<php if (strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],"iPhone")) { ?>
... CUSTOM CSS FOR IPHONE...
<php } ?>

This will also work for iPhones and iPod Touch:

<php if (strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'iPhone') || strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'iPod')) { ?>
... CUSTOM CSS...
<php } ?>

That's great and all – but then suddenly one day it stopped working. Going back through what changed on the site, I realized one thing we added was a cache plugin. DOH! So the page gets cached without the custom CSS for the iPhone – the iPhone calls up the site but gets served the cached page (non-iPhone version)… Yeah, that would do it.

So I found this solution:

<!--[if !IE]>-->
<style type="text/css">
@media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px) {
.... CUSTOM CSS HERE....
}
</style>
<!--<![endif]-->

or of course you can pull in a whole stylesheet for the iphone:

<!--[if !IE]>-->
<link media="only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="iphone.css" />
<!--<![endif]-->

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Then this morning I found this tutorial – and most importantly found out about MAMP. WHY has no one ever told me about this??? Hmm?! OMG. It rocks!! They say it's one click install for mysql apache and php (apache and php were already on my mac – it was the mysql that was giving me headaches). One click was right. It ran. I installed WordPress locally without any problems. I'm a happy camper!!

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1) Google XML Sitemaps by Arne Brachold
Easily generate google friendly XML sitemaps.

2) The Attached Image by Paul Robinson
I recently found this plugin and I'm kicking myself for not finding it (or realizing what it could do for me) sooner. This is perfect for when I have a layout that has an image associated with a post or page, and I need to "call it out" and have it show up somewhere outside of where the content is going. (An added thanks to Paul who added a few extra features I requested in his comments section. How cool is that!)

3) Raw HTML by Janis Elsts
This has come in handy on more than one occasion. Requires viewing the page in "HTML" view only. (Last I used it, if you viewed the page in the visual editor – it would screw everything up). But still – very helpful for when you really need to have wordpress allow HTML in a post/page (and not try to "format" it for you.

4) PageMash by JoelStarnes
This is a new one I found this week in my search for a plugin to help me tame the too-many-pages WordPress CMS project. I must have done a million searches looking for page management plugins. WHY didn't that one ever come up?!? (Google – you fail me AGAIN! Let me put on my surprised face…) Anyway, this creates its own admin page to do it's magic. My one comment/complaint would be I wish it could have done the same cool stuff – but on the same page-listing admin page. But even so, I'm still thankful for this plugin. It's really going to help me out a lot.

5) All In One SEO Pack by Semper Fi Web Design
This plugin is pretty much a no-brainer. It gives you all sorts of control for each page and post for adding keywords and descriptions and customizing the title, etc. The screenshot below is the box that will appear on your edit post or edit page view.

6) Search Everything by Dan Cameron
This plugin has been a huge help when I've wanted to tweak what gets searched using the WordPress search function. You can exclude categories, certain posts or pages. It's very nice!

7) WP-PostRatings by Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan
This plugin is more for the typical blog site, but still I've used it a few times and it rocks.

8 ) Subscribe 2 by MattyRob, Skippy, RavanH
Can be used for typical blog sites – or if you use your "posts" for "press releases" in a CMS site – this is a great way to notify people of new releases.

9) Members Only by Andrew Hamilton
This is an excellent plugin for when you need to have your blog restricted to registered users only.

10) Sitemap Generator by Dagon Design
I had been using this plugin on a number of sites pre-2.7. I absolutely loved it, which is why I've included it here in this list. However, It seemed to work initially after the 2.7 upgrade – but would then randomly have problems and I'd have to remove it. So I've included it in this list anyway because of how awesome it was, and I'm hoping hoping hoping that they update it for 2.7.

I've specifically left Akismet out of the list because, if you're going to allow comments on your blog, then using Akismet is just a given. (It also COMES with the WordPress download) So including it in a list like this is sort of a cop out. But I'm mentioning it here because it is so awesome and the developers have my complete gratitude!!

