Blog

  • A WordPress Class Template Tag to Rule Them All

    Last week, on Twitter…

    Yes, I know, that’s the beginning of a terrible blog post. But really, a tweet by Jonathan Christopher piqued my curiosity last week:

    https://twitter.com/jchristopher/status/273437718653050880

    SMACSS? I hadn’t heard of it and figured it was probably some Mac-only app, but looked it up anyway. Lo and behold, it was actually interesting. I haven’t really changed the fundamentals of the way I write CSS for a couple of years, don’t use a pre-made grid, and have yet to adopt a pre-processor.

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  • Abstracting Custom Post Type and Taxonomy Registration In WordPress

    Custom Post Types in WordPress are incredibly useful, but as a web developer working on a number of projects at any given time, it can be frustrating having to manually write out each and every label needed for display throughout the dashboard.

    While reviewing plugins and other projects, I’ve seen developers build libraries to abstract away a lot of the mundane details of creating CPTs by dynamically generating default arguments and labels. Unfortunately, there are a few pitfalls with this approach that don’t make it a viable option:
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  • Thirty

    In the time since last writing here I experienced a watershed moment — I bought a $40 cowboy ribeye from the butcher. It was everything a $40 steak should be and more.

    I also hit 30 years of age; an appropriate time for reflection.

    Some people write insightful songs upon the passing of their youth. I write platitudes. At the same time, the following cliches are also my truths, things I have learned and take to heart. I hope you can glean some nugget of worth.
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  • Custom Post Types Are Not Posts

    Custom post types are not posts.

    However, posts are a specific implementation of a CPT. As are pages. And nav menu items. And revisions. Oh, and attachments, too. Hell, at some point, comments could probably even be integrated as CPTs. Are all of these objects the same just because they’re CPTs? See where I’m going with this?

    CPTs are not posts.

    For most intents and purposes, forget that “Post” is even part of the name.

    There has been a little discussion around the usage of CPTs and shortcodes in WordPress themes meant for public release over the past week or two. It’s actually been an ongoing discussion for awhile, but it recently heated up a bit and sparked a few reactions.

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  • Nauracons Icon Set Download

    We’ve been working on a WordPress theme for a few months here at Blazer Six. When completed it’ll be part of a larger project that we’ve teamed up with several other designers and developers to build. The project isn’t ready for prime time yet, but the theme is for musicians, and as such I needed several media icons that matched our design.

    I originally created a limited set with the intention of turning them into an icon font; the initial icons can be seen on Dribbble. My goal was to maintain one line width and make sure everything aligned to the pixel grid at 16px. Any multiple of that should align as well and look just as crisp.

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  • Treasure Hunting In WordPress Core

    As WordPress organically evolves based on the needs of the community — from blogging engine, to content management system, and toward an app platform — it’s become ever more important that its default behavior can be modified to suit a wide range of demands. The primary means of making customizations is through the use of hooks, which consist of actions for executing functionality at a specific point in time, and filters for modifying data passed through them. Plugins and themes take advantage of this system to extend WordPress in an unlimited number of ways.

    One of my very first plugins simply limited the length of post titles so they didn’t break the design if they were too long. We’ve all come a long way since then!

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  • Redesigning the Blazer Six Logo

    My niece, who will turn a year old in a month, just discovered her tongue. It’s been there the whole time; darting in and out at the sight of an approaching spoon, but it wasn’t something she was cognizant of. Her mom recently posted a picture on Facebook of her sitting in a highchair directing it at the camera. Obviously, something clicked. I don’t mention that to embarrass my niece, or her mom, but to draw a parallel to starting a business. Six years ago Brady and I ventured into self-employment after our previous employer was acquired, and for a while it felt like we were just discovering our own tongues.

    Now that we’re six (what is that in business years?) I’d like to think we have a few more synapses firing. We have a better idea of who we are and where we want to go. Of course that could change in the next six years, but we wanted a logo that reflected our growth and ideals; our character.

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  • Using WordPress As A CMS For Small Business Websites

    Update: This is an old post and the information and ideas presented may no longer be relevant.

    After launching the redesign of this website a couple of weeks ago, we’ve gotten a few questions about how we configured WordPress to make the site work the way it does. This blog gives me the perfect opportunity to answer those questions and perhaps contribute a little back to the community.

    The Need For a CMS

    A little background: We launched our first site rather hastily last year with the intentions of updating it as time went on. Unfortunately, it was fairly static and I was the only one able to update it. Considering how busy I was, the site became stagnant and outdated. During the redesign process, we decided that a CMS would be beneficial to keep the site from reaching that point again. I looked into multiple open source solutions, but found most of them were overkill for our needs. We decided to stick with something that we were familiar with: WordPress.

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