Daggerhart Lab Blog

Simple PHP Template Class

As a follow up to my earlier post, I wanted to show how to greatly improve the usefulness of the function by changing it to a class with distinct methods, and in the process reduce the previous approach's shortcomings. Read More

How to copy a live WordPress site to a local VVV machine

VVV is one of the best environments for WordPress development, but it only comes with a few sites by default. This post will guide you through creating a new local development site on VVV, and (optionally) importing a live site for local development. Read More

Sweet Widget Templates for WordPress

The way WordPress handles the HTML for widgets is clunky, inflexible, and basically wrong. This plugin solves the problem by providing true templates for widgets within your WordPress theme. Read More

Drupal 7 Themeing Notes

An ongoing list of notes, hints, tips and tricks for Drupal 7 themes and modules. hook_theme(), hook_preprocess_hook(), Drupal render arrays, and many more resources and technical details. Read More

How to Create a Simple PHP Templating Function

Sometimes you find yourself needing to write a very simple php template function. Maybe you're working on a very simple script, or in a CMS that doesn't provide much in the way of template organization or overriding. Read More

How To Disable The WordPress Login Form

There are plenty of reasons you may need to hide the standard WordPress login form. This post shows how to remove the login form from the page completely, while still providing a simple mechanism for accessing the form when needed. Read More

Allow Image HTML tags in WordPress Comments

How to allow your users to place HTML img tags into WordPress comments by hooking into the wp_kses_allowed_html filter. Additionally, this same method can be used to allow other HTML tags into comments. Read More

Simple Read-Only JSON API in WordPress

Class for WordPress that provides a simple JSON api for consumption. Read More

Database interactions with WP_Query and $wpdb

Presentation I gave at WordCamp Asheville in 2015. In which I provide an overview of two different PHP classes for querying the WordPress database: $wpdb for custom queries, and WP_Query() for getting lists of posts. Read More

abstract art in browns and reds

Dynamically add items to WordPress menus

Often I find the need to dynamically add items to a menu in WordPress based on the current logged in user, or current post being viewed. After a little looking around, I found that the wp_get_nav_menu_items filter holds the key to this challenge. Read More

WordPress: Add Images to Taxonomy Terms

Relating images to taxonomy terms is a common problem I've run into when building WordPress sites. To do it completely and effectively it requires the use of multiple hooks, and a non-trivial amount of logic. Read More

Vertical CSS3 Title in widget / block / panel

This post shows how to rotate text using CSS so that it is aligned vertically. It's not a perfect solution, but it was fun to figure it out, and a good excuse to play with CodePen. Read More

Drupal 7 Invite module: Send invite_by_email programmatically

How to use the entity api's entity_metadata_wrapper() to send invitation emails provided by the invite_by_email module. This approach can easily be setup as a custom rule action to provide significant flexibility. Read More

WordPress: Get taxonomy hierarchy, including children

This function provides a complete hierarchy of taxonomy terms from the given taxonomy using get_terms(), and stores each term's children within an array as the property named children. Read More

Introduction to WordPress Plugin Development

This is a presentation I gave at WordCamp Asheville 2014, meant to teach new developers to create WordPress plugins. It focuses on setting up a new plugin project, and exploring different WordPress hooks. Read More