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The bad news is that it spits out all the HTML, whether you like its HTML or not. I was reading on the forums the point of doing it this way was to make everyone control the "look" using styles and you "shouldn't need to change the HTML". What you "shouldn't" need to do has been the argument in favor of most issues I have with WordPress. (Don't get me wrong I do love it.) If all anyone needed to do was just change stylesheets, then everyone's HTML would look the same, because we're all doing the same thing, right? Well, we're not. Half the time I use WordPress for standard blogs – where – sure the "default" HTML is fine and I'll make it work from the styles. The other half of the time, I'm twisting WordPress to do all kinds of funky sites. Following this path of "you shouldn't need to do that" is going to start making that flexibility disappear. Applications "shouldn't" need to spit out HTML. I certainly support WordPress' idea of making it easier to use for the common person – but workarounds should always exist for those of that need a more advanced level of control. On the forums, I saw a perfect, simple reason why someone might want to change the HTML…What if I don't want it to say "blahblah says:". wp_comment_list should include parameters to change some of the hardcoded text like that…Okay. Stepping off my soapbox now.

Thankfully, there IS a way around it. I wish this page had more information, but it's enough to get started at least. On the wordpress codex – you can see the wp_list_comments() function explanation. (Are the three parameters the only ones wp_list_comments() takes?)

Ironic that the first thing they show you is how to bypass the "auto html dump" the function does… so if you want to customize the HTML, call the function like this:

<ul class="commentlist">
<?php wp_list_comments('callback=mytheme_comment'); ?>
</ul>

Then create a functions.php file in your theme directory and use this as a start to customize the HTML of the output:

function mytheme_comment($comment, $args, $depth) {
$GLOBALS['comment'] = $comment; ?>
<li <?php comment_class(); ?> id="li-comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>">
<div id="comment-<?php comment_ID(); ?>">
<div class="comment-author vcard">
<?php echo get_avatar($comment,$size='48'); ?>
<?php printf(__('<cite class="fn">%s</cite> <span class="says">says:</span>'), get_comment_author_link()) ?>
</div>
<?php if ($comment->comment_approved == '0') : ?>
<em><?php _e('Your comment is awaiting moderation.') ?></em>
<br />
<?php endif; ?>
<div class="comment-meta commentmetadata"><a href="<?php echo htmlspecialchars( get_comment_link( $comment->comment_ID ) ) ?>"><?php printf(__('%1$s at %2$s'), get_comment_date(), get_comment_time()) ?></a><?php edit_comment_link(__('(Edit)'),' ','') ?></div>
<?php comment_text() ?>
<div class="reply">
<?php comment_reply_link(array_merge( $args, array('depth' => $depth, 'max_depth' => $args['max_depth']))) ?>
</div>
</div>
<?php
}

There is a note that says there is no ending "li" tag because wordpress will automatically add that itself. (WHY OH WHY?!) I assume if you don't want it to do comments as list items and instead want divs (and therefore end with "/div" instead of "/li"), then you'd change the call to wp_list_comment to:
<div class="commentlist">
<?php wp_list_comments('style=div&callback=mytheme_comment'); ?>
</div>

There is also a comment on the "callback" parameter on the codex: "Use to customize comments display for extreme changes to the HTML layout. Not recommended." Ah. I feel like such a rebel.

A few side notes:

If you're going to use comment threading, paging, etc then this page has some useful info on it on some important things you'll need in your theme files.

And if you are going to keep the default HTML – then you'll probably need to know WHAT STYLES you need to work with! Here is the list.

This page also has some comment styling information on it.

Here is information on the new way to separate pings from comments.

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HSL Color Schemer

Truth be told, I was sent that link too long ago to mention without being embarrassed. It's been sitting in my to do box to post the link since then. Doh!

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(add this to the wordpress config file after the "DB COLLATE" line.
define ('WP_POST_REVISIONS', 0);
define('AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 600);

This sql query will remove the revisions from the database:
DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type='revision';

Go to the abeontech link for more details.

