One of the most versitile tags in my arsenal that WordPress gives me is a fun little tag called <?php bloginfo(); ?>.  By itself, it’s not much fun, but when you add in a variable, it can tell you anything you need to know about your blog.  Like what, you ask?

• name
• description
• admin_email
• url
• wpurl
• stylesheet_directory
• stylesheet_url
• template_directory
• template_url
• atom_url
• rss_url
• pingback_url
• rdf_url
• comments_atom_url
• comments_rss2_url
• charset
• html_type
• language
• text_direction
• version

Look at all of the information packed into one template tag.  So, what are it’s practical uses?

Pull an Image From Your Template Folder

<img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_directory’); ?>/images/image.png”>

This lets you add images into your themes, and (no matter what the url is) the image will be pulled from the theme folder directly.  Even works if the user changes the name or folder text.

Add an RSS Feed Subscription Link Anywhere!

<a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss_url’); ?>”>subscribe to the feed</a>

Add a Link to the Home Page Anywhere!

<a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>”>Home</a>

These are just a few of the uses I’ve personally used in themes with this tag.  Do you use it for something different?

When you’re working on a development site it’s hard to set things up correctly because you know you’re going to change the site, and putting in elements that are more than likely “stationary”, such as links, will have to be changed, and that causes un-necessary headache when it comes time to move the site live.  But, in the light of wanting to make your lives easier as a developer, there is a WordPress tag that can make your life much easier: ‘bloginfo’.  the ‘bloginfo’ tag can be given various arguments to make it bend to your will.  But, one of the most useful I’ve found:

<?php bloginfo(‘siteurl’); ?>

Instead of putting links in with just a leading slash (/about/), adding <?php bloginfo(‘siteurl’); ?> will automatically append the full site url before the sub-pages. Since most developers have their dev sites as a subfolder of a current site, this allows you to skip adding the development folder before each and every URL.  It’s also good for adding links into hardcoded content, such as graphical navigation, or specially coded front-page templates.

Example code:

<a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘siteurl’); ?>”>home</a>

this link will lead you to the home page.

<a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘siteurl’); ?>/about/”>about</a>

this link (if you have custom permalinks) will take you to the about page, no matter what website or server it’s hosted on.