Plugins

Since 2011 I’ve written at least 30-odd WordPress plugins. Most of them live in private company or university repositories. Here is what a few of them do:

  • Embed a custom JavaScript debt calculator on selected pages on a website, loading the custom JS and CSS only on that site.
  • Provide language support for a Spanish-language microsite on an English site.
  • Automate the optimization of MySQL database tables at regular intervals for a high-volume website.
  • Integrate content from a university’s third-party social media platform into academic departments’ WordPress sites via a REST API.
  • Manage robots.txt files for WordPress multisites via a single config file.
  • Push custom Google Tag Manager datalayers to dozens of sites across a WP multisite for Google Analytics custom dimensions.
  • Automate the archiving of unlaunched sites on university multisites when the site had remained on the installation for a year without being launched. Notify the site owner 90, 60 and 30 days in advance of the archiving and when action is taken.
  • Log whenever a WP cron job on a site fires (for debugging).
  • Add live-chat scripts to multiple websites without directly embedding the code in the sites’ respective themes.
  • Add security headers to WordPress pages, improving site security ratings from F to A+ on WebPageTest.
  • Allow faculty’s non-standard file types used in their academic work, such as TeX and Maple, to be uploaded to the Media Library.
  • Create shortcodes for dynamic copyright statements on sites using page builder themes so content providers do not need to update them manually every year.
  • Add body classes to multiple sites to provide unique identifiers indicating which site it is and whether it is the staging or production version. Allows designers and developers to target a particular site when customizing features.
  • Reorder the WordPress admin menu to prioritize the items most frequently used by content providers.
  • Load additional CSS and JavaScript files and make other changes to a theme in the WordPress repository without altering the theme’s code directly.

Plugins