I've still been working on the WP Theme Generator, which nobody is using. I found that my webhost has the php setting for adding slashes turned on by default. My code relied on having no slashes. To fix this, I had to write a short recursive function, which I'll share here, and then explain.

Recursion, it's just a fancy word for a function, in which it calls to itself. Like function a() { a(); }. That would provide an infinite loop, but it's the most simple recursive function.

So, my situation, the $_GET and $_POST vars had slashes added. And I wanted to strip them out, but I would like my function to accept both strings and arrays, for sake of convenience and consistency (always use my function, instead of sometimes stripslashes()). What I wrote was this:

 
function ss_($in) {
	if (is_array($in)) {
		// It's an array, loop through all the keys and strip them.
		foreach ($in as $key => $value){
			$in[$key] = ss_($value); // <= Reference to itself, recursion!
		}
		return $in;
	}elseif(is_string($in)){
		// Regular stripslashes
		return stripslashes($in);
	}else{ return null; }
}

Comments say it all, really.
Just another quick example would be a countdown function:

 
function countdown($num) {
	echo $num, '<br/>';
	if ($num == 0) return false; // Stop countin at 0.
	countdown(--$num); // --$num subtracts the one from $num before the value is read. $num-- does it after.
	return $num;
}
 
countdown(20);
 

That all for now, folks.

The Cronjob Interface

I've just set up my very first cronjob, to take out the trash of the theme generator. So  here's a warning, if you're creating a theme there sunday morning around 3.00 am, or wednesday morning around 3.00 am, you have a chance your files are going to be deleted midway through your process..
BAWWWWWWWWW...

Tutorial on Cronjobs will follow :-)

A theme generator, which takes in regular templates (all HTML), and turns them into a 'basic' template, with a widget-ready sidebar, archive support, comments, and what not!

Click

Please let me know what you think in the comments section. And, please; Do note that this is a beta version, hmm let's make up a number. Let's call it version Oh-point-six ?

Thanks for reading.

Here's a quick explanation:

 
<a href="#">Link text<span>Your tooltip</span></a>

Use that HTML. Then add the following to your stylesheet:

 
a { position: relative; outline: none; }
a span { display: none; }
a:hover span {
display: block;
font-size: 8pt;
position: absolute;
top:-25px; left: -45px;
border:1px solid #383a47;
background-color:#5cbbe3;
color: #383a47;
text-align: center;
padding: 1px 5px;
width: 130px; }

This code hides the span tag when you're not hovering over it. (a span { display: none; }) and positions it nicely when you DO hover over it.
Read on for an example (just a single hyperlink, but it's not valid xhtml so I put it on a different page)

Hover over me!Wow, a tooltip!

The steps I took for designing my new layout

I'm personally not the creative type, being original with design is very hard for me. I just can't think of that special thing to do to make a design unique. So the thing I did was: sit down, pull out a sketchbook and a pen. And just draw a regular layout. Then switch some things around, and you have a general layout to work with. This is what I came up with:

That's what my next layout (which will be a wordpress theme) will look like, at least, that's what I'm aiming for.

So I'll be focusing on that, using photoshop. I'll be sure to keep you updated.

One more thing: Cypher. An online text-based hacking game. By clicking that link and signing up, you're selecting me as the referrer so you'll be making me 100 credits! Woot!

Like the rest of all the Wordpress users, I've upgraded to 2.6. I was one of the first too, updated about ~10 minutes after the release! Here's a little demo, from the wordpress website:

I find that the Theme Viewer does its work great :). And it's nice to have the plugins sorted instead of having activated and not activated randomly in between.

Get Wordpress 2.6

 
.clear { clear: both; }

This forces any item with a class of clear to be clear of floats on the left and right, which are - by chance - the other two options to clear; left and right. So after floating elements left and right, you should add a to force content below.

In this tutorial we'll use an iframe to simulate AJAX behaviour.

Firstly, we "might" want to create a simple upload form:

 
<p id="f1_upload_process">Loading...<br/><img src="loader.gif" />
<p id="result">
<form action="admin/addpost.php" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data" target="upload_target" onsubmit="startUpload();" >
		File:
<input name="myfile" type="file" />
<input type="submit" name="submitBtn" value="Upload" />
	</form>
 
	<iframe id="upload_target" name="upload_target" src="#" style="width:0;height:0;border:0px solid #fff;"></iframe>
 

The important part here is the enctype, always have the enctype specified if you're uploading files. The first paragraph is the little Loading... box that'll show up when we press the submit button. The second <p> "result" is to display the results (We've uploaded or We failed). And lastly the iframe that is actually submitting the data, specified through the target="upload_target" in the form. Also, the forms onsubmit triggers the startUpload(); function.

Now we want to add some Javascript functions:

 
 
<script type="text/javascript">
function startUpload(){
document.getElementById('f1_upload_process').style.visibility = 'visible';
return true;
}
function stopUpload(success){
if (success == 1){
document.getElementById('result').innerHTML =
'
<div class="msg">The file was uploaded successfully!</div>
 
';
} else {
document.getElementById('result').innerHTML =
'
<div id="error">There was an error during file upload!</div>
 
';
}
document.getElementById('f1_upload_process').style.visibility = 'hidden';
return true;
}
</script>

The function called startUpload(); does nothing more than show the #f1_upload_process div which contains the text "Loading..." and an image. the stopUpload function, though, checks the success variable passed to it, and adjusts the text of the #result accordingly and hides the "Loading".

So far, we have an ugly form. Lets add some style to it, make it look good.

 
 
#f1_upload_process{
z-index:100;
position:absolute;
visibility:hidden;
text-align:center;
width:400px;
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
background-color:#fff;
border:1px solid #ccc;
}
 
form[target='upload_target']{
text-align:center;
width:390px;
margin:0px;
padding:5px;
background-color:#fff;
border:1px solid #ccc;
}
 

I've used a conditional parameter on the form, so all other forms can stay as they are, and I didn't have to give the form an id or class. Then, one more thing; the PHP:

 
 
<?php
if (isset($_FILES['myfile'])) :
$destination_path = "./"; // This folder (don't forget trailing /)
$result = 0; // Not succesful yet
$target_path = $destination_path . basename( $_FILES['myfile']['name']); // Target path (This folder + Filename);
if(@move_uploaded_file($_FILES['myfile']['tmp_name'], $target_path)) { // move the file
$result = 1; // success!
}
sleep(1);
// Echo the javascript to call the stopUpload function.
?>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
window.top.window.stopUpload(&lt;?php echo $result; ?>);
</script>
<?php
die(); // Dont forget this, if not you'll echo the form again.
endif;
?>
 

Now save it as a PHP file and run it on your webserver, voila.

Click to download source