I learn something new every day, here’s my live skill feed.

I just learned that it’s possible to check in php if a request has been made through an ajax call which is handy when you want to return a different template depending on if it’s ajax or not. To do it you just add this snippet:

function is_ajax(){
    return (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH']) && ($_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH'] == 'XMLHttpRequest'));
}

When trying to get a category link inside the loop I used to nest a few WordPress functions like this:

<?=get_category_link(get_cat_ID(single_cat_title()));?>

But today it wasn’t working, I discovered after experimenting that this method doesn’t work when you have an apostrophe on your category name and that single_cat_title(); should only be used for actually printing the category. To get the category link you can use this instead:

<?=get_category_link(get_query_var('cat'));?>

Just discovered the CSS pseudo selector :last-of-type It selects the last element of the type specified. Only works in advanced browsers though.

I found a pretty cool library to help you print out google maps on your sites. You can find it here.

I discovered a nice method of looping out data in CodeIgniter. I set up a loops module and created a load of view files to handle different loop styles. That way I can print them out anywhere in the site by adding:

<?php $this->load->view('loops/loopname'); ?>

Makes it work a bit like WordPress’ get_template_part() function.

Tank Auth is an excellent user authorisation library for CodeIgniter. It’s saving me a shit load of time.

Switched my main CodeIgniter project to HMVC this week, it’s much handier for larger sites.

There’s a new ad in Gmail. It’s now fixed at the bottom of the page and is really annoying. But you can get rid of it by going to Gmail Settings > Web Clips and unchecking the show web clips box.

Is an extremely easy way of including multiple loop styles in your WordPress themes. Take a look.

Dogfooding – When a company uses the products that it makes. Eating your own dog food expresses confidence in your product.