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Just wanted to post a reminder to myself should I ever come across this weirdness again. I was working on a layout recently, and everything was working fine in Firefox, and everything was fine in IE except for one little nagging problem. A box that had a repeating background image in it sometimes showed up with the background in IE, and then sometimes not. Sometimes if I refreshed the page – suddenly the background image appeared. The line in my css calling for the background image looked like this:

#mybox {
background: url(images/my_background_tile.jpg) top left repeat-y;
}

Everything looks kosher – at least it SHOULD be. For some reason IE REALLY wanted a background color too! (even though it wouldn't be showing up because the image would be covering over it). Okay. Whatever. So this is what made the background image show up consistently:

#mybox {
background #fff url(images/my_background_tile.jpg) top left repeat-y;
}

IE was happy. And there was much rejoicing.
(*one quick note: this problem was specific to REPEATING background images. Background images set to no-repeat were not having problems)

Oh also – don't ever do this:

#mybox {
background: #fff url(images/my_background_tile.jpg) top repeat-y;
}

All kinds of weirdness happens then. If you're going to specify background coordinate locations (with either "top", "left", "5px", etc.) you have to specify both x and y locations. IE will hate you otherwise. And we don't want THAT! do we?

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remove_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'wp_trim_excerpt');
if (get_the_excerpt() == "") {
echo apply_filters('the_content',get_the_content());
} else {
echo apply_filters('the_content',get_the_excerpt());
echo '<p><a href="'.get_permalink().'">Read more...</a></p>';
}

Updated 8/11/08 Made some changes to the code. Excerpts were coming in unformatted, also removed some extra stuff I don't think I needed in there…

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So here's the deal – if you have a form and an element in the form is named "submit" – if you try to call document.myform.submit() – you'll end up getting the "submit is not a function" javascript error. (Because to javascript – "submit" is now that object element in your form – not a function)

So the simple solution is if you plan on using the javascript function submit() – do not name any of your form elements "submit".

That's all well and good except if you're working on code that isn't completely yours – and if the PHP code to process the form is specifically looking for $_POST['submit'] like so:

if (isset($_POST['submit'])) { // process form }

then you now have another problem.

This was the case I ran into with CubeCart recently. Most of the forms do not require a submit element to be in the form in order to process it – but a handful did. The design I was working on needed all the buttons designed and to look the same. So my options were:

1) Just use the regular input type="submit" button on those forms. (Ok – but then the site is inconsistent)

2) search for all instances of (isset($_POST['submit']) in the code and change it to some other element I can add to the page… ie:

<input type="hidden" name="formsubmitted" />

and then in the code:

if (isset($_POST['formsubmitted'])) { // process form }

(Obviously this is not recommended in the case of CubeCart as it will make it really annoying to maintain/upgrade the cart!)

3) add that other "formsubmitted" element I noted above to the pages that need it – then towards the top of the MAIN index.php page (which is called with all pages on the store) add the following:

if (isset($_POST['formsubmitted'])) $_POST['submit'] = 1;

Thereby setting the value of $_POST['submit'] so it will process the form…

Another tip with using css-styled links for buttons that will submit forms in CubeCart – you don't need to use document.FORMNAME.submit() – from any form you can use their "submitDoc('FORMNAME')" function like so:

<a href="javascript:submitDoc('FORMNAME');" class="myButtonStyle">Send Form</a>

Just make sure the form has a name (some of them don't).

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1) you didn't set the id.
Go back and make sure your div has id="mydiv" (or whatever you named it) in there.

2) the javascript is running BEFORE the div has been defined in the code.
This is what got me. I had the javascript code just above where the div was… and at load time, that div doesn't exist yet… the browser hasn't gotten that far down the page yet, so as far as it's concerned, that div with that id, doesn't exist. Once I moved the javascript BELOW the div… all was well.

And actually here - they suggest calling it on onload.

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