Switching between two WordPress themes for mobile sites and Batcache

Fellow WordPress developer James Collins blogged about the wp_is_mobile() function which is a handy core function you can use for mobile detection (betcha you’d never have guessed that!).

I actually don’t think I’ve ever used it, but I have used a home grown function that was done with Mark Jaquith on a project. I thought I’d share what I did to have the mobile detection work and how we toggle between the two themes, and batcache doesn’t go nuts and cache the wrong stuff for the wrong people.

The entire use case is to show one theme for desktops, and if mobile, show a different theme, and also throw in a toggle link to switch between the two sites. This works with batcache, and you’ll see how below.

Read More

Dinner at Euro

It’s no secret, I’m a fan of nice food. Just over a year ago I was introduced to Euro restaurant in Auckland, and it’s become one of my favourites.

Euro do a kick-ass job in my opinion (albeit very limited) because they build their dishes with only the bare required ingredients, but they use the absolute best from all over the world. The core ingredients do the work for you, you don’t need to make it more complicated than it has to be. (Can you tell, I am so not a ‘foodie’)

Read More

Lockdown WordPress users to one login session

Earlier in the year, I was working on a WordPress powered member site, that gave the users access to restricted content for members only. Pretty simple concept. The client however, wanted to sell multiple users for the same company, but a flaw with how WordPress does the user authentication, is that a single user could be logged in on 50 computers at the same time.

This is a typical situation I find myself in with doing WordPress development, that you’ll spend half an hour reviewing other plugins that claim they do this, and after installing and testing a few, you realise they don’t actually do it and you’ve just wasted half an hour!

Read More

Managed WordPress Hosting – reasons why I don’t want it

One blog I do like following is Chris Lema’s, if you don’t read it already, you should… he’s a very clever chap. One post I read recently (Managed WordPress Hosting – Reasons You Need It), and I also touched on this in my talk at WordCamp Melbourne, is why I’m not a user or huge fan of Managed WordPress Hosting, guys like WPEngine, Pagely, etc.

There are three main reasons I don’t like / use Managed WordPress Hosting at present, and these problems are somewhat unique to being an Australian, and won’t apply to everyone.

Read More

Exceptional Service

On Saturday I listened to Troy Dean speak at WordCamp Melbourne about 101 ways to elevate yourself above the pack and demand more greater fees/rates.

Some of these points were things like;

• send your client apps they make like
• send your client invites to events you spot and they would benefit from
• send your client news/media you come across that they may like

These tips of which there were many could all really be merged into one: give a rats, and think about your client.

Read More