Vlad Vornicu

How to check if a post has gallery WordPress

Vlad Vornicu — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:18:47 +0000

I needed for a wordpress project to found out if a post has gallery inserted. I did a quick research and didn’t found anything that could help me (or maybe I searched wrong)… I thought wordpress has a function that should check if a post has gallery or not, like “has_post_thumbnail()”. Ok… so here is the simple solution I could make

$check_gallery = stristr(get_the_content(),'[gallery');
 
if($check_gallery == FALSE) {
    echo "this post doesn't have a gallery";
} else {
    echo "this post has gallery";
}

Contact Form 7 validation with default values

Vlad Vornicu — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:36:47 +0000

Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.

Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.

You can get it from http://contactform7.com/

Ok… that’s enough with the introduction. I saw that many guys that use this wp plugin have a problem with the validation when they add default values to their inputs. So… I wrote down a simple solution for their problem.

Go to the plugin folder -> modules -> text.php and search for the function wpcf7_text_validation_filter (that is around line 107). Now, insert into the function the following lines

$values = (array) $tag['values'];
 
// Value
if ( is_a( $wpcf7_contact_form, 'WPCF7_ContactForm' ) &amp;&amp; $wpcf7_contact_form-&gt;is_posted() ) {
       if ( isset( $_POST['_wpcf7_mail_sent'] ) &amp;&amp; $_POST['_wpcf7_mail_sent']['ok'] )
              $value = '';
       else
              $value = stripslashes_deep( $_POST[$name] );
} else {
       $value = isset( $values[0] ) ? $values[0] : '';
}
 
if($_POST[$name] == $values[0]) $_POST[$name]= '';

And that should solve your contact form validation problem. Let me know if I did something wrong.

How to check if the scrollbar is visible

Vlad Vornicu — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 12:57:44 +0000

Don’t know if somebody needs this, but I had to use it. Let’s say you want to find out if your page has a scroll bar. We will use a simple jQuery function that will return true if the scroll bar is visible and false if not.

function checkScrollBar() {
    var hContent = $("body").height(); // get the height of your content
    var hWindow = $(window).height(); // get the height of the visitor's browser window
 
    if(hContent>hWindow) { // if the height of your content is bigger than the height of the browser window, we have a scroll bar
        return true;    
    }
 
    return false;
 
}

Note. I didn’t have time to test this function. You can do it for me and notify if I did something wrong.

Radio button on Opera Mini

Vlad Vornicu — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:47:14 +0000

Recently, I had to make a form where you had to choose some answers. I said: “no problem”. (btw I had to make it work on opera mini). I made the form with the input radio in it

<form action="saveForm.php" method="POST" name="question">
      <label for="answer">Do you like my opera mini webpage?</label>
      <input type="radio" name="answer" value="1"> Yes <br/>
      <input type="radio" name="answer" value="0"> No
 
      <p><input type="submit" value="Submit" name="submit"></p>
</form>

and I tested. Surprize, the radio buttons didn’t work on opera mini.

I searched on Google for a solution…but didn’t find anything about radio button on opera mini (or maybe I didn’t search well). I made my own solution…it isn’t a great idea, but it works.

<p>Do you like my opera mini webpage?</p>
 
<form action="saveForm.php" method="POST" name="answer1">
      <input type="hidden" name="question" value="1">
      <a href="javascript: document.answer1.submit();">Yes</a>
</form>
 
<form action="saveForm.php" method="POST" name="answer2">
      <input type="hidden" name="question" value="0">
      <a href="javascript: document.answer2.submit();">No</a>
</form>

I hope it will be useful for someone.

How to improve your webpage with jQuery

Vlad Vornicu — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:47:57 +0000

I’ll share my few knowlege about jQuery. I’m not an expert on jQuery, I’m still learning how to use jQuery.

Ok let’s say you have a simple webpage, without animation, without nothing. Only the (x)html and the css stuff.

First you have to add in your html file (between and ) the following line

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js">script>

Ok, this is how we get the latest version of the jQuery library.Now… let’s see. You want to show a message when somebody click on a button or a link. Let’s say you have a page that is under construction and you don’t want the visitor to get there before it’s ready.Also you don’t want him to reload the page for nothing to see. What you have to do: add an id for the link or button and a div that it will hidden until the visitor clicks the link.

