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Category: Tutorials

How to intercept post publishing based on post meta

How to intercept post publishing based on post meta

Published August 12, 2019 by RachieVee

It’s been a while since I’ve written a step by step tutorial. I decided to write one based on a real world task I had to work on.This is a tutorial on how to intercept post publishing in WordPress. In summary, I needed to stop people from publishing posts based on a post meta value. If someone tried to publish a post when they’re not supposed to, from both “quick edit” or regular edit, an error needed to display.

A good use case for this is a news blog where content has to be approved by a head honcho before it gets published. After all, no one wants to publish unvetted content – especially news!

If you have post meta that determines what “stage” the post is in an “approval process” – you can check against that post meta before WordPress decides whether it’s allowed to be published. For those unfamiliar with post meta, I mean any values saved through WordPress’ default custom fields, or if you’re using a field plugin like ACF or Carbon Fields. Post meta can be also be saved via PHP with the add_post_meta() function.

Before we begin, this tutorial assumes:

  • You have familiarity with editing/creating WordPress themes.
  • You have a basic understanding of how WordPress hooks work. Need some pointers on getting acquainted with them? Check out an older post of mine: 10 Ways to Learn WordPress Hooks.
  • You already have a custom field/post meta to work with. In this tutorial, we’re going to assume there is a field called _approval_status (meta key), and if that field is set to “approved” (meta value), the post should publish successfully. Meta key/value are what the field label/value are called in the WordPress database table wp_postmeta.
  • You have added this field to “quick edit”. Not mandatory, but the tutorial will include how to intercept post publishing on quick edit as well as regular edit.
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How to get WooCommerce Category Info with an ID

How to get WooCommerce Category Info with an ID

Published September 24, 2015 by RachieVee

The universe has been telling me to write this post for a very long time. The first time was a year-ish ago, when I googled how to get WooCommerce category data with an ID and couldn’t find a clear answer. “Hey, this is a pain to find an answer for – this should be a blog post!” The second time was after I had posted a question on the WordPress Stack Exchange to find an answer, and then I answered it myself. “Whoa – I figured this out! I should tell people about this!”

Then that question eventually ended up earning me a “most popular question” badge. “Damn it, Rachel, people want to know about this – write a damn blog post!”

Okay, so I didn’t do it. Time passed and it was exactly yesterday ( when I began writing this post ), I was working in WooCommerce again, in the zone, went to google, and this happened:

Yep, that’s right everyone. I ended up googling the same problem I had already once resolved and ended up at the same Stack Exchange question I both asked and answered. All right, universe. You win this round.

To make sure I never ever forget I know how to do this again, I’m going to write it down! How to get the WooCommerce product category name, link, image, all the things with PHP so long as you have an ID to use, step by step, in tutorial form.

Before We Get Started:

  1. This assumes you’re familiar with PHP loops, objects and variables.
  2. This is a WooCommerce tutorial yay!
  3. I am using Advanced Custom Fields for this walkthrough, but you can use other methods like a regular Custom Field and re-work this solution to your purposes.
  4. I am getting category information on a page other than the category archive. If you’re on a category archive, check this WooCommerce documentation first for a head start. I found that the method there and the method I’m writing here are a little different depending on the template you’re working in.
  5. This solution is meant to work inside the loop.
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Accessible Links by the Handbook

Accessible Links by the Handbook

Published May 11, 2015 by RachieVee

WordPress has this handy theme review handbook. On my quest to learning about accessibility, the requirements in this handbook seemed the next logical step. Since accessible links have been an overwhelming topic for me, learning requirements first give me a head start in addition to learning about making links accessible via context.

The handbook has three required rules for accessible links:

  1. Keyboard Navigation: Visible focus states
  2. Link Text: Screen reader text
  3. Skip Links

We’ll go over all three in this post. This post is on the lengthy side, but it’s all pretty easy to pick up. What’s difficult is making these techniques a habit in your everyday coding. That, I think, is what takes practice. This post also assumes you’re familiar with basic Css and comfortable with minor edits in theme template files.

Time to dive into our WordPress themes!

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An Intro to Accessible Links

An Intro to Accessible Links

Published April 21, 2015 by RachieVee

I confess. I reached a point in my learning accessibility journey that I became overwhelmed by how much there is to learn. My intention was to start a few posts about links, but there is just so much about accessible links, I didn’t even know where to start. I became discouraged.

Here I am again though, and I’m back on it! I’ve decided that I can’t tell you everything there is to know about accessible links in one post. I can, however, at least introduce the concept and offer resources to wonderful people that have written great things already.

In this post, I’m going to focus on why accessible links matter, how to know if our links are accessible and what we can do right now in our text-editors. Text-editor changes are what’s helping me ease into the concept of accessible links – hopefully it will be helpful to you as well.

Those wonderful people and resources will be sprinkled throughout for those eager to dive into making the most accessible links ever!

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Responsive Images in WordPress with Foundation’s InterchangeAn images icon and the Foundation Yeti logo.

Responsive Images in WordPress with Foundation’s Interchange

Published March 5, 2015 by RachieVee

I recently faced planning a site that was extremely image heavy. I mean big beautiful heroes and HD videos everywhere – the works! It was like going to an IMAX movie except in website form! Anyway, the point is, there was a lot going on and it was very important that the site remained just as beautiful when the screen shrinks down to mobile as this was a responsive site. The thing is – the images were huge! Trying waiting for a 1400px image to load on a your 5+ year old LG Android – you’re gonna be there a while.

So the problem was, how do I properly code responsive images in WordPress without one, torturing users with slower internet connections and two, still maintaining good practices?

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