WordPress forms: minimal example

You can use a great plugin like Gravity Forms, but every once in a while you will find yourself in a situation where you will have to build a form yourself.

Below is a super-minimal example of what you will need to create a form that works as a plugin.

Create a php file named SimpleForm.php and add the following:

<!--?php
/*
Plugin Name: Simple Form
Plugin URI: http://example.com/
Description: A simple email form
Version: 0.1
Author: your name goes here
Author URI: http://www.your-website.com
*/

Next, the form:

<form method="post" action="">
 <?php wp_nonce_field('add-item','my_form_added'); ?>
 <input type="text" name="my_form_name" value="<?php echo $name; ?>"/>
 <textarea name="my_form_description"><?php echo $description; ?></textarea>
 <input type="submit" name="my_form_submit" value="submit">
 </form>

Here’s some stuff that makes this different from a regular php form.

The action should be empty.
Because it’s wordpress, there needs to be a nonce field inside of the form:

<?php wp_nonce_field('add-item','my_form_added'); ?>

Then, when the user presses the submit button, you verify the submit button was pressed by:

if (isset($_POST['my_form_submit']))

And then you verify the nonce by:

if (wp_verify_nonce($_POST['my_form_added'], 'add-item') )

Refer to how the nonce was created in the form above.

Wrap up the form code and validation code into a function called my_form and then add the shortcode:

add_shortcode('MY_FORM', my_form);

Now you can add this form to any WordPress page using [MY_FORM].

View the complete form plugin.

Pods CMS: setting up a status field

When you write posts or pages in WordPress, there’s already a setting for status:

This is pretty straightforward to set up with Pods CMS for your pods content, by using input and pre-save helpers.

First, install the helper called Selectbox Your Values. Copy the code from the link and “import” it using the Pods CMS Package Manager.

Go to your WordPress Admin > Pods > Package Manager:

Once you hit “Proceed to Confirmation” you should see a “Success!” and “Finalize” message (not necessarily in that order).

After that, you have to do a quick edit to the helper, so go to Pods > Setup > Input Helper:

Change the code as shown in bold:

<?php
$arr = array("waiting for approval", "published"); //array with fixed values, edit and/or add these with your preferences
?>
<select id="<?php echo $css_id; ?>">

<?php
 foreach ($arr as $val) {
 if ($val==$value) { $selected="selected"; } else { $selected=""; } // add selected argument to set value
 echo '<option value="' . $val . '" ' . $selected . '>' . $val . '</option>';
 }
?>
</select>

Then, create a column in your pod called status, and then add the input helper that you just installed and modified:

Now, if this field hasn’t been made a “required field” you can create a pre-save helper so that your default status becomes “waiting for approval“. This is useful if you are making a public form where you won’t be showing the status column as an option.

Go to your WordPress Admin > Pods > Setup > Helpers and add a new helper:

For the code, just add the following:

<?php
if($columns['status']['value']==undefined)
{
$columns['status']['value'] = 'waiting for approval';
}
?>

All this code above does is check the value of your status column. If it’s undefined (because your user hasn’t used the drop-down menu at all) it sets the value of the status column to ‘waiting for approval’.

After that, just go to your pod settings and add this pre-save helper:

To display only the pods content with a status of published, use the following code

$name-of-your-pod-goes-here = new Pod('name-of-your-pod-goes-here');
 $params['select'] = '*';
 $params['orderby'] ='t.name ASC'; // sorts by the name, optional
 $params['where'] = 'status = "Published"';
 $name-of-your-pod-goes-here ->findRecords($params);

Pods CMS: how to relate a pod to WordPress taxonomy

Thanks to Scott Clark I figured out how to create a pod with a column that relates to WordPress Categories:

The above image demonstrates how to create a multi-select to choose multiple categories to associate with my pod.

Because category is a PICK field, it has to be reference with the syntax:

category.name

Say, if you want to select all pods content with a category name of “my-category” with a link like this:

http://my-domain-here.com/category/my-category/

You can get the “my-category” part of the link above with the code:

$selected = pods_url_variable(-1);

And then use $selected to retrieve all the related pods content with:

$pods= new Pod('my-pod-type');
$params['select'] = '*';
$params['orderby'] = 't.name';
$params['limit'] = 25;
$params['where'] = 'category.name LIKE "'.$selected.'"';

Moving from wordpress from folder to folder and then fixing broken images

It seems like whenever I move a site from any-domain.com/wordpress/ to any-domain.com (for example, when you are building a wordpress site that will replace the existing site) it’s a bit of a gamble as to whether you are going to end up with a slew of broken images. Sometimes the images are broken; sometimes they aren’t.

I finally figured out a fix that works instantly.

Back up you database, and then use the following query:

UPDATE 'your-wordpress-database-name'.'wp_posts'  SET  'guid' = REPLACE (
guid,
'http://anydomain-com./wordpress/',
'http://anydomain-com./');