Since I realize I never blogged about it, and in case there are 2 people who read my blog who never see me on twitter, I joined WebDevStudios last September. This job effectively pulled me out of freelancing full time, and I am putting all my working focus on my time with them. It’s been a very good thing for me and I’m quite happy.

For those who are already caught up with that news, late in April, I got a little bit of a promotion within the company. They decided that they wanted to get me more integrated and give me some more responsibility. With that, they decided to anoint me “Plugin Tzar”. What this means is that I am the main person in charge of and dealing with a handful of plugins the company has made over time. These duties include helping people in the support forums set up for each plugin, as well as taking notes about reported issues/bugs and later fixing these bugs for future releases. Not only that, I’ll also be the main person extending and adding new features and/or paid extensions to the plugins so that we can create our own little marketplace.

I’m excited about the opportunity and the chance to run with this. I have already begun working on at least one of the plugins, slated for the next update next week. I also have many ideas and work to do with the others, that I can’t wait to get started on. Hopefully I can help our plugins shine with current and future users, and make sure they’re getting top-notch support when necessary.

 

jQuery version 1.9 was released today, and I wondered how one could use that version on my site until it was released properly with WordPress. I found out that the $wp_scripts variable holds the script version of registered scripts. Thus, I was able to concoct the following function for the wp_enqueue_scripts hook. Change the prefix as you see fit. Also change the version as you see fit as well. This is fairly future proof as versions will never go down.

add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'prefix_load_scripts');
function prefix_load_scripts() {
	if(is_admin()) return;

	global $wp_scripts;

	if ( $wp_scripts->registered['jquery']->ver != '1.9.0' ) {
		wp_deregister_script( 'jquery' );
		wp_enqueue_script('jquery', 'http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.9.0.min.js');
	} else {
		wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
	}
}

I won’t deny that I’m a believer in using the version of jQuery that WordPress comes packaged with, but if you are anxious to try out the new stuff and not worry about reverting back manually, this would be a way to go.

 

These are the custom Alfred.app searches that I have that help me with my web development, whether it be WordPress or in general. Feel free to use and add your own in the comments area or via twitter. Just send them to @tw2113 and I can retweet for you. Click the links to automatically add them to your own custom search list.

WordPress.org

http://wordpress.org/search/{query}

WordPress Plugins

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q={query}

WordPress PHPXref

http://phpxref.ftwr.co.uk/wordpress/nav.html?_functions/{query}.html

WordPress Trac

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/search?q={query}

WordPress Trac Ticket

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/{query}

jQuery API

http://api.jquery.com/?s={query}

PHP.net*

http://php.net/{query}

*changed to Kailey’s url string.

Mozilla Developer Network

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q={query}

Github

https://github.com/search?q={query}

Builtwith

http://builtwith.com/?q={query}

w3c Spec via Google

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:w3.org+{query}

Smashing Magazine

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/search-results/?q={query}&sa=&cx=partner-pub-6779860845561969%3A5884617103&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8

New Ones From Kailey Lampert in the comments

WordPress.org theme search

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/search.php?sort=&q={query}

QueryPosts.com function lookup

http://queryposts.com/function/{query}

 

Due to being in a mood involving musician promotion, I’m typing up this quicky tutorial about adding SoundCloud oEmbed support to your site.

Simply add this code snippet it to your theme’s functions.php, a basic quick plugin that you type up as you read this post, or a “Must-Use” plugin.

wp_oembed_add_provider('#https?://(?:api\.)?soundcloud\.com/.*#i', 'http://soundcloud.com/oembed', true);

Once that is added, you can simply paste in SoundCloud based urls into your post and they will automatically embed themselves. You can see an example below, first with the actual url, and then the result.

URL

http://soundcloud.com/haimtime/haim-dont-save-me/s-SGs8F

Result

Resources used

• SoundCloud Shortcode: Plugin where I got the wp_oembed_add_provider() function line from
• http://developers.soundcloud.com/docs/oembed
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_oembed_add_provider
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Must_Use_Plugins