Print Folder Contents in Windows

One of the things I enjoyed about the Macintosh OS was that you could print the contents of a folder.* This was handy when I was editing a series of images or uploading files to a web site. Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t have an obvious way of doing this. However, you can do it easily via …read more…

How Many WordPress Plugin Combinations are Possible?

I answered a question on the Graphene Neo Mobile theme about WordPress plugins, which then made me think about math, which then made me do math. Here’s the silly thing: I tweeted about it, forgetting that the forum is a private one. So it’s not very useful. But here’s the original query: Does anyone know …read more…

Using WinMerge

In an earlier post on creating child themes for WordPress, I said that if you had already made changes to your theme, you could use a program like WinMerge to find the differences between a clean copy of your theme and the copy you’ve been editing. The time has come to show just how that …read more…

CSS – A Very Basic Introduction

This is a very basic introduction to Cascading Style Sheets. The intended audience is people who know a little bit about HTML and absolutely nothing about CSS. If you are foggy on HTML, you should read “HTML—A Very Basic Introduction” first. Basics CSS stands for “Cascading Style Sheets”. It’s a language for controlling the appearance …read more…

Create WordPress Shortcodes

In my earlier post about template parameters in MediaWiki, I lamented that WordPress doesn’t have a similar mechanism. Actually it sort of does: it has shortcodes. Shortcodes pretty much do what a MediaWiki template does, in that they allow you to easily add content to a post or page. You can even pass variables, which …read more…

Add Post Navigation Links in the Graphene Theme for WordPress

Earlier today, somebody in the Graphene Theme support forum asked about changing the location of the “Next Post” and “Previous Post” links: I’d like to put the pointers to prev/next posts below a post as well as at the top, preferably between the post and any comments. Is that possible please and, if so, how? …read more…

Create a Static Front Page in WordPress — A Visual Guide

Creating a static front page in WordPress is easy, but I often encounter people who have trouble doing it. Perhaps the instructions in the Codex aren’t very visual, or all the talk about theme development on the same page puts them off. In any case, here is a quick, visual guide to creating a static …read more…

Add CSS Classes to Images in WordPress

Not many people realize how easy it is to control the appearance of selected images in WordPress by adding a CSS class to the image, but this is a very powerful tool to control the appearance of your website. For example, WordPress automatically adds a border around all images. Here’s an example: If you want …read more…

Template Parameters in MediaWiki

One of the strengths of MediaWiki is that you can use templates to include the same information across a wide number of pages. (I wish WordPress would do this.) The idea is a simple one: create a page in the `Template` namespace, and then include it in any page by wrapping its name in double …read more…

WordPress—Taking Your First Steps

WordPress is one of the most versatile CMS’s out there. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of people start out with it in complete and utter frustration, often because they don’t understand what WordPress is actually for, or how WordPress actually works. This list is meant to help you ease into WordPress. It’s based on over …read more…