Create a WordPress Admin with Code

By Devin

A few times I’ve gotten into a situation where I have access to WordPress files (via SFTP or other means) but I’m otherwise locked out of the site (my user hasn’t been created or was accidentally deleted). In those cases, the quickest option is generally just to create a new admin user with code.

If I know which theme is active, I’ll generally just drop this code into the bottom of functions.php for that theme, refresh the site once or twice in the browser, and then delete the code (important: make sure to delete it!)

<?php
add_action( 'init', function () {
$username = 'admin';
$password = 'password';
$email_address = 'webmaster@mydomain.com';
if ( ! username_exists( $username ) ) {
$user_id = wp_create_user( $username, $password, $email_address );
$user = new WP_User( $user_id );
$user->set_role( 'administrator' );
}
} );
view raw create-admin-user.php hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Continue reading →

Example Cart Restrictions in WooCommerce

By Devin

I’ve been working with a “Trial Product” in a WooCommerce store which needs to be the only item in the cart during checkout due to shipping requirements (and because it doesn’t make sense to order a trial if you’re also going to order the actual product).

To make this clear to the customer, I’ve restricted what can be added to the cart in specific situations:

1) If the “Trial Product” is already in the cart, additional products should not be added. WooCommerce will instead display a notice asking the customer to remove the “Trial Product” from their cart if they wish to add different products.

2) If products are already in the cart, and the customer attempts to add the “Trial Product”, a notice will display asking the customer to remove the other items from their cart first. Continue reading →

Adding Estimated Read Time to a WordPress Post

By Devin

Ever since Medium popularized the concept of the read times on articles, I’ve been seeing it as a design element in more WordPress projects.

Getting a great estimate for average read time is complicated, but if you just need a blunt tool for calculating it, you can use:

amount of words in the post / average reading speed

According to Medium, people read about 275 words per minute. Medium also adds 12 seconds for each inline image, but I didn’t get that fancy.

Here’s the snippet:

<?php
/**
* Estimates the reading time for a given piece of $content.
*
* @param string $content Content to calculate read time for.
* @param int $wpm Estimated words per minute of reader.
*
* @returns int $time Esimated reading time.
*/
function prefix_estimated_reading_time( $content = '', $wpm = 300 ) {
$clean_content = strip_shortcodes( $content );
$clean_content = strip_tags( $clean_content );
$word_count = str_word_count( $clean_content );
$time = ceil( $word_count / $wpm );
return $time;
}
view raw estimate-read-time.php hosted with ❤ by GitHub

To output the read time in your post, use something like this:

<div class="reading-time">
<?php echo prefix_estimated_reading_time( get_the_content() ); ?> min read
</div>
view raw output.php hosted with ❤ by GitHub

If you prefer to use a plugin, there’s a few around. This snippet is mostly borrowed code from Reading Time WP, which is also on GitHub.

Prevent WordPress Emails in Stage or Local Environments

By Devin

When you’re developing a WordPress site locally or testing in staging, you’ll generally want to prevent the site from sending out emails to customers or users.

I’ve noticed that a number of other WordPress developers are fans of MailHog (great write up by Jonathan Christopher), but in many cases it’s easier if you don’t have to install anything additional on the server.

I use two plugins to block and then log emails:

“Disable Emails” prevents the emails from sending from WordPress, and “Email Log” is able to capture their contents in case you need to view them.

Since I sync my production environment to staging and local quite frequently, I have a script in my theme that activates these plugins when it detects the new environment.

Automatic Accounts on WooCommerce Checkout

By Devin

There are a lot of good reasons to require a customer account on checkout:

  • It’s easier for customers to manage their orders and get support.
  • It’s for customer to purchase again (all their details are saved).
  • It’s easier for store manager to track life time value of customers.

However, the checkout process for first time customers should still be as seamless as possible. This is why I like to create accounts automatically if the email hasn’t been used before. WooCommerce has this functionality built-in. Continue reading →

Using Scroll Reveal for Animation Effects

By Devin

I’ve been rebuilding a WordPress site that was originally set up using a popular ThemeForest theme and Visual Composer. The theme made it really easy to add animation effects that occur on scroll (as specific elements come into view), but extracting the code for animations wasn’t super easy (it’s part of a 600kb javascript included by theme and mixed with inline styles from Visual Composer).

However, after testing a few different libraries, I found Scroll Reveal worked best as a replacement (3k minified & gzipped). Continue reading →

Automated WooCommerce Testing with Ghost Inspector

By Devin

WooCommerce sites are made up of a complex set of integrated parts. There’s WordPress, WooCommerce itself, other third-party plugins, and a theme. Each of these components require frequent updates and has the potential to break critical functionality on your site. This is why it’s critical to have automated tests.

For a WooCommerce site I used to work with, we had a checklist of items we would manually run through after any major update:

  • Verify products on home page look correct and load
  • Test “Add to Cart” button
  • Test removing item from cart
  • Verify all product on /shop page look correct
  • Test complete checkout with Stripe for guest checkout
  • Test complete checkout with PayPal for guest checkout
  • Test complete checkout with Stripe with coupon for guest checkout
  • etc.

Needless to say, this took a lot of time. Thankfully, tests like this can all be automated using Ghost Inspector.

Continue reading →

Subscription Toggle in WooCommerce

By Devin

In WooCommerce subscription products and standard products can’t be combined. For example, if you’d like to offer customers the option to purchase coffee as a one-time sale or as a convenient monthly subscription, you’ll need to create two separate products on the backend (even though it’s essentially the same product and SKU).

If you’re SEO focused, this might be a concern in terms of duplicate content and splitting page rank. For customers, this also isn’t a great experience. If a customer lands on the one-time product page, they might not know about the subscription option (and vicea versa).

A better example of subscription user experience is Target. If a product offers a subscription option, there’s a radio button toggle with a discount clearly highlighted. Turns out, with a little work, this is also possible to do in WooCommerce. Continue reading →