When using WordPress as a CMS, situations often arise where you need to display, add or update content on your WP site without turning to plugins. While bolting in some PHP alone can do the job, nothing is more seamless that the magic of jQuery’s AJAX.
If you pay much attention to trends and developments in the WordPress universe, you’ve no doubt heard something about the web programming technique known as Ajax, and how it can be used to make your WordPress site more dynamic, engaging and downright sexy.
If you haven’t, then it’s high time you got schooled.
The mighty Ajax
Sticky Clicky Star sounds like a band name, doesn’t it? It’s actually a plugin for WordPress that makes managing sticky posts easier than ever!
What are sticky posts?
Sticky Posts came to WordPress in version 2.7, allowing you to mark a post to be placed at the top of the front page of posts. Many themes utilize the sticky posts feature to display “featured posts.”
Turn sticky posts on and off with 1 click!
There’s good news for BuddyPress plugin developers this week! The BuddyPress Skeleton Component has been revamped and updated to be compatible with BuddyPress 1.5.
What is the BuddyPress Skeleton Component?
The skeleton component is the bare bones of a basic BuddyPress component, packaged as a plugin. Although it’s listed as a plugin in the WordPress repository, it doesn’t have any specific function on its own. The skeleton component is more of a tool for getting you started on creating your own component. It makes it easy for you to get your component:
Registering activity stream items
Posting notifications
Setting up widgets
Adding AJAX functionality
Here’s a tip that applies to WordPress users across the board – from casual bloggers to power publishers with dozens of posts per day. The Magn WP Drag and Drop Upload gives you the ability to automagically upload your images to WordPress posts, using HTML5 and an drag and drop upload script. It’s based on the Ajax Upload plugin developed by Valums.
Check out the drag and drop upload in action:
WordPress sites are always in need of a good contact form. Are you looking for a feedback/contact form that works, right out of the box, with attractive aesthetics and a simple yet full-featured form? Look no further than the free Usernoise Modal Feedback Contact Form plugin.
Why Usernoise?
jQuery is a beautiful thing. It powers most of the fancy plugins you find that add cool, interactive effects to your WordPress site. I’ve selected a few of my favorites from the newest jQuery-powered plugins to hit the repository. Grab a cup of coffee and check out some of the possibilities available for your WordPress site.
Flicker Photo Post
After you’ve seen enough WordPress blogs, you might start to think that they all look alike with similar displays of posts, categories, and archives.
Want to do something a little more creative with your content? Check out the Category Grid View Gallery plugin. It offers you a visual way to display categories on your WordPress site. The plugin generates a grid view of the categories by grabbing the first images from posts within those categories.
Here’s a screenshot of Category Grid View Gallery in action, taken from the live demo:
Highly configurable shortcode makes it easy to customize the gallery display
If you’re interested in learning about using Ajax with WordPress then you should grab yourself a copy of the free WordPress and Ajax ebook. WordPress and Ajax is a comprehensive review of using Ajax with WordPress. From the website:
The book contains three real-life examples that provide the rationale and logic behind coding decisions, the reasons for Ajax’s use, and the steps from inception to completion of the examples.
The book works through three main stages:
Foundation: get a good foundation for sending your first Ajax request;
Sending that First Request: learn the code to send your first request and carry out server-side work;
The BuddyPress Template Pack plugin has been downloaded over 85,000 times since its release in February of 2010. In case you’ve never used it before, the BP Template Pack plugin guides you through the process of using your existing WordPress theme in order to display BuddyPress pages and content. Boone Gorges announced an update to this plugin this week:
The plugin now provides templates that are 100% up-to-date with the latest stable release of BuddyPress, which means that users will get all of the features and AJAX niceties enjoyed by sites that use the bp-default theme.
