Category: WordPress

Patch for JWPlayer

I made a website for the Positive Parenting Program of the Manitoba Government while working at Canada’s Web Shop, and it had videos on one of the pages. Because the videos are self-hosted, I used the excellent JWPlayer for WordPress plugin, and it worked great except that when the staging site was brought down the videos stopped working.

It turns out that JWPlayer for WordPress is using WordPress guids instead of using the wp_get_attachment_url() function that makes it safe to move your WordPress website between domains. In short, the guid column in the posts table stores the original URL of the video, and if you change domains, the only way to get the correct URL is to use the aforementioned function.

I wrote a little patch, notified LongTail Video, and it is on its way to being included in the plugin.

RecipePress WordPress Recipe Plugin Project

As of recently, I am the main support person for the RecipePress WordPress plugin.

Over the last 6 months I’ve built and helped others build at least 5 recipe-based websites. Here’s a list:

Since all of them are using the RecipePress WordPress plugin, I ran into a bug, contacted the project owner, and it turned out he is looking to step down. Since I am always looking for successful PHP-based free software projects to contribute to, I think this is a great opportunity for me.

Here’re some useful links for RecipePress users:

Site-branch-specific Styling with WordPress

For the second time now, I’ve been asked to style some elements in a page based on the branch of the sitemap tree being displayed.

You can see it at http://rupertsland.ca/wp/about/ still in staging, will move to http://rupertsland.ca/about/ vs. http://www.rupertsland.ca/wp/reference/ and http://www.seniorscircle.ca/directory/health-well-being/ vs. http://www.seniorscircle.ca/directory/home-and-housing/

Here’s an explanation:

Say we have a sitemap like this:

  • about
    • our company
    • our history
  • blog
    • news
    • snippets
    • portfolio

For example I need to style all the h1s in the blog branch to be blue, and all h1s in the about branch to be purple.

I’ve been putting “if (have_posts()) while(…): the_post();” of the loop before the get_header() call of a given template. I thought that $post is not available before the call to the_post(), but it turns out it is. Then after starting the loop, I would write a function to use as a filter for the body_class filter which would add a class to the body based on $post, and then I have a branch-specific CSS class to hook into it.

I’m probably going to stop moving the loop beginning before the get_header() call now that I know that the global $post is available before calling the_post(), and also I am just going to give a parameter to body_class() in header.php instead of hooking into the body_class filter.

Let me know if you have some ideas on how to do this better!

Mai V2

Mai decided to refresh the look of her portfolio site, and created another clean and crisp design, ready to be implemented into her website.

Mai is a visual designer originally from Japan, currently living in the U.S.A. We met through ProgrammerMeetDesigner.com

I’ve created a WordPress-based site and developed a WordPress theme based on the PSDs she provided.

Technologies used:  PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, MySQL, WordPress.

Wordpress theme developed for MaiKSDesign.com
Wordpress theme developed for MaiKSDesign.com