Fire Studios

Google Syntax Highlighter may be WordPress' most popular syntax highlighter plugin, but it's not the most efficient. With plenty of extra JavaScript and sloppy PHP writing, it's quite the bloat-ware if left unchecked. So here's 2 fixes showing how to put GSH on a diet and still get all the features of the plugin.

Thumbnails in WordPress themes are a critical part of relaying the topic or aspect of the article/post you've written. With some simple tricks you can add your own to your theme, and there are even plugins out there to do it for you. The fact of the matter is that these systems you have in place have faults, so here's a video detailing how to create an advanced WordPress Thumbnail generator in your own theme.

WordPress was developed to be extremely user friendly on both the front-end and the back-end, but also allow for some complex functions and features to be implemented for the more advanced and code knowledge of us. FS-2009 (the name of the theme released to FS at the start of the 2009 year) takes advantage of the many functions that WP has to offer, so I've created a screencast that covers all the PHP involved with creating this theme.

Anybody who is old enough to remember sites from before WordPress and CMS'es knows that the number one hardship of owning and running a site was updating it. You had to go through and update every file, move content from one document to another, it all took too long and was too much trouble.

Now we all use blogging engines and CMS'es because they remove this hardship. But what do you do if you have a site and implementing one of the many engines available would be too much hassle or over-kill? You create a simple system that updates the frequent areas that you change.

This is a guide we'll be using our podcast site FS-Air. Using only PHP and jQuery we'll create everything you see on the site. This tutorial assumes you have a understanding of HTML, CSS, jQuery, and PHP.

Learning to code and develop websites or applications can be a difficult process, but when you couple in the pressures of being a student in school, it makes everything that much more difficult to grasp and shove into all the empty nooks and crannies of your mind. You can easily ease off the pressures of school by applying some of the same disciplines you gained when learning your programming language.