John Russell Blog

Tag: WordPress

  • WordPress Plugin Conflicts and Compatibility

    One of the reasons WordPress is so successful, and used so widely, is because it can do almost anything you need, particularly through the use of Plugins. Plugins add new features to a website by extending the core functionality of WordPress. However, not all plugins are created equally, and it’s impossible for even the best…

  • WordPress Gutenberg Review

    I think it’s important to know the history of my experience with WordPress in order to understand the basis for opinions, so this is where I will begin my WordPress Gutenberg review. I had my first real introduction to WordPress in 2012 when I made a site for a client that needed an easy to…

  • Using a PHP Framework or Library in WordPress Plugins and Themes

    Using a PHP Framework or Library in WordPress Plugins and Themes

    Anyone who has spent a fair amount of time creating WordPress Plugins or Themes has likely also come across the need to package a PHP framework or library inside a plugin or theme. On the surface this is a fairly routine thing to do – simply copy the file into your plugin or theme, or…

  • Search WordPress Users by Name

    If you run a WordPress site with a large list of users and have ever needed to search for a specific user (from the Users > All Users admin page) there’s a good chance no users were found. The problem is that the default query only searches by nicename (username) and email address. However, if you need to…

  • WordPress Menu Anchor

    I recently had the need to add a series of anchor links to a WordPress menu that linked to specific sections of a page. I found this to be tedious, since the page URL needed to be hard coded into the custom link menu item and if the page URL was ever updated each anchor needed…

  • WordPress Check if a Menu is Empty

    While working with WordPress there are times that it can be very useful to check if a menu is empty before outputting markup. One example is for displaying dynamic, custom, menus in a sidebar where you may not want to output any markup if the menu is empty. This is actually the default functionality of…

  • WordPress Custom Post Type Pagination

    Looking around the internet it’s easy to find several examples of how you can create WordPress custom post type pagination links using multiple different methods. The problem is many of them require overwriting or modifying the $wp_query global variable, which can break functionality with plugins, themes, or theme widgets. It’s almost always better practice to…

  • WordPress Richtext Editor for Excerpts

    Occasionally when creating a WordPress theme the design relies on using the excerpt meta box, but forcing the end user to manually type html tags defeats the entire purpose of using WordPress (or any CMS for that matter) and adds a layer of unnecessary complexity to editing posts, pages, or any other post type. To…