Josh Stauffer

Sinatra – Free Genesis Child Theme

Josh Stauffer — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 05:44:00 +0000

I am pleased to announce the release of Sinatra, a free Genesis child theme. This WordPress theme works on the Genesis Framework.

WordPress: Redirect Users After Log In

Josh Stauffer — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 20:13:07 +0000

First, the code…

// Redirect admins to the dashboard and other users elsewhere
add_filter( 'login_redirect', 'my_login_redirect', 10, 3 );
function my_login_redirect( $redirect_to, $request, $user ) {
	// Is there a user?
	if ( is_array( $user->roles ) ) {
		// Is it an administrator?
		if ( in_array( 'administrator', $user->roles ) )
			return home_url( '/wp-admin/' );
		else
			return home_url();
			// return get_permalink( 83 );
	}
}

Then, some explanation…

For more information on this filter, read up on the login redirect filter.

In short, this function sends administrators to the WordPress Dashboard after log in and everyone else to the homepage of the site. To send everyone else to a specific page on your site, replace the id ’83′ to the id of the page. Don’t forget to comment and uncomment the necessary lines.

Disable Directory Browsing with HostGator

Josh Stauffer — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 02:59:25 +0000

How would you feel if someone could view the contents of all your directories which do not contain an index.html, index.php, or other index file? Personally, I feel like my privacy has been invaded. Time to shed some light.

How’s your setup? Let’s test. From your browser’s address bar, navigate to a directory that you suspect may not contain an index file (an images folder is usually guilty). For WordPress users, try something like http://www.example.com/wp-includes. If you see a list of files, then others can see this too. I don’t like this. Keep reading.

If you host with HostGator or any other host for that matter, I strongly urge you to disable directory browsing. There are a few ways this can be done. You could edit the .htaccess or httpd.conf files but I feel it’s easiest to do this in cPanel.

From your cPanel admin, click on `Index Manager`. Select `public_html` from the list of folders, and on the next screen select `No Indexing`, then click save.

Doing this will keep people from seeing a list of files in your directories. Security is good. Be safe.

Empty Named Anchor Fix

Josh Stauffer — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:26:12 +0000

While developing a WordPress theme recently, I tested it in Chrome, Firefox, and IE and everything worked as expected. Recently I noticed the named anchors were not working in Chrome. I narrowed the problem down to Chrome positioning the anchors on the screen at coordinates 0,0 probably because the elements were empty. Thanks to this comment, it’s as simple as adding the CSS display: inline-block to the named anchor elements. The code was changed to and viola, the empty named anchors are fixed.

Genesis Framework Snippets

Josh Stauffer — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:43:17 +0000

This will become my personal snippet library for the Genesis Framework. Since it is a work in progress, here are some other resources for Genesis code snippets:

/* Source: http://dev.studiopress.com/add-widgeted-footer.htm */
/* Add support for 3-column footer widgets */
add_theme_support( 'genesis-footer-widgets', 3 );

Jon Acuff: a Man of His Word

Josh Stauffer — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 02:39:30 +0000

In case you don’t know, Jon Acuff is a well-known blogger/author who is responsible for the popular blog and book, Stuff Christians Like and the book, Gazelles, Baby Steps And 37 Other Things Dave Ramsey Taught Me About Debt.

Back last November he wrote a blog post, ‘Can I help you with your blog?‘, and I responded thinking it would be great if he did help but I’d understand if he didn’t. I can’t imagine the amount of email and requests Jon gets. It has to be a lot when you consider he’s reached over 2 million people with his blog and has tens of thousands of twitter followers.

Why am I writing this post? Well, I have two reasons…

To serve as a reminder for me to follow Jon’s suggestions.
To let everyone know that Jon Acuff is a man of his word and of great character.

The Evidence

Hi Jon,

I purchased your book last week and read your post today (http://stuffchristianslike.net/2010/11/can-i-help-you-with-your-blog/ ).

Hook me up.

http://www.joshstauffer.com/

Josh

Josh

Thank you so much for buying my second book! I really appreciate that. I am reviewing blogs right now and just came to yours. I love it! Here are a few thoughts I had:

I’d love to see you creating more content. Set a goal to write one post a week for 90 days. That’s 12 posts. Then write a handful of 3 posts really quickly. Write short posts. Just 200 words or so. Then, once you’re done, sit on them for a few days. Come back later when you’re not in love with them. You need to have an editor’s eye and if you try to edit the same day you write, you will miss things.

I’d like to see you do a couple of posts with lists in them. Blog readers really love to have short, easy to digest content and I personally have really seen community grow with posts that allow specific, list based things to react to. Your post about hostgator would have been a perfect post for a list.

On the community tip, the best way I grew my community on SCL was by joining other communities first. For a year before I launched my site I plugged into other blogging communities and would regularly post comments. Becoming known for generously leaving comments is a great way to encourage people to comment on your blog. (The times people commented you did an awesome job writing great responses to them.)

