By default, WordPress attempts to find pairs of single or double quote marks, and converts them to curly quotes, (or "smart quotes" as they're called --- with the one on the left curling one way and the one on the right curling in the other way).

This is all well and good for appearance sake when you're posting articles made up of paragraphs of text, headings, etc -- but is extremely annoying when you're posting computer programming code examples.

Most computer programming languages extensively use quote marks, (single and double), for formatting and parsing code.

In WordPress, the conversion is done by the wptexturize function.  Luckily, you can turn it off in most areas of your blog by locating the specific places and adding a remove_filter() instruction in your template's functions.php file.

The code below turns off wptexturize for titles, content, (and RSS content).

<?php
// ======================
// turn off smart quotes
// ======================
//
remove_filter('the_content', 'wptexturize');
remove_filter('the_rss_content', 'wptexturize');
remove_filter('the_title', 'wptexturize');
//
?>

Simply cut and paste the above code into your functions.php files, click  Update File, and those curly quotes should be gone.

###

I just created a half dozen new categories and about 25 sub-categories from them.  I usually don't use the drag and drop editor, but this time I felt like I could do it faster that way.

The bug creates one CATEGORY record for every record in the PRODUCT OPTION table. The tell-tale sign is the ghost categories have no "Last Mod. By" or "Last Modified" info and all have numbers sequentially higher than the last real category you created.

This is not an ongoing bug -- just one that I saw tonight, (I'm sure if it was going on longer more people would have complained and they'd fix it).

Had I been doing an upload / import I would have blamed myself for uploading the wrong table or something -- because that's what this error looks like.

The facts: (Tonight) The Drag & Drop Editor has a serious problem, (confirmed by Customer Support Rep "Viet" who tested it on his own store at approx 3:00AM on Dec. 3, 2010).

Check your CATEGORIES database if you've been working on that database.

Here's the steps to check and see if you have any extra categories that you did not create:

• goto Admin
• click Categories
• click List All

• if "Last Modified" column is not visible:
  • click Customize
  • check off "Last Modified"
  • click Save
  • (return to List All screen)

• click the little arrow next to "Last Modified" column heading
  • (click again to reverse sort order)

What you are looking for is categories with no "Last Modified" date, (or Last Mod. By info), and which have numbers higher than your last created category, and are named like your product options...

Make sure the bug is fixed before deleting all the extra categories... they just come back with higher numbers in the state the bug is in.

###

Anyone serious about working on their own website should install Chris Pederick's Web Developer browser extension, (and I suggest using it with FireFox).

The toolbar adds all kinds of diagnostic tools for debugging CSS, HTML, DOM, images and more.  In-fact, it has so many features, many developers forget what is buried deep inside the toolbar's pull-down menus.

Lets say you wanted to outline all the TABLE CELLS on a page.  You could [READ MORE...]

While setting up and testing WordPress, I realized the site's users would all get email from someone named "wordpress" using the email address "wordpress@example.com" -- this wouldn't do!

I searched the forums and some of the "How to" sites, but all I could find was an outdated plugin that claimed to be able to change the name.  Knowing someone else's plugin could do it in an earlier version, I figured I could write something to do it myself, (this was a WP 3.0 installation).

One easy to deal with aspect of customizing WordPress is filter hooks [READ MORE...]

Yup, we installed the upgrade -- it went painlessly.. almost.

One little problem with Shadowbox plugin not properly linking thumbnails to articles, (on another site where we upgraded but didn't install the new templates, menus, etc)  Also, we updated the ShadowBox plugin on that site too, so can't say where the blame lies.

Anyway, let me know if you spot any critters, (so I can promptly blame them on WordPress and deny any possability that I screwed up).