Thoughts By Ken Howard

My thoughts on Web Design, Development & Internet Marketing. I sometimes write about how family guides my decisions.

[kenhowardpdx]

Happy Birthday to this Tumblr

I received a message from Tumblr today. Apparently this tumblog is 1 year old today. But, guess what. I now blog at http://kenhowardpdx.com 

Yeah, so don't read any of my stuff here. Instead head over to where the party is.

[kenhowardpdx]

Elegant Use of Advance Custom Fields

One of the best things about WordPress is its limitless functionality. With the use of plugins, a WordPress install can be transformed with great ease.

Advance Custom Fields is one such a plugin that makes WordPress so powerful.

I'm currently working on a project where the admin will be posting articles by various different guest authors - none of the authors have a user account for this particular blog. With the help of AFC the admin can have complete control of author details like their name, company name, photo and biography. They can even elect to display the bio at the top or bottom of the post.

Here's how it looks while on the post screen:

Here's the code that puts this to work and hooks the bio to the_content() :

function author_details($selection = 'default', $postid = null) { // Define fields /*['author_name']*/ $author_name = 'Sales Tax Sally'; /*['author_photo']*/ $author_photo = get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/images/author_default.jpg'; /*['author_link']*/ $author_link = null; /*['author_link_label']*/ $author_link_label = null; /*['author_bio']*/ $author_bio = null; /*['author_bio_position']*/ $author_bio_position = 'top'; $fields = get_post_custom($postid); foreach($fields as $key => $value) { $$key = get_field($key); } switch($selection) { case 'photo': return '<img src="' . $author_photo . '" title="' . $author_name . '" alt class="photo" width="80" height="80" />'; break; case 'link': return '<a href="' . $author_link . '" target="_blank">' . $author_link_label . '</a>'; break; case 'bio': return $author_bio; break; case 'bio_position': return $author_bio_position; break; case 'name': default: return $author_name; break; } } function author_bio( $content = '' ) { global $id, $wp_current_filter; if(in_array('get_the_excerpt', $wp_current_filter)) return $content; $bio = '<p class="author-bio">' . author_details('bio', $id); $bio .= ' — ' . author_details('link', $id) . '</p>'; if(author_details('bio_position', $id) == 'top') { $content = $bio . $content; } else { $content = $content . $bio; } return $content; } add_filter('the_content', 'author_bio', 9);

[kenhowardpdx]

Fixed Positioning Fails in Mobile Browsers

While re-touching a mobile website, I wanted to simulate a native app having the menu fixed to the top of the screen. While this worked well on my large screen Android phone (4.0, ICS) with Chrome for Mobile, the experience was less than stellar on an iOS 5 device running Mobile Safari. In Mobile Safari, the fixed position element scrolls with the page and snaps back into position after the scrolling animation is complete. Brad Frost's video explains fixed positioning in the mobile landscape. The research here is invaluable. Read his blog post for further details.

As web practitioners, we must take a wider view of the mobile landscape when designing a website. We can't assume visitors have the latest release of iOS or Android on devices with large screens. If we do, no one benefits.

[kenhowardpdx]

In my growing desire to version control everything I do, I find myself frequenting this SVN Cheat Sheet. And I like to keep my repositories on Unfuddle. They also support Git...but I don't get Git.

[kenhowardpdx]

Bending WordPress' Excerpt Length at Will

One of the beauties of WordPress is that the developers have seriously thought of every possible element and made a function for it. Better yet, they've given us the ability to remove and apply filters against those already awesome functions.

I am currently working on a podcast site. One of the main portions in the header of my template is a "Latest Podcast" block. The area I have to display the excerpt is tight. It won't handle the 55 default word count of the_excerpt(). And if I apply a filter to excerpt_length() I would be modifying the word count for all excerpts on the site. Instead I am using the wp_trim_words()  function. This function is the core function driving the_excerpt().

Here's how I'm using it.

<?php function recentPodcast() { $category = get_category_by_slug('podcast'); $cat_id = $category->term_id; $recent_posts = new WP_Query( array('posts_per_page' => 1, 'cat' => $cat_id) ); while( $recent_posts->have_posts() ) : $recent_posts->the_post(); $new_excerpt = wp_trim_words( get_the_excerpt(), 20, '...' ); ?> <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" class="post-thumbnail"><?php echo get_the_post_thumbnail(get_the_ID(), 'thumbnail'); ?></a> <p> <strong>Latest Podcast:</strong> <?php echo $new_excerpt; ?> </p> <?php endwhile; } ?>

[kenhowardpdx]

PHP Function: count_the_days

While working on a job board implementation I needed to convert dates into an easy to read format. Users would be able to see when a job was posted: Today, Yesterday or 2, 3, 4 days ago. Here's the PHP function I wrote to handle this. I hope you find this helpful.

function count_the_days($date) { $timestamp = strtotime($date); $datediff = time() - $timestamp; $daycount = floor($datediff/(60*60*24)); if($daycount == 0) { return "Today"; } elseif($daycount == 1) { return "Yesterday"; } else { return $daycount . " days ago"; } }

[kenhowardpdx]

Tumblr & Code

Since I'm new to Tumblr. I want to make sure I know how to display my code properly. I have a bit of things I'll be sharing in the future.

<?php /******************* * * By Ken Howard <[email protected]> * *******************/ $details = array(); $details['name'] = "Ken Howard"; $details['job_title'] = "Interactive Manager"; $details['company'] = "Turtledove Clemens"; $details['company_website'] = "http://www.turtledove.com"; $details['company_phone'] = "503-226-3581"; $details['email_address'] = "[email protected]"; foreach($details AS $field => $val) { echo $field . ': ' . $val . "<br />\n"; } ?>

The Syntax Highlight method I used can be found here: http://github.mnewton.com/prettify-wrapper/

[kenhowardpdx]

Google Suggest has been a friend of mine since it launched in 2008. The concept driving Google Suggest is that Google looks at each character as you type and suggest the most common search terms that begin with that string of characters. And in some cases it will suggest a variant of the terms you've typed.

Google Suggest Is Bad For Parents

This image tells me that "how to grow weed" is the top search phrase that begins with phrase that I typed it, "how to grow". But should Google do more analysis before it suggest that I want to know how to grow weed? As a parent, would this result be acceptable for my children? Of course not.

What's worse is that after you stop typing, Google Instant kicks in and starts displaying results for the suggested term.

While I'm perfectly capable of turning off these options in Google's search settings on the website and in the Chrome Browser, browser makers should be thinking about the younger generation. There are too many steps involved when your kid just wants to jump on and point and click at Dora the Explorer or Barney and Friends. 'Sorry, honey. It will be 5 minutes. I need to make sure bad things don't destroy your innocence.'

Re-defining 'Safe Mode'

The current design of 'Safe Mode', incognito in some browsers, is to prevent search history and cookies from being stored on a users computer. Shouldn't 'Safe Mode' mean that it protects the viewer from harmful subject matter? Should I teach my kids to use Zoodles or another kid-friendly browser that restricts them from traveling outside a very limited corner of the Internet?

Utopian vision? Maybe. There's no way that Google or anyone can prevent children from watching the wrong YouTube video.  I'm just hoping my kids choose the right path and that I have the foresight to guide them gently down it.

[kenhowardpdx]

What do you do when you are the victim of a negative comment or review? There’s a right way and a wrong way. I hope that after reading these tips you’ll choose the right way to handle negative reviews. If you’re a small business owner, bad reviews can be detrimental to your success.

http://smplctd.com/RG4olr

[kenhowardpdx]

Nothing.

I have nothing to say.

I just set up my tubmlr. account.

You should probably read something else.