//remove Private and Protected from post titles
function my_private_title_format($text){
$text='%s';
return $text;
}
add_filter('private_title_format','my_private_title_format');
add_filter('protected_title_format','my_private_title_format');

                        
<?php
// check if the post has a featured image assigned to it.
if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) {
// get the src of the large size featured image
$src = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id($post->ID), 'large' );
$thumbnailSrc = $src[0];
// output image resized with timthumb 
?>
<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
<img src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/scripts/timthumb.php?src=<?php echo $thumbnailSrc; ?>&h=420&w=482" alt="">
</a>
<?php } ?>

WordPress has continued to be a source of work for us. It has eclipsed our work with our own content management system for several reasons.

• It’s faster: WordPress requires less custom coding, and the custom coding required is easy and fast to develop.
• It has a large community of developers: This allows us to troubleshoot problems easier, since any bug we run into has no doubt been dealt with by someone else.
• Our third reason is closely related to the second reason: it is easy for our clients to transition from us to another WordPress developer if needed. We can also form a symbiotic relationship with another WordPress developer to serve our clients better.

For the above reasons, we are slowly phasing out work custom content management system work in favor of WordPress.

• a link to delete (or “trash”) a post from the front-end
• shows only if the user is logged in and has the capability to delete that post
• shows a confirmation pop-up box
• if confirmed, post is trashed and page is refreshed

The following goes in the theme’s functions.php file:

function wp_delete_post_link($link = 'Trash This', $before = '', $after = '') {
    global $post;
    $post_type_object = get_post_type_object( $post->post_type );
    if ( !current_user_can( $post_type_object->cap->delete_post, $post->ID ) )
       return;
    $message = "Are you sure you want to trash ".get_the_title($post->ID)." ?";
    $delLink = wp_nonce_url( get_bloginfo('url') . "/wp-admin/post.php?action=delete&post=" . $post->ID, 'delete-post_' . $post->ID);
    $htmllink = "<a href='" . $delLink . "' onclick = \"if ( confirm('".$message."' ) ) { execute(); return true; } return false;\"/>".$link."</a>";
    echo $before . $htmllink . $after;
}

Then use the following template tag wherever you want it to appear in your theme.

<?php wp_delete_post_link('(trash)', '<div class="post-edit">', '</div>'); ?>

Some were asking about a url redirect for after the post is trashed. Try this to redirect to the home page:

add_action('trashed_post','my_trashed_post_handler',10,1);
function my_trashed_post_handler($post_id) {
   if (!is_admin()) {
    global $post;
    $user_info = get_userdata($post->post_author);
    wp_redirect(get_option('siteurl'));
    exit;
   }
}

In order to dynamically create these page links, set the following variable within the loop in the archive template:

$pageNumber = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;

<a href="http://example.com/category-b/page/<?php echo $pageNumber; ?>">Back to Category B</a>

The first site is The Green Road Show. The client had a banner already designed and said she wanted a simple WordPress site set up to go with it. I created a child theme from my trusty standby, Mimbo,  which I’m loving more each time I use it (as well as each time I don’t).  It is so simple to modify and by default includes dropdown menus and post thumbnail generation. Clients are generally very happy with the results. I hardly ever use its built-in functions like the featured category posts on the home page. These could be useful if you aren’t going to get into the theme files and rearrange them, but I’ve never had a client have a use for them.

The next site we worked on was Design Life Blog. The site already had a full design created in PSD, and the client had purchased the Thesis theme from which to work. I previously had some experience working with Thesis and some other themes like it, like Hybrid. I wasn’t initially attracted to either of these themes because of the complexity involved in modifying them. Yes, there are many built-in functions that you or the client can manipulate without touching a line of code. That is the advantage. The disadvantage is that if you want to modify the theme beyond these built-in functions, you don’t simply go to the WordPress codex and follow the Template Hierarchy to create a new layout. No–you must actually program little mini-plugins called theme hooks. I’m not going to get into all the details on theme hooks, but suffice to say they drove me absolutely crazy. This may be because this particular site was so complex and customized. If I were working on a much simpler site where changing some colors, fonts, and column widths would do the job, then Thesis or Hybrid might be a good choice. But then again, I would probably still go with something like Mimbo just for simplicity’s sake.

But enough of Thesis, which probably deserves a whole post of its own. For Design Life Blog, I took the PSD design, then pulled up the Thesis theme and customized it beyond all recognition with theme hooks. This site really has a lot of cool additions. We installed VideoPress, which is Automattic’s own video plugin for HD video upload and playback. Then we created a contest plugin where visitors can enter design contests, upload images, and vote on other visitors’ contest entries. The client can see vote tallies and set contest start and end dates through the admin.

