Mostly Client Side

Last night I managed to complete the first stage of my tagline rotator plugin. As you can see when you browse this blog the tagline changes. It will display random IT related quotes. This list will continue to expand as I add quotes on a daily basis.

There’s no real business use for this plugin (except maybe if you put add links in the tagline instead of quotes), however, it is a lot of fun. As I said that was only phase 1.

The next stage is all about allowing a user of the plugin to customize the quote selection. That means being able to save the quotes to the database. Should be a lot of fun to work on!

A Quick Explanation Of What I Did

As I told you a few days back I used the “Hello Dolly” plugin as the framework for my plugin. The code in the existing “Hello Dolly” plugin is really easy to understand. That’s why it serves as such a great starting point for anyone trying to get into WordPress plugin development!

The big challenge was to override the core get_bloginfo() function, which is easy enough with a bit of research. That’s what I did and that’s how I got to the point I am at right now.

Next step is to access the database and store the quotes there. It will require some further research and a lot of experimentation, but that’s half the fun isn’t it

As you can see the theme of this blog has switched to something much, much simpler. This is a theme I created a few years back.

Although it’s not as sassy as many of the themes you can download I feel that it is only fitting that I use a theme of my own creation. This theme is highly likely to face a lot of changes in the future.

As mentioned in other posts on this blog my main objective is for this blog to be as flexible and interactive as possible. I truly hope you enjoy your stay here.

Oh, I almost forgot. I worked a bit on my tagline plugin last night.I figured out how to show the content on the front page of the blog, but until I work out how to put it directly in the tagline I’m not going to show it. I will probably get to that tonight though, so stay tuned.

To kick off my brand new “WordPress Development” category I’ll spend a few moments talking about what I want to achieve with the category and what I’ve been up to so far.

What I Want To Achieve With This Category

Well, it’s no fun being a 1337 programmer if you can’t brag about your achievements

All, kidding aside my goal is to share and exchange ideas with others. If you read one of these posts and learn something then my goal has been achieved. If you find that one of my ideas are good, but would be even better if I did this or that I’d be thrilled.

If you have any feedback at all I want to know. So, never hesitate to comment on any post on this blog!

What Have I been Up To?

Let me start off by saying that when it comes to WordPress development I’m a total n00b! I have no experience whatsoever!

I do, however, have programming experience in various languages. So, it’s not like I’m starting from rock-bottom.

Diving into WordPress development I had to choose an area to focus on. The most accessible area seems to be WordPress plugin development and that will be my focus.

To make an easy transition I’ve been making some modifications to the “Hello Dolly” plugin and I’ve experienced a bit of success with that. I have some great ideas of things I want to do with that.

I’m going to use that as the foundation for a random tagline plugin. I’ll get back to you with more about my ideas for that.

Happy coding!