WordPress Coding ~ Luthiery Laboratories

April 2, 2019

WordPress Coding

April 2, 2019

Getting back in the saddle - I wrote the PHP code for the sidebar navigation, as nothing very good seems to exist in the WordPress world.

The main navigation node at the upper-right shows the path to where you're at with a breadcrumb trail, the page you're on, and any siblings and children. It also incorporates the Blog.

The Recent list shows all recently-edited pages and posts. A Random section picks out random pages and posts, which is interesting since this site is huge and growing.

I also wrote a SiteMap function to lay out the whole thing at once, or by section.

Got the last of the old material added to the new site. Added "Recent Updates" and "Random Links" to navigation. Started playing around with user polls. This site can do everything [that other site] can do, much better.

The old online forum has become really moribund. I wanted to see the last of my contributions there sink out of sight fast, but I guess I'll have to settle for slow.

Web Stuff, 04/2/19

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May 20, 2026

WordPress 7.0

May 20, 2026

I cringe whenever I see a new major version number of WordPress - what did they break this time? But you can't hold back the tide, so with some trepidation I installed it on a test site, and to my surprise, I found nothing wrong. The changes are all on the back-end, and completely unnecessary, like animated menus. The people in charge must be six-year-olds in need of entertainment.

Then I tested the editor, and not at all to my surprise I found they had broken it in a way that shows just how little they test things or care. Fortunately I was able to fix it with a little more of my own code. That is the risk you take when you use a platform like WordPress. Someday they may break something I can't fix.

Of course, they also added support for AI. At least that is disabled by default, and it is going to stay that way. I am not even curious, crusty old curmudgeon that I am.