Originally when I started using Git with my WordPress projects, I checked in all the files (WordPress core, plugins, themes, and even uploads). Over time I’ve found that to be less than ideal. My preferred .gitignore file appears below and it ignores everything by default. This allows me to whitelist only those plugins and themes […]
Dev Tips
Why Capitalize the P in WordPress?
In the WordPress community, I’ve found there is an over-emphasis on capitalizing the P in WordPress, to the point where there is a function in WordPress to correct the lower-case p (see capital_P_dangit() ). While all this fuss over the size of “P” may seem pedantic and silly to you, it is still worth taking […]
Responsive Images with srcset
When loading an image, historically I loaded the largest size of the image that would be used. e.g. example.jpg is an 1170px wide image for large screens. On small screens this big image is loaded but scaled down to display properly. The important thing to note here is even if the image is only displaying […]
QR Code Best Practices
As a web developer, this article is going to focus on the use of a QR code (Quick Response Code) to point to a website URL. The first step in properly implementing your QR code, which points to a website URL, is to ask yourself, “Does this need a QR code?” Hint: the answer is […]
WP Engine Syntax Error Composer autoload_static.php
While working with a client recently, I found that deploying to WP Engine with Git had stopped working. The Symptom The following appeared on the command line when I ran git push production remote: – warning: syntax Error Found in wp-content/vendor/composer/autoload_static.php … remote: – failed: we detected a PHP syntax failure. The Problem The file […]
How to Avoid Mucking Up Your DNS
At WordCamp Lehigh Valley 2018, I presented How to Avoid Mucking Up Your DNS. When I started working with websites, modifying DNS settings terrified me. We’ll discuss the things I wished I knew then: A records, CNAMEs, TTLs, name servers, and how to test these things. We’ll look at things I broke and how the […]
WordPress Responsive Images Increased Page Size
Let me establish right away, I think WordPress Responsive Images are a good thing and I am an edge case. Unfortunately, in my case the page size has increased rather than decreased with responsive images. Background As part of my Friday night fun I’d planned to review the positive impact of responsive images on my […]
WordPress Maintain Aspect Ratio Thumbnail
In WordPress your thumbnails will be cropped to exactly 150px by 150px regardless of the original aspect ratio. With this setting, if your original image is very short and wide, the left and right edges will be removed to make the image square. This is called “hard cropping”. In many cases this works well, but […]
Round Gravatar Hovercard Problem
I see this problem on a lot of WordPress blogs using a round Gravatar with Jetpack Hovercards. When you hover over a user’s Gravatar (often in the comments) there is a hover state that appears while the Hovercard loads and this hover state has the Gravatar image but it has the wrong aspect ratio. Below […]
Amazon S3 URL Redirect
Recently I found it necessary to create an Amazon S3 URL redirect. In the case where the Amazon S3 bucket is setup to act as a website, you can setup this up by adding the redirect directly to the file metadata. Instructions to setup an Amazon S3 website URL redirect Unfortunately, in this case the […]