When developing a new WordPress theme, sometimes you might need to create optional widget areas within the template; that is, areas that can include widgets if the user wants, but don’t appear at all if the user has not added any widgets to that particular area.

For instance, some users of your theme might want to include a tag cloud above the footer; or maybe they want to include Google AdSense ads above the content. Other users of your theme might not want anything to appear in those areas, though.

So how do you create an optional widget area in a WordPress theme? The simple answer is, you use the is_active_sidebar() function.

As you may or may not know, WordPress has two simple helper functions built into it that make it easy to determine whether a checkbox/radio button should be checked or a select option should be selected.

Last week on the official Twitoaster blog, it was announced that the service would be shutting down almost immediately (as of March 20). Sadly, I have used the Twitoaster plugin on multiple WordPress installations because of its ease of use. It was  great tool allowing WordPress posts to be pushed to Twitter automatically, and came with the added benefit of tracking when a blog post was tweeted (it even went as far as to allow you to automatically publish those tweets as comments on your posts).

When developing a new plugin for WordPress, sometimes you want to add a visual/WYSIWYG editor to one of your plugin’s settings fields. Unfortunately, most of the tutorials you’ll find online only explain part of what needs to be done in order to get that working. The main problem I have encountered when looking at these tutorials and example plugins is the fact that they only invoke the visual editor; they don’t offer any way for the user to use the editor in HTML mode.

I’ve had a little bit of an opportunity to play around with Internet Explorer 9, and I’m still not sure if I like it or hate it. I am excited about the possibility of natively using some CSS3 and HTML5 in Internet Explorer, but I’m also disappointed by the lack of specific CSS3 elements.

On the plus side, IE9 does support almost all of the new CSS3 pseudo-classes (nth-child(), nth-of-type(), etc.), 2D transforms, almost the entire background module (multiple background images, background-clip, background-size, etc.), border-radius (rounded corners), box-shadow and RGBA colors.

Since I got my new netbook, I’ve been thinking a lot about the somewhat cyclical nature of computing. Today, I was thinking about the fact that, when computers first started out, the majority of peripherals were external devices. Then, towers got larger, components got smaller and everyone started packing all kinds of internal peripheral devices into their computers. At one point in time, it looked almost as though external peripherals (optical drives, hard drives, disk drives, modems, equalizers and all kinds of other crazy stuff) would disappear forever.

It is with great sadness that I share the fact that there are now more Dell computers in our house than HP computers; but I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity I had over the weekend. I was able to pick up a brand new Dell Mini 1012 for a good price. I’ve been wanting a netbook to carry around for quite a while; but just hadn’t found the right one for the right price.

When developing plugins for WordPress, most of the time I deal with semi-permanent settings with my plugins. A user goes to the “Settings” page for the plugin, they set things up the way they want them, and they expect those settings to remain that way until they decide to change them again.

However, there are times when you need to store temporary information that needs to either expire or be updated on a regular basis. There are functions within WordPress to help you with that, too. They are part of the “transient API” in WordPress. Basically, transient options are options that have an expiration date.

According to a new website Microsoft launched last week; currently only 2.9% of Internet users in the United States are using Internet Explorer 6. Worldwide, IE6 usage is still at 12.0%. However, only 10 of the 43 countries displayed on the chart have higher than 5% IE6 usage. Of those 10 countries, 8 are Asian nations.

Headscape, the Web design and development company of BoagWorld’s Paul Boag, announced today that their design proofing and approval service Get SignOff will be closing its virtual doors as of May 31, 2011.

Unfortunately, I never really got a chance to test out the service, as I don’t perform an extreme amount of design work; but it seemed like a nice option.

If they really are closing the service for the reasons cited in the message below, I must say that I respect them for the decision. I understand how tough it can be to provide the dedicated service and support that something like Get SignOff may require; and I wholeheartedly believe it’s better to shutter the service – while directing your users to another similar service – than it is to let a service continue floundering with no real support.