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Adding Custom Fieldsets to Gravity Forms
Fieldsets are important in ADA compliance because they help tell screen readers that a group of fields belong together and can share a label. This enhancement makes it easier for those using screen readers to use your site and navigate your forms, and you certainly don’t want to give anyone any obstacles in using your site! Now, what if you’re using Gravity Forms to create your forms? Gravity Forms allows you to add certain grouped fields that will automatically add a fieldset around them. These are fields like Address, Name, and other combined information. This can be helpful, but it also can be very restrictive. You must choose fields that are certain field types and only have a maximum amount. It is true that you can modify the title of a “name” field – such as “middle name” – to identify it as accepting an email address, but you’ll lose
WordPress Hooks – The Difference Between Actions and Filters
WordPress handles most of what’s needed to output your content to the user’s screen with PHP and SQL, producing that information in HTML with the capability to manipulate it further with JavaScript. However, there may be times when you want to modify how WordPress works with that data on the back end or how it’s displayed to the user. There are a few reasons for this, including ensuring ADA compatibility, modifying content before it’s saved, or simply deferring enqueued JavaScript files. In circumstances where you need to alter the data, either to change it before output or to add an additional function while something is loading, WordPress offers hooks in two flavors: Actions and FIlters. So, what is a WordPress hook? It is an additional function that you can use in order to interrupt WordPress’s normal operations and run some of your own. This can be very handy because WordPress
Enqueueing JavaScript and CSS Files In Your WordPress Theme
When you’re building a theme, it is important to be able to use CSS stylesheets or JavaScript files where necessary. Sometimes you only want a script or stylesheet included on a specific custom post type or template, you might be adding some fancy JavaScript to modify your site, or you may just want to add different stylesheets for different media values. WordPress is not picky about allowing you to add additional files and it is well within your capabilities when written properly. In order to add files correctly, you’ll have to use the enqueue functions available within WordPress. Enqueuing the files this way ensures both full control and the ability to filter the HTML if needed. It is important to note that these files will only appear in your theme when you use wp_header() and wp_footer() within the head of your theme and just before the ending element for the
Using Chrome Developer Tools to Modify CSS
or: How I Learned to Love the !important Every site that you visit uses CSS. If it didn’t, it would look like plain black words on a flat white background with text left aligned to the side of your browser and no gutter, padding, or color to speak of. Even in an attempt to emulate a plain paper book, CSS should still be present in order to properly display the words you’re presenting. When you first look at CSS, it can seem exceedingly simple and easy to control, requiring nothing but an identifier and a key and value pair in order to specify which item should look which way. This deceivingly simple appearance can end up frustrating many front end designers trying to modify a site’s facade. CSS stands for Cascading StyleSheet. This acronym hints at one of the frustrations that I’ve found new designers have. To get into it,
New Site!
While I still consider the site a work in progress, I believe that it’s gotten polished enough to switch over to the new design and attempt to impress everyone with its boring, plain design. As I move along, I will add more flair and design, particularly focusing on colors in the layout. I still have items to work on, I promise I haven’t missed those old artifacts from the past design. I will take care of each of these items in due time. In the meantime, if you’d like to browse around and check out what I currently have, any input would be greatly appreciated if you share it on the contact form. I will be working on the site as much as I can and posting as much as possible. Please be on the lookout for more information as it comes!
How to Deal With Making Mistakes
Mistakes are a strange and horrifying experience in the realm of web development. One minor change could throw the footer of the site off completely. If it isn’t properly checked, that disfigurement could go into Production before anyone really realizes it, making your face red with that small error. The simple fact is, you try your best not to make any mistakes, but everyone does it – it’s a part of the learning process. Making mistakes isn’t the bad thing as much as how you react to making that mistake. One of my favorite examples of how to handle a bad mistake comes from the science fiction movie series Star Wars. You could watch this series and pick apart hundreds of mistakes – both on screen and behind the cameras – but my personal favorite comes from Lando Calrissian. A warning for those who haven’t watched Episode 5: The Empire
When You Need To Modify An Element That Hasn’t Loaded Yet
When trying to apply ADA-compliant identifiers to elements that have been created from within a plugin, we can sometimes run into problems. Some plugins won’t let you modify the output, especially elements that need to have ADA specifications applied like a slider’s navigation, form labels, or other elements. You’re normally meant to utilize filters in order to control the HTML output of plugins, but oftentimes they aren’t offered by plugin manufacturers. You can’t hack the plugin files, because each plugin will need to be updated in the future for security and enhancements, so you may have to turn to JavaScript in these cases. But what happens when these elements are being loaded onto the screen with JavaScript and you’re unable to target any of them because they don’t exist on page load? In the search for a solution to my problem, I found this wonderful answer on StackOverflow. User Yong
The Short Echo Tag in PHP
Using the short echo tag (“<?=”) in PHP was rumored to be deprecated because the short PHP tags (“<?”) were slated to be. Those short open tags were scheduled to be removed due to XML’s opening tags conflicting directly with them. Even though XML’s opening tags conflict with the defunct PHP short open tags, the short echo tag does not! Therefore, it is perfectly okay to use the short open tags in PHP as long as your code doesn’t need to work below PHP 5.4 – Which shouldn’t be a problem!
Using NaNoWriMo to Challenge Myself
I have been taking the time in my afternoons and weekends to start a story for National Novel Writing Month. Many of you have probably heard of NaNoWriMo and the process of attempting to write 50,000 words in a single month. I do have to admit that the challenge is daunting and unexpectedly rewarding at the same time. I am 6 days into writing my first novel. I missed the first day of writing, but was able to make up the word count by putting in some extra time this week. I currently have 21 words more than the target goal of 10,000 and that’s something that I didn’t expect. But I’ve done it. Personally, NaNoWriMo has been an excellent confidence booster and a nice way to retroactively erase the doubts that certain people have shown in me. One such instance is a teacher I had in high school that
Building a WordPress Theme
Building a WordPress Theme Part 1 – Setting up the stylesheet and the file structure There are many articles out there on building a WordPress theme, and many different techniques for doing so. I would like to tell you what I’ve learned, the best practices I’ve found, and the easiest path for creating a WordPress theme. If you want to include additional functionality, I suggest you use a plugin. If you’re just looking to style your website, then a template is what you’re after. The first step is to ensure that you have the latest version of WordPress installed on your server. Starting Out: Okay, WordPress is installed. Now what? Start by creating a directory in the wp-content/themes/ folder with an obvious and appropriate title. All of the theme’s work will go into this folder, such as your images, JavaScript, additional CSS, etc. The Stylesheet A theme’s default stylesheet is