The third WordPress site we worked on was GraduateFog.co.uk. This site was already set up for the most part, we just came in for some small tweaks like resizing and placing the banner, creating the dropdown menu, and customizing the home page to the client’s specifications. The client had already chosen the Arras WordPress theme, which I liked for the most part, though parts of the coding seemed unnecessarily complex made modifying it much more time consuming. I had to dig through several directories and files before I figured out why it was doing what it was doing. The thumbnail generation is not automatically done like with Mimbo. This always leaves the client frustrated, since they generally have to insert urls in custom fields–not very intuitive. But at least customizing it didn’t involve theme hooks!

The first site is Id8, the Sellier Design blog. Sellier Design requested that we  turn their original design into a WordPress blog. We coded the theme from PSDs then installed it with the website system. The site is configured to pull in Twitter posts from two different accounts and automatically post them as blog posts. The client also can use the WordPress admin area to make other blog posts to the site.

The second site is Cardiopump Fitness. Using a design created by Bonita Pioneer, we coded and built out this website on the WordPress platform. Website features include interactive video clips, free workout downloads, a blog, and an online shop. The shop interfaces with PayPal for secure online payments.

Where the heck is that extra padding coming from!?!

Bless the day that I heard about Firebug, an add-on for Firefox that allows you to highlight different HTML objects on your page and see the styles associated with that object. See that 10px extra padding on your image? That’s coming from line 131 of your styles.css file.

The only problem is when, as usually happens, you need to debug CSS between different browsers. IE8 almost never renders the page the same way as IE6, IE7, Firefox 1, 2 3, Safari, and Opera. (Yes, I have all these browsers installed on my computer.) Although I haven’t used it yet, Firebug Lite apparently solves this problem. It is a Javascript file that simulates Firebug’s features in any browser. I will definitely try that out and report back on my findings. In the meantime, anyone else try this?

I’ve found a new tool that helps significantly with the tiresome process of backing up your files. It’s called Synkron. I first heard of it from the productivity blog, When I Have Time. The post I just linked to has a much more in-depth writeup than I will go into here.

Synkron works on several operating systems. Hook up your external hard drive (if you don’t have one, get one). Then tell Synkron what directories to back up. I have two directires on my computer where I store my personal and business files–I simply tell Synkron to “clone” these two directories to my hard drive. Cloning will copy any new files to the hard drive directory as well as delete any files that aren’t in the directory being cloned. The first time I did this, I saved about 1GB space on my hard drive from deleting previously backed up files that I had deleted on my computer but were still on my hard drive.

One issue I’ve found is that if you have Firefox and other applications open on your computer, Skynron takes forever to finish it’s cloning–I’m talking several hours here. Yesterday I closed all applications on my computer before starting the cloning process and Synkron was done in 2 minutes flat.

Before I knew about WP-Hive, I gave WordPress MU a try. The installation is quite complicated if working with multiple domains, and then you run into the issue that many plugins and themes are not compatible with MU. MU is great if you’re thinking of running a social network of blogs, but not the ideal solution for running several separate sites on one installation.

There is also Stephen Rider’s Virtual Multiblog which sounded great at the outset, but the instructions proved complicated, involving symlinks for pointing the different domains. Edit: Per comment below by Stephen, symlinks are only required if the multiple blogs are set up in different directories.

Come to the rescue WP-Hive. A simple plugin, simple instructions, simply park your domain through cPanel, install the new WordPress site using the new domain, and you’re set to go. You have one installation you have to upgrade for everyone. All the plugins you upload for one blog are available to all. Each installation will run it’s own theme, it’s own set of active plugins, and it’s own user and permission set. It gets somewhat complicated when adding XML sitemaps and robots.txt so that each site has it’s own, but following the instructions easily get’s that done.

This site is running on a WP-Hive setup, as well as our client’s site Roca Services and two wedding websites I set up for some friends. We will no doubt be adding many more sites on this setup now that creating and maintaining them is so easy.

Update 2010/11/12: I’m still using this great plugin to run the WordPress sites that host with us. Some say that this plugin is redundant now because of the built-in multisite capability of WP since 3.0. However, multisite was built with a social networking idea in mind. Multisite also is a pain to add multiple domains (doesn’t work out of the box). As WP-Hive says on its website, Hive is built for a single administrator to run several sites and on a single WP install, and it’s perfect for that.

Update 2011/06/17: The plugin developer has unfortunately stopped active development on this plugin. It is a shame since I do still use it. There are some instances, for a web developer hosting his/her clients for instance, when multisite isn’t the perfect tool. WP-Hive is. There was a minor scare when the plugin didn’t work with WP 3.1, but that has now been fixed. But as far as being a tool for the long run, it looks like we’ll have to count on multisite.