Tips and Tricks

Add a Date of Birth Field with Dropdown Selections for Month, Day, and Year

Chad Butler · Mar 27, 2014 ·

I have received a lot of requests in the past for how to add a set of dropdown selections for date and store it as a single user meta value. This is a great example of using the new wpmem_register_form_rows filter hook, a new hook in 2.9, because we can use a single field in the WP-Members Fields tab for the date of birth to be stored as a single meta and use the filter to quickly change the placeholder field to a trio of dropdowns for date selection.

Note: this example requires a some php work, but like all of the examples here, I have tried to make it as “cut-and-paste ready” as I can. For many, this will work out of the box. For some, you may want to change the way the date is assembled and displayed (i.e. DD/MM/YYYY). I’ve tried to comment the code snippet as much as possible so you can follow what is going on. Continue Reading →

Remove form headings

Chad Butler · Mar 19, 2014 ·

Depending on how the plugin gets used, sometimes the <legend> tag for the form is not needed. For example, if you have created a login page with the page title “Login”, you do not really need the form to also carry the same text. Here are some generic utility snippets you can use to remove these various headings. Continue Reading →

Modifying default error messages that are not editable in the dialogs tab

Chad Butler · Feb 7, 2014 ·

When I first developed the admin panels for the plugin, I added editable dialogs for most of the various error messages. Since then, some additional dialogs have been added for form validation (as well as the ability to add your own validation and messages). However, most of those were not included in the dialogs tab. This is mainly because it does take quite a bit of programming overhead and more system resources for adding this as a feature.

So what if you want to change one of these messages? For example, you would like to change the message “The username cannot include non-alphanumeric characters” to something more light hearted, such as “Like, no weird characters in the username, dude!” This code snippet collects a number of these default message strings and allows you to replace them with your own versions. Continue Reading →

A random word and number combination for passwords

Chad Butler · Jan 22, 2014 ·

One of the earliest code snippets provided on this site was one that discussed how to create an easier random password. This post discussed two examples: one that showed how to create a random password of only upper and lower case letters and one that always set a specific word.

I understand that some sites have users that are not very computer savvy, and I often get the question of how does one generate a random password that is both secure and easy to use. So, I came up with this little example.

This code snippet will generate a password that is a combination of a random word and a random 2 digit number. This allows you to generate random passwords that will be easier on the user and still have some level of security. Continue Reading →

Use an invitation code with the PayPal subscription extension

Chad Butler · Jan 14, 2014 ·

When running the PayPal subscription extension, you might have some users you want to give a free account to. Or you might want to offer a discount to users with a specific code. Here is are some code snippets that will allow you to validate a promotion code in the registration form and if it is valid, either bypass the PayPal process (for a free subscription) or apply a discount. Continue Reading →