I would like to provide an outline of (mt) Media Temple’s virtual server hosting. This is a review that aims to present essential aspects of their DV Managed and DV Developer hosting services. DV Developer is the answer to every web developer’s dreams ... DV Developer works exclusively with Linux, and is crafted especially for seasoned developers, who are basically left to their own devices and unencumbered in the process of creating everything from scratch. And true enough, as far as software...
In this weeks tutorial we'll be creating a WordPress widget to display the current weather for a specified location. To do this we'll be using the great Weather Underground API. You can sign up for a free developer account here, or sign up for a professional account to get increase request rates. Signing Up ... Once you've signed up and registered for your API key, you should see something like the following. To actually query the API we just need the API key. The Wunderground API does not use OAuth to authenticate...
Last week I briefly touched on the customization possibilities of Google Maps, this week we'll be taking a more in depth look at what exactly you can customize. The options available include customization for all aspects of the map such as: Roads Points of Interest e.g. Schools, Parks and Hospitals Methods of Transport Water Landscape features e.g. Man made or Natural This covers not only custom colors, but the icons and text associated with each element. Getting Started ... This tutorial is a follow...
In this weeks tutorial we'll be creating a jQuery plugin that serves as an introduction to the HTML5 Geo-location API to request your current location. Once we have the location, we will then draw a route from there to Dublin, Ireland (or wherever you tell it to) using the Google Maps API. This could be used in a HTML5 web application or on a site to tell your customers how to get to you. Getting Started ... First of all we'll need to create our jQuery plugin wrapper. The $.extend function will allow us to provide...
A few weeks ago in my Google Maps Shortcode for WordPress tutorial I covered how to create a basic shortcode. All of the settings required for the Google Maps API where included as configurable attributes for the shortcode. It was discussed in the comments that perhaps it would be better to set some of those options globally. One option discussed was modifying the wp-config.php file, this I don't think is a great idea. It would mean that it could be potentially overwritten by upgrades and is not easily...
This week, we'll be creating a simple jQuery gallery that uses the Flickr API to retrieve a list of images from a photo set and display them. We'll also be using the API to get some additional information about the images and storing it using the HTML5 data-* attributes The Flickr API ... To use the API you need to register for an API key, it doesn't take long and you can start here There are 2 methods that we will be using for this tutorial, first we'll need to get name and description of the specified photo set....
This week we'll be extending WordPress by adding a custom shortcode. This shortcode will allow us to add a Google Map to a post using a simple piece of text in a post or page. Shortcodes are a quick and easy way to add functionality to a post in WordPress. They look something like this: [ gallery ids="1,2,3,4"] We'll also using PHP based Object Orientated Programming (OOP) to create our shortcode. We'll create a basic class, that has some static functions with in. We'll be using static methods because we...
Speed. It’s an important factor in the recent Olympics, the Paralympics and even our day to day lives. Speed is also an important factor when it comes to Google. Their ethos concerns the provision of accurate, relevant search results delivered as quickly as possible to the user. To quote their Webmaster Guidelines: “Monitor your site's performance and optimize load times. Google's goal is to provide users with the most relevant results and a great user experience. Fast sites increase user satisfaction...