jetpack triggers. You can read about that on the Jetpack Infinite Scroll documentation page. Read more
Images are generally the heaviest assets on a webpage- so if you’re interested in fast load times for users, this is one of the best places to optimize.
One popular technique for speeding up the initial load time is called “lazy loading”. It works by replacing the source of images (src=”/example.gif”) with a transparent placeholder image (src=”/pixel.gif”). This allows everything else on the page (text,fonts,scripts,etc) to render first. Read more
Visual is a free theme designed to showcase photography, artwork and images in a neat masonry grid layout.
I think it’s important to give users a visual cue when menu items have a drop down menu.
One way I’ve handled this in the past is to use the Superfish jQuery plugin, which adds a class to any list items with children. This allows them to be styled differently- with a background image of a down arrow (for instance).
However, I just saw a new theme released by Paul de Wouters called Spine. Instead of using javascript to apply the class- he uses a custom Walker_Nav_Menu so that the class is added to the markup directly.
I think this is a much better way to do it, and solves an issue I’ve seen in some themes where the menu items shift a bit when the new classes and styling are applied with javascript.
Read more
Assuming you don’t want to use the TypeKit plugin, here’s how to enqueue the scripts directly from your theme:
/**
* TypeKit Fonts
*
* @since Theme 1.0
*/
function theme_typekit() {
wp_enqueue_script( 'theme_typekit', '//use.typekit.net/xxxxxxx.js');
}
add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'theme_typekit' );
function theme_typekit_inline() {
if ( wp_script_is( 'theme_typekit', 'done' ) ) { ?>
<script type="text/javascript">try{Typekit.load();}catch(e){}</script>
<?php }
}
add_action( 'wp_head', 'theme_typekit_inline' );
I’ve built a couple themes where I’ve needed to give users more control over how the featured image is displayed for individual posts. The obvious place to put these options are in the thumbnail metabox itself.
In this theme the default display of the thumbnails is a cropped to a square next to the title. But if the user had a large landscape image, they could choose to display it full width instead.
I experimented with CSS preprocessing today (both LESS and SASS). I have to admit, it was much easier to set up than I thought and really intuitive to use.
To get started, I just downloaded a copy of CodeKit (OSX) and dropped a couple theme directories into it. When that happened, CodeKit started to watch all the LESS and SASS files in those directories- and automatically compiled them into actual CSS files whenever I saved.
To become more familiar with the syntax, I forked a copy of Jared Erickson’s LESS theme on GitHub and made some edits. Then I converted it to SASS syntax. If you’re completely new both SASS and LESS- I think that’s a fun small project to do. Read more
I’ve been working on a plugin that needs to update the text of an object via javascript when an element is clicked. Like the rest of my plugin, those strings in the javascript need to be translatable. Thankfully WordPress makes this easy to do.
Let’s say this is the script you are enqueuing:
function prefix_enqueue_custom_script(){
wp_register_script( 'prefix_custom_script', plugin_dir_url( __FILE__ ) .'js/custom-script.js', array( 'jquery' ) );
wp_enqueue_script( 'prefix_custom_script' );
}
In this custom script there are two strings that should be translatable: “upload” and “remove”. To make this happen we’ll use the wp_localize_script function, which gets hooked onto the script handle:
function prefix_enqueue_custom_script(){
wp_register_script( 'prefix_custom_script', plugin_dir_url( __FILE__ ) .'js/custom-script.js', array( 'jquery' ) );
wp_enqueue_script( 'prefix_custom_script' );
wp_localize_script( 'prefix_custom_script', 'prefix_object_name', array(
'upload' => __( 'upload', 'textdomain' ),
'remove' => __( 'remove', 'textdomain' )
) );
}
Now in my javascript, instead of simply using the text “upload” and “remove” I’ll use the variables prefix_object_name.upload and prefix_object_name.remove.
This tutorial explains how to output post meta (comments, tags, categories, edit link) and display a small icon before each one using an icon font. Icon fonts are great for this purpose because they can scale to any size, look great on retina devices, have a smaller file size than images, and use a single HTTP request.
An icon font I particularly like (and use in this demo) is Entypo by Daniel Bruce. There’s over 250 icon glyphs available in the font and the download size is only 19k. But there are a lot of great choices out there to use. (Update: the tags icon is now from FontAwesome) Read more
On services like Twitter and Facebook you’ll see content that was posted “posted X minutes ago” or “posted X days ago”. I like that. I think it’s bit more personalized than simply using the long form date (e.g. December 27th, 2012).
On my site I now display the post dates as a human time diff (aka, a human readable format) if the post is less than a month old. If it’s older than I month, I use the standard date format selected inside the WordPress dashboard under “Settings > General : Date Format” (in my case Month Day, Year).
if ( ! function_exists( 'example_posted_on' ) ) :
/**
* Prints HTML with meta information for the current post-date/time and author.
*
* @since Example 1.0
*/
function example_posted_on() {
$post_date = the_date( 'Y-m-d','','', false );
$month_ago = date( "Y-m-d", mktime(0,0,0,date("m")-1, date("d"), date("Y")) );
if ( $post_date > $month_ago ) {
$post_date = sprintf( __( '%1$s ago', 'example' ), human_time_diff( get_the_time('U'), current_time('timestamp') ) );
} else {
$post_date = get_the_date();
}
printf( __( 'Posted <time class="entry-date" datetime="%1$s" pubdate>%2$s</time><span class="byline"> by <span class="author vcard">%3$s</span></span>', 'example' ),
esc_attr( get_the_date( 'c' ) ),
esc_html( $post_date ),
esc_html( get_the_author() )
);
}
endif;
Use a Function
Instead of adding this code to each template where I need to display the date, I’ve wrapped it in the function “example_posted_on” so I can reuse and easily update it if needed. Whenever I need to call the date, I just use example_posted_on().
Since this is used in a theme of mine, I’ve wrapped it in a “if ( ! function_exists( ‘example_posted_on’ ) ) :” check so someone can easily override it from a child theme if they need to.
Compare the Timestamps
To check if the date of the post is older than a month, I generate a timestamp to compare with the one from the post:
$month_ago = date( "Y-m-d", mktime(0,0,0,date("m")-1, date("d"), date("Y")) );
You could easily change this to be to any time period you want and compare those timestamps instead.
Make Sure it is Translatable
If you’re wondering why the strings are wrapped in “sprintf” and “printf”, that’s so everything can be translated if someone wants to localize the theme for a different language. Make sure to change the textdomain “example” to whatever you’ve defined as the textdomain in your theme.
Be Careful of Caching
If your site makes use of heavy caching (W3C Total Cache, and/or a good CDN) your post “day” may get stuck for a while. If it’s included as part of a publicly released theme you may want to give users an option to turn it off and use the regular date instead.
Another option (in that case), would be to use javascript to look for the post date, and convert it to a human readable format on front end instead- but that’s probably fodder for another post.
I do a lot of multivariate testing on high-traffic websites with Optimizely, a powerful and easy-to-use web application.
This video explains how to use Optimizely to create a basic multivariate test (relying on javascript to push events and create variants). Some of that code is also posted below.