WordPress 4.9 is live a few days now and it comes with an awesome new widget: the Gallery widget! In this mini-tutorial we’ll see how to turn our gallery widgets into image slideshows using Slick carousel and minimal code!
Creating a simple WordPress blogging layout with CSS Grid and Flexbox
CSS has come a long, long way and throughout the very recent years has steadily matured to become more than a simple styling specification which required hacks for many complex (or simple) things. With constant improvements like the introduction of e.g. flexbox, custom properties, and more, the design developer’s life has become dramatically easier. One of the most recent additions into the language’s specification is CSS Grid, which aims to remove any layout limitations the language had before (even by flexbox).
How to add a custom user field in WordPress
WordPress stores user information out of the box, and it cares for the user’s name, email, and some more basic info, it leaves a lot to be desired. For example, social network links are pretty-much required these days, but since social networks come and go on a daily basis, WordPress itself can’t commit to supporting any single one as it may not exist tomorrow. A user’s date of birth is quite important for some websites as well (for example, with age-restricted content), however since a user’s date of birth may be considered confidential or identifying information, it may be illegal (or require special permits) in some countries. Again, WordPress won’t collect this information by itself in order to give us (its users) the freedom to use it no matter of our location. It therefore provides the means to build support for this extra information ourselves.
How to style a WordPress navigation menu bar using CSS
Writing styles for navigation menus nowadays is mostly a routine job; after all, CSS has made strides in the last few years, we can even mimic hover-intent on menus without any JavaScript at all (a topic which we’ll cover on a dedicated tutorial).
Keyboard shortcuts for WordPress content editors
Keyboard shortcuts, as their name suggests, are a great way of streamlining your work process when dealing with computers. WordPress comes with its own set of shortcuts to help content publishers be faster when writing, or editing content.
Useful shortcuts for the text editor
Most of you are familiar with the text editor toolbar sitting right there, above the text entry box. The toolbar hosts a number of very useful text formatting options like changing font weight, text alignment and more, you’ve seen them and most likely clicked them, right? Well, if you want to become quicker you don’t have to, just utilize the shortcuts listed below and you’re on your way to more efficient publishing.
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Using the WordPress transients API
Your website’s speed matters a lot, because when your site is slow, your visitors will quickly go away and look for a competitors site that doesn’t waste their time. But computers are fast. Very fast. Yet, there are operations that are computationally intensive, network latency that increases access times, or complex database queries that can bring a even a powerful server to its knees. In such cases, a level of caching should be implemented where possible, so that a stored, pre-computed result is served to your visitors. When will this cache get refreshed is a matter of use-case, but as a general rule of thumb, it should be updated as rarely as possible.
How to create a custom color scheme for your WordPress theme using the customizer
Ever since WordPress version 3.4 it’s been extremely simple to add site settings to our websites with the Theme Customization API. Here at CSSIgniter it’s actually been a couple of years now where we’ve completely abandoned custom Theme Options pages in lieu of the Customizer, since the benefits are too many to pass: ease of use, consistent API, native look and feel, and live previews to name a few.
How to make your own WordPress dashboard widget
Do you build a plugin and want to easily display some general information? Or perhaps you are building a theme and want your customers to keep up with your blog? If you don’t want to build a dedicated settings page, then a simple (or complex, your call) widget on the WordPress dashboard should be enough. It’s very easy and very fast, too!
How to add a new navigation menu to your WordPress site
Do you need to show an extra navigation menu on your WordPress site? Or perhaps you need to show a bunch of links someplace? No matter your use-case, WordPress provides navigation menus that are very easy to create, manage and display. If you like the drag and drop interface of the navigation menus management screen, and you so you figured you’ll create a menu to show them.
However, you neither want to show them in the sidebar (“Custom Menu” widget), nor in the content (“menu shortcode” plugin), and your theme doesn’t quite allow you to display it exactly where you want. What do you do? You need to register a new menu location. Let’s see how.
How to add custom fields to the WordPress registration form
If you allow registrations on your WordPress site, chances are you need to gather some more information about your users. If you absolutely need this information, the best way to get it is to make it required during registration, otherwise there are slim chances that your users will actually visit their profile page and provide that optional information.