Monthly Archives: December 2008
Dec 31, 2008 by Matt | Posted in Coding
It’s always a pain to deal with dates when coding. Most date-oriented functions expect UNIX timestamps, which is hardly a user-friendly format, and at a glance it’s near impossible to do something simple in theory, such as adding three days to a date. Generally the best strategy is to convert all dates into UNIX timestamp format, and then you can reformat it with date() when you want to display it in a human-readable format.
Fairly recently, when I was working on WP125, I came across a very useful function called strtotime(). It’s one of the coolest functions I’ve ever found in PHP. As the name suggests, it can convert a string into an equivalent timestamp.
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Dec 30
Since getting a Mac, I’ve become a fan of the graphics editor Skitch. It’s a simple and useful application that I’ve been using more and more as of late. Skitch is great for taking a quick screenshot and resizing it quickly. You can press…
Dec 29
Version 1.2.0 of the WP125 ad management plugin has been released. You can download the latest version from WordPress Extend, or you can update using WordPress’s automatic plugin updater. The latest version streamlines the management workflow, and overall makes the plugin more friendly with…
Dec 28
One of Firefox’s more popular extensions is AdBlock Plus, an add-on that can stop ads from showing as you browse the web. There are two ways to use it. You can selectively kill ads that are so annoying that you can’t stand them (e.g.…
Dec 26
Usability Post has undergone its first major redesign. The new theme looks good, having a somewhat more unique look than the old one.
Dec 24
Twittbot is an interesting Twitter companion service that allows you to create Twitter groups. First you create a new Twitter account to represent your group. Then you head over to Twittbot and bind the Twitter account to a Twittbot, picking a security level (anyone…
Dec 23
Smashing Magazine has done it again. Their latest post, 8 Useful WordPress SQL Hacks, is a goldmine of useful tricks to streamline your WordPress experience. The tips include Backing up (and restoring) your database Batch deleting post revisions Resetting a lost admin password Updating…
Dec 22
WordPress 2.7 introduced a little menu in the upper right corner of the backend. By default it includes commonly-used links, such as the New Post and Comments Management pages. It’s a neat idea, but the developers didn’t give the average user an easy way…
Dec 21
If you’re not comfortable with the new vertical navigation in WordPress 2.7, rest assured that there is an alternative. Ozh’s Admin Drop Down Menu plugin, has been updated to bring horizontal dropdown navigation to WordPress 2.7. When WordPress 2.7 and its new and optimized…
