Chris Wallace at UpThemes has generously offered up 10 copies of his Typecase Pro plugin (usually $19) for giveaway, in addition to one grand prize of a year’s developer club membership at UpThemes (usually $99) and an UpThemes t-shirt.

To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on this post or tweet at @wpcandy and @upthemes on Twitter and tell us your favorite font — bonus points for linking to an example of the font in use in a cool way. We’ll randomly select the winners from those who comment and tweet.

We’ll be collecting entries for the next week, and announcing the winner next Wednesday on the blog.

It’s been a while since we did a giveaway here, so this should be fun! Have at it in the comments.

This week’s WPCandy Roundtable will be filled with BuddyPress Core developers: John James Jacoby, Boone Gorges, and Paul Gibbs will be sitting down to chat. If you caught last week’s show with the marketplace theme developers, you’ll know a thing or two about what to expect tomorrow afternoon.

We’ll be streaming the Roundtable on the WPCandy Stream at 2pm EDT (18 UTC) with the chatroom buzzing if you’d like to swing by and get your question answered by the group.

Speaking of questions, if you have one (or a few) that you’d like to see posed to these BuddyPress pros leave it in the comments below. Make ‘em good ones!

WP App Store, the project aiming to make plugin and theme purchases easy within the WordPress dashboard — and which we previewed a couple of months ago — quietly launched yesterday (complete with slick intro video). Their plugin is downloadable on their website, which once installed will give you a new top-level menu item for browsing commercial themes and plugins recently added to their system.

Seventeen theme and plugin partners are in place at launch, a few more than announced when the original teaser page went up. Brad Touesnard, the developer behind WP App Store, said that a couple of the vendors that originally showed interest haven’t been responsive, while others just aren’t in the store yet. Developers interested in bringing their own theme or plugin products to WP App Store can request an invite.

Touesnard’s certainly not on his own with this project. In addition to the vendors partnering with WP App Store, his advisors include prominent WordPress business owners Adii Pienaar, Carl Hancock, and Jason Cohen.

Above: The WP App Store plugin, active in the dashboard and displaying newly available themes and plugins.

Right now, as you might expect, the WP App Store lists many more WordPress themes than plugins — sixteen or so pages of the former and only a few pages of the latter. That likely has more to do with the higher ratio of theme businesses to plugin businesses than anything else.

Touesnard said that WordPress.org’s clause restricting storefront plugins will likely keep it from inclusion there, though teased that they “have some pretty clever strategies to distribute the plugin.” We’ll have to wait to hear more about these ideas, but for now you can download their plugin from WPAppStore.com and upload it to your WordPress install.

In answer to a few questions on Hacker News, Touesnard said that the ability to search and review items in the store are high up on the feature list for future versions of the plugin.

What do you think?

Will WP App Store bring a proper theme and plugin shopping experience to the WordPress dashboard? It will be interesting to find out, in time, what kind of penetration WP App Store can achieve. Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

This episode of Aftertaste immediately follows this week’s Weekly Theme Show and sees the crew casually discussing WordPress hosting choices, going back and forth with the chatroom, and choosing the episode title.

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On this week’s episode of The Weekly Theme Show, we discuss buying themes via a plugin like WP App Store, the results of the ThemeThrift project, and all sorts of options and dashboard notification fun stuff. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

This episode is sponsored by the upcoming WordPress service Raft.io and the Typecase plugin by UpThemes.

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Episode #8 Show Notes

• WP App Store
• How 92% of us stiffed ThemeThrift in its first week
• Jake Caputo’s editorial
• Weaver theme options post discussion
• Notification in the dashboard, that discussion
• Credit links theme review guidelines (WordPress.org Codex)

This episode of Aftertaste took place directly after WPCandy Podcast #32 and, of course, consists of Brian and I discussing WordPress topics a wee bit more than we did on the podcast proper. I’d also say we did a good bit of catching up, since we honestly haven’t’ chatted in a while.

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Episode #32 of the WPCandy Podcast sees Brian Krogsgard and I (yeah, seriously!) running down the most important WordPress news of the week in just about 30 minutes. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it here again: if the other podcasts we produce here overwhelm you, the WPCandy Podcast proper is likely the show for you. Very little discussion, but quite a bit news and links.

If you only listen to one WordPress podcast this week, make it this one.

This episode is sponsored by the Typecase plugin by UpThemes and the upcoming WordPress service Raft.io.

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Episode 32 Show Notes

• WP App Store
• Kevinjohn Gallagher will be releasing his company’s WordPress plugins soon
• Nathan Rice is blogging again!
• QueryPosts.com
• Plugin directory messages on WordPress.org
• Hacker News article on Automattic’s estimated earnings this year
• Example of favorite plugins on Michael Fields’ WordPress profile
• WPCandy Labs

Let’s lay some groundwork:

1. This example would go in your functions.php file.
2. This example assumes your theme is a parent theme.

In this example, I’m registering four scripts, and enqueuing two. I’ll explain it afterward.

