Category: Development

  • Speed Up Your Genesis Theme by Reducing Database Queries

    WordPress ships with a bunch of nifty methods to improve performance and knowing when to use one of them could cut the number of database queries on your site by over 60%. It has to do with the way post thumbnails are displayed in a loop. By default, whenever get_the_post_thumbnail() is called in the main…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…