JB Shortener

Posted on

Almost two years ago I wrote about a new short URL system I started using on this blog. I’m finally releasing this in plugin form with a few additional improvements. WordPress has support for “short urls” built in and will even let you use the wp.me system if you have the Jetpack plugin installed. Instead of using wp.me, I like using my own custom domain. This plugin gives you an option to set the short domain that you’d like to use and includes the helper files to install on the short domain.
(more…)

Forward to development dir, mod_rewrite

Posted on

Let’s say you have a new web project you’re working on. Sure, you could setup a web server on your local machine and develop locally. For some reason you don’t want to do that though. Anyway, with this setup we’re going to assume you have some kind of landing page at the URL – why not? And you have a development directory `dev`. Now, as things get more complicated with this project, it would be nice if you could just point your browser at the root of the domain instead of a development directory. After all, eventually that’s where it’s going to live. Luckily, the solutions lies in `.htaccess`.
(more…)

Custom Fields are fine for Dan

Posted on

I actually doubt Dan Benjamin1 uses WordPress or cares about custom fields. The point is, your average client shouldn’t have to know or care about custom fields. I’d be happy if they were disabled by default — as long as I have an option to enable them by defining a constant in the wp-config file.

With a bit more work on your end as a developer, you can create a custom meta box that points directly at a custom field. If you’re really crazy about it like I am, you could even use a hidden key for you custom field by starting the name of the key with and underscore.

I think the ideal situation is if you happen to be working with a custom post type. It’s easy enough to turn custom fields on or off for any post type you create. So you can do all your testing with the custom fields turned on and turn them off when you get everything set and ship the theme off to the client. In the scenario, I don’t even bother using hidden keys, since there’s no way to access them directly through the custom field boxes anyway.
(more…)