Options Framework Sidebar

By Devin

The latest version of the Options Framework has a new hook to display content below the options panel. This feature was added thanks to @Satrya, who posted a neat screenshot on GitHub and requested it.

The hook can be used to display any content below the options panel, but one cool use is to add a sidebar with additional information about the theme. Here’s an example:

I added a demo theme of this to the Options Theme Kit if you’re interested to see exactly how it works.

Here’s a slightly simpler example:

add_action('optionsframework_after','exampletheme_options_after', 100);

function exampletheme_options_after() { ?>
    <p>Content after the options panel!</p>
<?php }

Infinite Scroll in WordPress

By Devin

Infinite scroll has become a standard feature in many web applications. Twitter and Facebook are the ones I use every day, but it’s also in a ton of Tumblr themes and Cargo Collective sites.

I feel WordPress themes has been slow to adopt infinite scroll- but after adding it to my site over the weekend I understand some of the complications.

Unlike Tumblr or Cargo Collective, WordPress (.org) users can use plugins to add all sorts of javascript to posts. On my site Syntax Highlighting is the main culprit (which I use to display code snippets), but many others have social buttons or lightboxed images.

When infinite scroll pulls in additional posts via ajax, it doesn’t load the javascript code from the header or footer of the post that might be needed to display js content (e.g. social buttons, formatted code, etc) properly. That puts theme authors in a bind. Infinite scroll may be a better end user experience, but it’s going to lead to more support requests during theme set up.

However, if you don’t use much javascript in your post content, or if you display excerpts on your index pages rather than full posts, I’d suggest trying it out.

The Infinite Scroll plugin recently had a complete rewrite, and I can now recommend using it again. If you use the plugin you should be able to set up infinite scroll for your theme in just a couple minutes.

I’ll also posted a tutorial about how to add Infinite Scroll to a theme without a plugin.

Useful Links:

Image Credit: Infinity Pool

WP Engine Hosting Review

By Devin

I’ve hosted most of my sites with BlueHost for over six years, but I recently migrated this one over to WP Engine. Mainly I was curious to see what the impact on page speed would be. As WP Theming has grown in traffic so have the load times– despite good caching, gzipped files, minified scripts and css, and sprited images.