Tom J Nowell

Articles

  • Content Without Posts

    I’m going to demonstrate how to have a URL with content in WordPress that’s neither a post, page, or listing. Its contents can be anything you’d like! To do this we need to take the following steps: Add a custom query variable Add a rewrite rule that uses the new query variable On the template_redirect…

  • WordCamp Lancaster 2013

    I’m at WordCamp Lancaster, and I’ve given two talks. Here are my slides, and a selection of photos taken! A big shout out to: Chris Witham for lending me a VGA adaptor Jenny Wong for organising the massive Pizza order Marko Heijnen for another VGA adaptor Code Deodorant How to determine code quality by scientific…

  • Where Do I Put That Code?

    If you need to ask this question, then you’ve been given code or tasks you haven’t the knowledge to understand, you have research ahead of you, and asking a second time could be very embarrassing. A lot of the time the problem is because of events. Imagine if you will a list of instructions, not unlike…

  • CrazyFlie Nano QuadCopter Notes

    After weeks of waiting, my QuadCopter arrived! Here are some hints and notes on the assembly process and photos of the result! Firstly, Royal Mails Parcel Force was outdone by generic bog standard Hong Kong post. I was able to track the package all the way till ParcelForce obtained possession, at which point they claimed…

  • Getting From URL to Template

    So you load a page on a WordPress site. How did it know to load the page template? How did it know it was a page and not a category listing? Is it hardcoded somewhere? To begin with lets list out what happens, then we’ll explain each step in basic terms: .htaccess rules pass the URL…

  • Auditor v1.6.2

    1.6.2 is a Maintenance Release, available via the auto-updater and download links in order receipts, here’s what changed: Fixed an overzealous error check, Auditor would warn in the error log that it had failed to cull logs, when no error had occurred Fixed a situation when failed upgrades might result in loss of data Fixed…

  • Bulk Entry Plugin Release

    I’ve released a new plugin for bulk creation of posts! Other plugins on the wordpress.org repository handled a strict subset of functionality such as posts and categories ( but not pages or tags), while others simply didn’t work. I set out to build an alternative that was extendable, reliable, and could handle custom post types…

  • Local Indicator v1.3

    After releasing v1.3, I thought I’d comment on the two significant changes I made. While there may be no visible change on the surface, new filters have been added to modify the colour and text of the indicator.

  • Clients Who Upload Huge Photos & Decompression Bombs

    Sometimes a client makes a blog post, and puts a photo in the middle. All good so far, until you realise the client has dragged an image from their brand new camera expecting a 10 Megapixel image to work. This is usually when people start talking about upload max file size limits, but this is…

  • Realisations

    Some pretty simple things people don’t realise when dealing with WordPress Nobody Remembers the API A lot of people worry that they don’t know the API, that it will take them a long time to memorise everything. Nobody memorises the API. It changes too fast, it’s too big, and it’s a waste of time when…

  • csswizardry-grids.less

    I’ve forked CSSWizardry-grids, a SASS based grid system, and ported it to LESS. Here is how you would use it: View the code on Gist. The only caveat is that at the moment you can’t use the generated classes as LESS mixins, but I’m looking to correct this. More details can be found at the…

  • WordPress: Necessary Reading

    WordPress APIs In brief, WordPress hooks enable you to change how WordPress behaves without editing any core files. Because you leave the WordPress files untouched, you can painlessly upgrade your blog with each new version of WordPress. It’s this hooks architecture that makes WordPress the best blogging solution. – Adam Brown Adam Browns Hooks &…

  • LEAF Tea Tasting

    So I heard LEAF were running a tea tasting session for the first time. Ran by a lady named Kayleigh, it covered the history and applications of Tea, complete with a tasting of 12 different teas. LEAF on Bold St is a tea shop and bar located in Liverpool, whos building was once an old cinema. Attending with…

  • Fixing JetPack Vanishing Menus & Order

    This is a fix for two issues with JetPack. First, it’s a much simpler method of stopping JetPack from sticking itself at the top of the menu under the Dashboard menu. Secondly, the code JetPack uses to rearrange the menu has bugs, meaning sometimes some menus vanish, e.g. Tools or Settings. Here’s a gist that…

  • WordPress Foundation & The GPL Issue

    There’s a problem that the WordPress Foundation & Core Team face, that puts them in unusual and awkward situations. It centers around a long running debate over the GPL and linking. A prime example being the recent situation of Jake Caputo: I've been blackballed from WordCamps: http://t.co/7vmV52Db — Jake Caputo (@jakecaputo) January 22, 2013 So…

  • Audio.php

    A lot of the talk about, and the APIs for attachments are centered around images. After all it’s their most common use case by a huge margin. But what about audio? I won’t pretend this is a comprehensive guide, but considering the lack of basic examples, here’s how to implement a basic audio attachment template.…

  • WordPress 3.5-ness & what’s new

    I gave a talk at SWIG, an event ran by our company every last Thursday of the month. I talked about what changed and what’s new in WordPress v3.5, everything from what the usual blogposts cover and what hasn’t been covered but might affect developers. I’ve uploaded the slides to Slideshare, you can view them…

  • Fixing Twitter OEmbed Language in WordPress

    A Twitter OEmbed returns tweets in the language of the requesting server, but say your an english site on a german server? You don’t want German retweet buttons! Here’s the fix. What Needs Adding The twitter OEmbed has some documented parameters, most notably, a lang attribute will fix the problem: lang Language code for the…

  • Auto-Grabbing Order Data From SellWire

    I’m going to demonstrate how to access order data programmatically from SellWire for a product. I’m going to be using this for building automation. Why Not Use SellWire APIs? At the moment SellWire provides no APIs, but they are planned. Until they are, some method of building automation is needed. To do this, I’ve programmed…

  • Business Cards

    Brand new business cards! Designed by myself and printed by Moo.com on Luxe cards, I’m going to talk about how I designed these cards and how well my ideas worked, but before I continue, just look at the size of these things! The Design Process I needed my business cards to declare quite clearly who…