If you want to have a content area somewhere on your site that shows content from a post or page - and you want to do this with using the simplest of code (no loop, no query_posts, etc), check out the function get_post. The get_post function allows you to simply get one post’s title, content, category, etc by simply adding a few lines (see the example in the documentation) of code to your site. I have used this on a number of client’s sites as well as recently on my company site for the company profile. Keep it simple!

A week or so ago, I posted some information on how to quickly style your WordPress images. After recently updating my company's web site (SDAC Inc. - I noticed if you used captions, my custom CSS would not work. Here is some CSS that will work with and without image captions:

The difference? I used img.align.. which worked if you did not use captions, but if you use caption, there is an outer div class called align... The more generic CSS posted here takes care of both issues.

If you install WordPress and use the media uploader to manage your images in your posts - you can easily style your images quickly by adding the following code to your theme's stylesheet.

This code will set up your images to float appropriately, as well as give a nice border as seen below.

Note* This information is now updated: Updated CSS

On my company blog, I blogged about my initial thoughts on WordPress 2.5 beta 1. I have since then updated to WordPress 2.5 beta 1 and have been pretty darn happy with it so far. All my plugins on jappler.com made the upgrade without any issues and this morning when I logged into my web site, I noticed that one of my plugins had been updated since I last logged in and with WordPress 2.5 - you now have the ability to do "one click" installs. You need to provide WordPress with your FTP user name and password, and with that, you can have WordPress manage your plugin updates. No more manual downloading, uploading, etc... Nice work WordPress team! Stay tuned for more WordPress 2.5 related posts.

Has anyone else seen the issue where you have created a 404 (or not) for WordPress and when you show links to posts or pages in WordPress that are marked as private - IE users intermittently get the generic IE 404 page? I cannot figure out how to fix this. Any thoughts would be appreciated! The HTTP header that the page (password protected) produces is a 301.

Basically - I have a custom 404 template that says "if is logged in show "file not found" and then a link to the search form. If you are not logged in, show a login form - as this takes care of the logic 99% of the time. This setup works 100% of the time with Firefox and Safari - but IE barks at it randomly. (If you refresh - you see the correct 404 text within 2-3 refreshes). What is going on?

Awhile back, I put something together (sons of suckerfish and sliding doors) and then was recently asked how to get this to work dynamically in WordPress.

The key to getting this to work dynamically is to first choose how you want to organize your site. I have done numerous sites based on categories and a lot also done using pages. Once you figure out what you want your menus to be driven from (page hierarchy or category hierarchy) you can then use some built in WordPress functions to dynamically fill out your menus.

For categories: you will want to use the wp_list_categories function
Example: (using the CSS and JS from the article I posted previously)

With that example, you can exclude certain categories, and their will not be a "Categories" text as the first level of the list. For more options, check out the wp_list_categories documentation.

For categories: you will want to use the wp_list_pages function
Example: (using the CSS and JS from the article I posted previously)

With that example, you can exclude certain pages, and their will not be a "Pages" text as the first level of the ... [more]

Finally after two years of contemplating the updates to Apache 2.x, MySQL 5.x, and PHP 5.x, I finally updated my server to the latest version os Apache, MySQL, and PHP. I was not too concerned about custom work or any of my WordPress sites, but I was concerned XOOPS and/or XOOPS modules would have some problems, but it is now a week later and everything is running smoothly. Why finally? Well, as of the end of this month, support for PHP 4 will be discontinued. Better late than never. Time to update your servers too?