<a href="#" id="underConstruction">Services</a>
 
<div class="showMessage">Sorry, but this page is under construction</div>

Now…let’s bring jQuery in our code. Add the following lines after the body:

<script type="text/javascript">
 
$(document).ready(function() {
 
       $(".showMessage").hide(); //here we will hide our message
 
       $("#underConstruction").click(function() {
 
              $(".showMessage").css("color","red"); //we made the message text red
 
              $(".showMessage").show(); //here we will show the message after the visitor clicks on the link
 
       });
 
});
 
script>

I know, it’s looks like a piece of nothing for the guys who know jQuery but I know that on the internet are guys who are looking for this simple code. Ok, if you don’t understand my version, you can also check the documentation from jquery.com where you have more details. I hope it will help somebody.

Lack of professionalism

Vlad Vornicu — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:17:40 +0000

I have been hosting some of clients project on a hosting company (I don’t want to give names, I’m not such a bad guy). Well, until today I thought they were a professional hosting company, but their not. 2-3 days ago, I bought from them another 3 hosts and 3 domains. Everything had gone well, until I had some little problems with 2 of the hosts. I accessed their homepage and clicked on Live Support. After 5 minutes of waiting, a guy says: “Hi, how can I help you?”, in my mind (“Finally, somebody who I can talk my problems with”). I started writing what’s bodering me… I wrote, I wrote and I wrote, then suddenly the guy left the chat and the live support goes offline. Beautiful, this is how a big company treats their clients.

Ok, maybe they have an excuse (the internet connection went off). I went to the Support Ticket where I started writting AGAIN my problems, I set the priority: critical.

It’s been about an hour and half since I submitted my ticket and still NO ANSWER from the “BIG” HOSTING COMPANY. If I have submitted the ticket off schedule, it weren’t a problem, but I submitted on their work time and what they did is unprofessional.

I hope their answer my ticket until tomorrow or maybe next week when I’ll have no clients to work for.

Time lost on Twitter

Vlad Vornicu — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:47:22 +0000

I was wondering how much time does a “twitter man” lose with reading and writting on Twitter. I have 59 people that I follow and still I can’t read all their tweets. How the heck does a person follow ~ 200. I don’t talk about the bots or the companies that ‘follow’ ~1000-2000 only because they need to be followed back and then tweet comercials. I talk about real persons who manage to read all and still have time do their jobs.

I recently installed TweetDeck, which is a very good application for receiving and sending tweets. After installing it I almost managed to read all the tweets but when I see the tweet on the top right corner, I lose my concentration on my work. This isn’t a good thing. I’ll keep that application for a week and see what are the results.

Ok, that’s all for now. See you on the next post.

Y!Messenger Pingbox

Vlad Vornicu — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:48:46 +0000

Well, that’s a very nice application from Yahoo, but still the script is not well done. For example: I thought it will be a good ideea to put it on my webpage. So that I can have a fast communication with my visitors. It seems that I can talk only with visitors who use anything else beside Firefox (3.0) or Chrome (3.o). This sucks.

I searched on Google and I found out that if you open a new tab in the browsers mentioned above and launch yahoo.com, after that you reload vladvornicu.ro. Voila, the Y!Messenger Pingbox appears.

So if you don’t see the Pingbox in the 3rd column, you can give it a try. Tell me the result in a comment.

// Update

I took out the Y!Messenger Pingbox because it’s annoying me to know that not all my visitors can see it.

Welcome to my Blog

Vlad Vornicu — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:22:48 +0000

Hi there,

I want to thank for the nice theme from SmashingMagazine and Slimmity. I didn’t have enough time to personalise my own. I talked to my roommate and he promised me a new theme soon.

Ok that’s all with the thanks.

I needed to create this personal project because many people asked me if I have a portfolio or a blog. So, from now on I HAVE. I want to put here some of my experiences from my personal life or from my work.

That’s all for the first post.

By the way, you can follow me on Twitter -> http://twitter.com/vladvornicu

or you can see my Facebook -> http://www.facebook.com/people/Vlad-Vornicu/100000570526618