Expanding the tutorial for creating conditional placeholders

Daedalon
(@daedalon)

10 years, 9 months ago

Marcus, referring to http://wordpress.org/support/topic/display-a-date-between-2-month?replies=12#post-4457037:

1. The code we’ve landed with for our placeholders has most of the time started with a copy-paste from the appropriate class. For creating any custom placeholder, the code for core placeholders is the best start, but it won’t work before replacing the this calls.

The original first version of the code above the linked comment is copied from classes/em-event.php, lines 1434-1442, to which we’ve then made the appropriate adjustments. The first copy-paste attempt ended with the test site showing a lot of the almighty blank area until we located the cause to be the references to this.

The fact that the copy-pasting can be done is a tremendous help for anyone creating custom placeholders, and knowing that the this adjustment is necessary will surely come in handy too.

2. http://wp-events-plugin.com/tutorials/creating-conditional-placeholders-for-events/ and other tutorials should contain a link to a drop-dead simple instruction on creating a custom plugin to which you can paste the solutions provided in various threads. The contents:

1. Create a folder (wp-content/plugins/my-em-custom)
2. Create a file (wp-content/plugins/my-em-custom/my-em-custom.php)
3. Copy-paste this content to that file and save it: <content>
4. Go to WP admin panel and enable the plugin

Something about a quarter of the length of http://wp-events-plugin.com/tutorials/creating-a-events-manager-add-on-a-complete-walkthrough/ to get things started smoothly.

http://wordpress.org/plugins/events-manager/

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

Daniele
(@lele_82)

10 years, 9 months ago

I followed your solution, i’ve created a small plugin, activated it but still show me the same warnings…. What i don’t understand is why in a local site it works whereas in the online site doesn’t it gives me warnigs

Plugin Support angelo_nwl
(@angelo_nwl)

10 years, 9 months ago

@daniele, already answered you at http://wordpress.org/support/topic/display-a-date-between-2-month?replies=22#post-4460365

Plugin Author Marcus (aka @msykes)
(@netweblogic)

10 years, 9 months ago

1. if you’re copying a snippet from a class, replacing $this is inevitable

2. we need to simplify the whole tutorial, there’s things I’d do differently now. that’s a good idea, although I’d hope people first read WP docs before trying to make changes in wp 🙂 : http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_a_Plugin

Daniele
(@lele_82)

10 years, 9 months ago

Thanks @marcus 🙂

Thread Starter Daedalon
(@daedalon)

10 years, 9 months ago

Marcus, quite so, telling these to users in the tutorial allows them to make the most out of EM with the least amount of site breakage time.

Regarding the WP docs, I expect most EM users would create custom plugins only to augment the functionality of EM. Getting them up and running with the least amount of hassle will increase their happiness with EM, just like the “famous 5-minute setup” of WordPress has been a major contributor for the large and happy userbase of WordPress.

After the user has their first EM customization plugin is up and running (a 5-minute task with appropriate instructions), it’s good to give them a link to more in-depth instructions so they can understand the proceedings in more depth. Having a working plugin first provides both a confidence boost and a bit of hands-on experience, which most of us will not learn without.

As a personal experience when I tried to understand OO programming some ten years ago by reading tutorials and theoretical background it was of no use. I had no practical need for the solutions of OO, so the topic felt like a complicated overkill for my purposes. I’ve then gone on to learn most of what I know about OO through augmenting EM, because there always was a practical need and the solution was never far out of my reach. I had began with copy-paste plugins and modifying EM core to try things out, and I then read documentation and code bit by bit to solve any particular need at a time. If at any point I wouldn’t have been able to continue without reading an 8-page mammoth like the WP codex page, I would have been pursuing other things instead.

EM has taken a better direction and has IIRC at maximum 2-3 page tutorials. Out of those most are already very neat, and when you rewrite the conditional placeholder one, and provide the helpers for using placeholders from EM, you’ve covered the one that we found in need of update the most.

Of course it’s a bit silly for me to advocate this, as I’m hoping you’d update the recurrence system instead, but if updating that tutorial saves you time in support or increases your revenue allowing you to develop more efficiently, then this thread has been an excellent use of my time 🙂

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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