<?php
/*
 * WordPress Sample function and action
 * for loading scripts in themes
 */
 
// Let's hook in our function with the javascript files with the wp_enqueue_scripts hook 

add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'wpcandy_load_javascript_files' );

// Register some javascript files, because we love javascript files. Enqueue a couple as well 

function wpcandy_load_javascript_files() {

  wp_register_script( 'info-caroufredsel', get_template_directory_uri() . '/js/jquery.carouFredSel-5.5.0-packed.js', array('jquery'), '5.5.0', true );
  wp_register_script( 'info-carousel-instance', get_template_directory_uri() . '/js/info-carousel-instance.js', array('info-caroufredsel'), '1.0', true );

  wp_register_script( 'jquery.flexslider', get_template_directory_uri().'/js/jquery.flexslider-min.js', array('jquery'), '1.7', true );
  wp_register_script( 'home-page-main-flex-slider', get_template_directory_uri().'/js/home-page-main-flex-slider.js', array('jquery.flexslider'), '1.0', true );

  wp_enqueue_script( 'info-carousel-instance' );
  
  if ( is_front_page() ) {
    wp_enqueue_script('home-page-main-flex-slider');
  }

}
?>

Now let’s break it down

We are using an action hook called wp_enqueue_scripts(). It’s your best friend. This hook ensures that your function is registering and enqueuing scripts in the right place and only on the front end.

We’ve prefixed our function. Because, you need to prefix all the things. Use a prefix that makes sense, but isn’t “wp” or something else that could be used by core or other plugins. Your full initials, sitename, etc. are good possibilities.

As a sidenote, I recommend adding the action in your own theme setup function.

We’re registering the scripts with wp_register_script(). Read that page. Get in the practice of providing every parameter of the function every single time you register a script.

1. Handle – A name this script will go by. This is how you will enqueue it the short way, or if your user has a child theme and doesn’t want your script, they can dequeue it with this handle.
2. Source – The path to the file. I used get_template_directory_uri(), which is a WordPress function that finds the parent theme directory. Never, ever, hard code the path with /wp-content or anything else. Use this function. It works. It’s great. If you are registering your script in a child theme, use get_stylesheet_directory_uri() instead. It’s the same thing, for child themes.
3. Dependencies – These are the scripts your script depends on. You may recognize my scripts I’m loading. They’re two different slider scripts. They both depend on jQuery. You can pass multiple dependencies in this array, if necessary. For the script called “info-carousel-instance”, it relies on the “info-caroufredsel” script. Therefore when I enqueue “info-carousel-instance”, WordPress will know it needs to enqueue “info-caroufredsel” as well, if it hasn’t been enqueued already.
4. Version – The version of the script you are loading. If you update your script, you can bump the version, and when you change the version here, WordPress will be sure to load the new one, and reset any caching that’s been used on the previous version of your script.
5. Load in footer – If you set this to true, your script will be loaded in the footer, and therefore after much of the rest of the page has loaded. I always do this for things like sliders, because that way my slider script won’t prevent more important things on my page from loading. Just think about what you’re loading when you consider whether or not to do this.

wp_enqueue_script()

wp_enqueue_script() will enqueue scripts.

Definition: to place something into a queue; to add an element to the tail of a queue (line).

This function simply puts the script it is enqueueing in line to be loaded onto the page. WordPress is also smart enough to know if a script you are trying to enqueue has already “been through the line”, if you will, and won’t load the same scripts more than once. Whenever you see a website loading jQuery mutliple times, you now know why – they aren’t enqueueing, or at least not properly.

I’m enqueueing two of my four scripts. My carousel instance and the home page flex slider instance. The carousel will be loaded on every page, and the flex slider only on the homepage, as that’s the only place it’s used. If you don’t need a script on every page, don’t load it on every page. You can use conditional tags inside the wpcandy_load_javascript_files() function, around the instances of wp_enqueue_script() that are to be loaded conditionally. Automattic’s _S theme also has good examples of loading scripts with conditionals (like a script for comments – a common one to load this way).

wp_enqueue_script() takes the same arguments as wp_register_script(), but if you register your scripts first, you can just call them by the handle in wp_enqueue_script, as my example above shows.

As of WordPress 3.3, you can even enqueue scripts in specific page templates. It will load the script in the footer automatically! For instance, I could have enqueued the “home-page-main-flex-slider” script directly in the template part with the slider code.

Register vs. Enqueue

In our function, we’re registering four scripts, and enqueing two. Registering a script makes it available for use. Enqueuing actually pulls the script to the theme. You can register without enqueuing. But to load the script on the page, you need to enqueue. If you register the script as I show, you can then enqueue it by its handle alone. If you don’t register it ahead of time, you’ll need to provide the full parameters in the enqueue function.

The reason I register all of my scripts in this function is simple: it helps me keep track. Sure, I could just enqueue them all in this function with conditionals, but sometimes conditionals get confusing, and I like to take advantage of the ability to enqueue in templates, because it’s simple. I could also skip the register function for the scripts I enqueue right away, but again, I do it for organization. I register them there, together, so that I know what I’ve got and I know what I’m loading on every page versus in specific places. I also tend to make notes in comments by the register function to note where I’m enqueuing, if not immediately.

Notes

To load scripts in plugins, plugins_url() will replace get_template_directory_uri() for the path, and your function would be in your plugin file instead of functions.php. To load them in the admin, you’d use the admin_enqueue_scripts() function instead of wp_enqueue_scripts().

But this tutorial is just to show you how to load scripts in themes – meant for the frontend. Please start doing this. If you aren’t, you are doing yourself and your customers (whether buyers of themes or clients) a disservice and certainly causing future headaches.

Also, you’ll see I used the version of jQuery included in WordPress. So should you. You’re making a theme. Use the jQuery included with WordPress. It will always be up to date and compatible with core. It will always work. I’ve seen Otto argue with enough people about this (including me). He’s right. If you think Google’s jQuery is better, use this plugin, or recommend it to your users. For themes you release, just use the WordPress bundled version.

I hope this has helped clear things up for some of you. I’m not the first person to write about it. But maybe I helped it click for some. And as Carl Hancock said (he deals with conflicts daily), “it needs to be drilled into them [me, you, all of us]. So the more articles the better.” Oh, and if I screwed something up, or you have something to add, please let me know.