24 | troubleshooting wordpress themes
here is a little trick if you need to check some variables, or try something new in your wordpress theme while the site is live.
use a conditional if statement to check that you are logged in as the original administrator, and only then do what you need to do. this way you can perform and display the neccesary tests, without the public seing anything.
<?php
if ('1' == $user_ID) :
echo 'you are logged in - this will not be shown to the public: <br/><br/>';
// test routine begin //
echo 'cat-id , cat-slug , cat-name , number of posts <br/><br/>';
$categories= get_categories('');
foreach ($categories as $cat) {
echo $cat->cat_ID.' , '.$cat->category_nicename.' , '.$cat->cat_name.' , '.$cat->category_count.'<br/>';
}
// test routine ends //
echo '<br/>end of logged in section <br/>';
endif; ?>
in this example, i displayed a full list of all categories with id, slug, and name.
the wordpress back-end (dashboard) is generally a good place to work, however for developers, some lists don’t show all the variables or parameters that would be useful for programming custom displays or functions. for instance, the IDs of posts, pages, categories, tags, etc. are not easily found in the back-end.
you can (and sometimes need to) build your own code snippets to show them on the spot where you are working with them.
this avoids a lot of guesswork.
and now you know how to hide these displays from public view.