Think about creating more “exits and entrances” for your posts. Readers need visual entrances they can use to start reading. Sometimes it’s tempting to have long run on paragraphs, but readers sometimes feel intimidated by big “walls” of text. Try to break up some of your posts into smaller chunks and give readers the chance to “enter and exit” ideas easily.

I’d love to see you take greater “visual credit” for the Transchild theme. I think it looks great and it would be fun to have some sort of visual preview represented on your main page.

Hope that helps. Thanks for buying the book!

Jon

Make a good decision today by following @JonAcuff on Twitter and checking out his blog, JonAcuff.com. You can thank me later.

Redesign – March 2011

Josh Stauffer — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 05:25:12 +0000

A redesign for my blog was long overdue. I’ll continually be making tweaks and improvements but I am really pleased with how it came out. This design is a child theme for the Genesis Framework. I tried to add some flavor by incorporating some jQuery effects, CSS3 styles, the Google Font API, and some Genesis hooks. My favorite feature is probably the scrolling background in the header area. Take a look around and if you have any comments, please fire away.

I’m with GoDaddy, BlueHost, HostGator!

Josh Stauffer — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 03:14:02 +0000

In roughly six months time, I’ve managed to switch my web hosting from GoDaddy to BlueHost and have ultimately ended up with HostGator. Here are some thoughts concerning my journey.

I hosted my websites with GoDaddy for several years before making my first hosting switch last September. At the time, I was satisfied with GoDaddy’s hosting control panel (which many don’t care for) and I thought the history snapshot feature in the file manager was great. Plus the fact that they would prorate some of their services made them the best fit for me. I can honestly say I was satisfied with my GoDaddy shared hosting account. Then I started having some load issues and the most frustrating thing to me was that others I knew that were on the same plan didn’t experience the same problems I faced. Without getting into too much detail, I began looking for my next web host.

After reading numerous reviews and considering the WordPress Web Hosting recommendations, I decided to make a move to BlueHost. This was one of those changes that made me question why I didn’t make a move sooner. My sites seemed to load quicker, cPanel became my new best friend, and the support was better than expected (live chat makes a difference). Everything was great until my sites started going down almost daily. Had my move from GoDaddy to BlueHost proved not to be a step in the right direction, I probably wouldn’t have abandoned ship so quickly.

I figured I’d give HostGator a shot since they seem to have pretty good reviews and they came highly recommended by a few people I know. The move was very simple especially with the cPanel experience I picked up as a BlueHost customer. I pay a little more per month so hopefully “you get what you pay for.” Before I made the move from BlueHost, I ran some performance tests. I planned on comparing the results against HostGator but there wasn’t much difference in the statistical results. However, it is my perception that my sites load much quicker than they ever have before which I am very pleased about.

In conclusion, I’d have to admit that each web host has their pro’s and con’s (even GoDaddy). When deciding who to go with, you should compare your needs with what each company offers, read plenty of reviews (avoid affiliate review sites), and ask for the opinions of people you trust. There’s one tip I’ll leave with you that proved to be very helpful to me. Get real-time feedback by searching Twitter. For instance, you could search phrases like “bluehost down“, “godaddy down“, “hostgator down“, etc. Try it!

Genesis: How to Add an Additional Wrap

Josh Stauffer — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 22:40:15 +0000

If you’ve ever looked at the Visual Markup Guide for the Genesis Framework, you may have noticed that all of the main sections contain a div that wraps around the inner markup except the the ‘inner’ section. To give you a general idea of the structure I am referring to, have a look at this:

#header > .wrap
#nav > .wrap
#subnav > .wrap
#inner > .wrap, this is what we will be adding
#footer > .wrap

Genesis has made it easy for us to add the additional wrapper by using hooks. All you need to do is open up the functions.php file in your child theme and add the following code. The code should be placed at the end of the file, just before the closing ?> if there is one.

// Add div.wrap inside of div#inner
function child_before_content_sidebar_wrap() {
    echo '';
}
add_action('genesis_before_content_sidebar_wrap', 'child_before_content_sidebar_wrap');

function child_after_content_sidebar_wrap() {
    echo '
';
}
add_action('genesis_after_content_sidebar_wrap', 'child_after_content_sidebar_wrap');

Amendment

The same result could also be accomplished by adding the following line to the functions.php file of your Genesis child theme. Thanks @GaryJ.

add_theme_support( 'genesis-structural-wraps', array( 'header', 'nav', 'subnav', 'inner', 'footer-widgets', 'footer' ) );

That’s really all there is to it. I hope this has helped someone.

Transchild – Free Genesis Child Theme

Josh Stauffer — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 03:17:34 +0000

I am proud to announce my very first free Genesis child theme. Releasing a WordPress theme to the public has been something that I’ve wanted to do for a very long time and I’m glad I’ve finally taken this step.

The theme incorporates transparent elements and is a child theme for the Genesis Framework, hence the name ‘Transchild.’ My attempt at a clever name.

Check out the Transchild theme and I look forward to reading your feedback in the comments below.