10 Useful Web Development Snippets

One of our shared Google Docs is a scratch pad of hard to find items that we’ll need again. It’s been a great help for when we just need that… you know, thing. This will be most useful to those using WordPress as a CMS, but there are great tools here for all web designers.

• Graphics

  • Favicons
    • Favicon.cc
    • Save as .ico photoshop plugin
      • Make a multi-resolution icon http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/info/icobundle.html

• Code

  • Email masker
  • /*ellipsify($string,$length) – pass this a string and a number of characters and it will truncate any field to this length + ‘…’
    */
    function ellipsify($string,$length){
    if(strlen($string)>$length){$string=substr($string,0,$length).’…’;}
    return $string;
    }
  • http://tools.pingdom.com/ – used to measure load time, and load order of all elements
  • CSS compressor – makes each css definition on one line, cleans up unnecessary bits.
  • Tips:
    • http://blog.themeforest.net/resources/20-seo-tips-that-every-web-developer-should-follow/

• WordPress

  • Themes
    • http://www.arrastheme.com/ pre-made, free, rockin magazine theme
    • http://michaelhutagalung.com/2008/05/arthemia-magazine-blog-wordpress-theme-released/ very nice themes (magazine, blog, customizable [decibel festival used a mod of it])
  • Disable auto <p> junk http://lynnepope.net/stop-wordpress-mangling-code
  • Fix permissions on Nearly Free Speech http://snarp.livejournal.com/145192.html
  • Superfish Menu code snippet
  • style.css -> php
    • <?php
      require(‘../../../wp-blog-header.php’);
      header(‘Content-type: text/css’);
      ?>
  • Call a plugin outside the post
    • <?php echodo_shortcode(‘[shortcode option1=”value1″ option2=”value2″]’); ?>

You can see our working document here.