Using JSON with WordPress

With the popularity of jQuery, AJAX, and client-side programming operations in general, there’s more use made of JSON as a format for getting data backwards and forwards.

For example, the Twitter API offers data as JSON – and more manageably than accessing their RSS XML feeds for user timelines.

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Separate Pingbacks from User Comments

People have predicted their death for a long time, but pingbacks/trackbacks (and displaying them) are still firmly with us – there is a certain vanity involved…

They do give an indication of related content, other sites in your niche (and just how many automated spam sites there are out there ) etc. At the same time, they break up the flow of user comments and even with threaded comments can make it difficult for visitors to follow the discussion.

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Expressivo Free WordPress Theme

Expressivo is a free WordPress theme, three-column with two righthand sidebars – going to a single sidebar on single posts and pages. With Cufon embedded fonts for post titles, threaded and paged comments – you can also replace the header completely with your own image.

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A jQuery Slideshow for WordPress 2.9

You want a jQuery slideshow for your WordPress blog? – on the front page, or maybe in the sidebar? No real problem, all the javascript is taken of with the help of a jQuery plugin, all we have to do is figure out how to get the post data.

And to keep things really simple, this is going to use the thumbnail functions in WP 2.9 – no need to mess around with custom fields any more.

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WordPress Comments Plugins

We spend enough time on the blog content and then tend to forget about the comments part. Comments are the way to get people involved – build up a blog’s readership etc etc. A few, sensible, comments trickling in will freshen up a page’s content and make it not seem completely dead in the water to passing search engine crawlers…

And the good news, there’s plenty of comment-related plugins available to get the job done.

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WordPress Action Hooks – the simplified version

WordPress action hooks allow you to access the functions of the core WP code, without messing around with that code. It’s the basis for most plugins (the whole business essentially started out as the plugin API), but themes are using them more and more and there’s no reason not to…

do_action/add_action are also the means of getting external scripts, CSS, javascript/jQuery correctly on the page.

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How’s Twitter doing these days?

Some thoughts on Twitter and how it affects the average WordPress blogger presently :- how to get value out of it, what to avoid and how to maintain a decent etiquette – it does seem to have grown slightly in the last year or so.

Success requires 2-way communication. “Broadcasters” – you know the ones… Their profile says 3 following 12,455 followers – they’re not being a success via Twitter, they’re trading off an established reputation.

It would be nice not to have to do the work, but if you’re starting at the bottom… you’ll have to do the work, no one else will. Follow those who follow you.

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Intrepid Free WordPress Theme

Intrepid is a free WordPress theme, two-column with a right sidebar, compatible with WordPress version 2.8 upwards, with threaded and paged comments. 3 styles of pastel shades to choose from – blue-green, green-brown and purple-gray as default… You can also replace the header completely with your own image.

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WordPress 2.9 – Using Post Thumbnails

With WordPress 2.9 comes a revised image thumbnail system – previously, support for posts with attached thumbnails was a little haphazard (it is a fiddly business in terms of the programming), but this is a significant step forward. The need is for a series of images, of given size, associated with a series of posts [...]

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Using Google Code libraries with WordPress

By default, WordPress loads the version of jQuery that comes with the package. But there is an alternative way of doing it and that’s to use the AJAX Libraries API at Google Code – use their bandwidth, why not… A few lines added to your functions.php in the theme you’re building and you’re ready to [...]

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