Web Development Resources

We’re pretty particular about the tools we like to work with: Magento for Ecommerce, WordPress for CMS, jQuery for enhanced UI. Under the hood we like driving with the LAMP framework (Debian Linux, Apache Web Server, MySQL and PHP). Everything we do here at Sycha relies on open source so hopefully we can give back something through this collection of web development resources.

WordPress Function: is_page_or_descendant()

Here’s a handy little function to check if the page you’re currently viewing is a specific page or a descendant of it (child, grandchild, etc). I’ve come across a few simliar functions: is_child(), is_subpage(), is_descendant(), etc; but none that met my needs exactly.

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WordPress: Add the <hr> button to the Visual Editor (TinyMCE)

Strangely, the <hr> tag (horizontal rule) button isn’t enabled by default in the WordPress Visual Editor (TinyMCE). Here’s how to turn it on, along with any other buttons you want to use.

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CSS: Style your <hr> tags with a background image

I find <hr> (horizontal rule) tags to be a nice semantic way to separate or break up content on a page. To give them some style, you can replace them with a nice background image.

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Magento: Enable Terms & Conditions checkbox at Checkout

A very common requirement for online shop owners is to force the customer to accept their terms and conditions before placing an order. When a client requested this recently, I was happy to find that Magento has this functionality built in, meaning time saved and no custom coding. It just requires some setting up in the admin, here’s how.

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Linux tip: Mirror a website with one easy command (wget)

I often find myself having to setup a static copy of a website. If I have command line access to the host then it’s simple enough to tar up the filesystem and database, but if I only have web access then this little gem saves me a lot of time.

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