I think I’ve done enough of these that I can convey upon you my limited expertise. :) [This one’s for Val.]
For today’s exercise (which will take me no more than an hour to explain in writing), we’re going to make a plugin that is like the acronym plugin, except it’s going to display an image popup instead of text.
Our next issue is namespaces. I’ve written some information about this in the codex. This project is probably a little small to be worrying about namespace collisions, but it merits mention so that you can use good practices when you move onto bigger things.
When you write a function in PHP, generally it exists in the global namespace. That means that you ca call that function from anywhere. It is not possible to declare two functions in the global namespace with the same name in PHP. If you and your friend write plugins to do similar things, you should’t use the same function names. But if you want to write a plugin that doesn’t share function names with people you haven’t met, how do you do that?
Finally, a replacement for Babylon Pro, which lets you click on words on your screen to learn more about it. Not quite as simple, but a better reference.
This library makes some pretty sweet Flash graphs using a PHP class.
This is what happens when you don’t sit at the screen and reload your stats info:
You get listed in the top ranks of DayPop (shown), Furl, del.icio.us, and others and don’t even realize it until your server starts to act like it’s in a pool of molasses. One day you’re minding your own business, writing some code, and then it sneaks up on you…