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Every web developer should keep useful code snippets in a personal library for future reference. Today, I'm showing you the 10 most useful snippets and functions I have added to my snippet library from the past 3 months.

The Google URL Shortener API has been released this week so I came up with a short snippet that generates short goo.gl URLs. The script is quite simple, you can paste it in your theme's functions.php file or create a plugin out of it, so without further ado:

Creates a widget, shortcode or PHP snippet for inserting dynamic, highly customizable lists of posts or pages such as related posts or table of content

Two of my favorite web designers with super helpful blogs, Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks and Jeff Starr of Perishable Press, have just released their new collaboration! The book, "Digging Into WordPress," is now available as a PDF download, and if you buy the PDF book now, you will be eligible for a "sweet discount" on the hard copy of the book when it comes out, plus receive updates free. They've done a great job on this book, which covers setting up WordPress, anatomy of a WordPress theme, theme design and development, extending functionality including using WordPress as a CMS, working with RSS feeds, SEO, dealing with comments, and keeping your site "healthy." I already followed both of these designers before they began their collaboration, and have found countless useful tutorials, code snippets, design ideas, and much more on both of their sites - I've relied on Perishable Press as a source for great unobtrusive javascript code, and on CSS-Tricks for all kinds of other useful tools for making valid, functional, and beautiful sites. This book is bound to be a valuable reference to anyone who works with WordPress.

function add_slug_class_to_menu_item($output){
$ps = get_option('permalink_structure');
if(!empty($ps)){
$idstr = preg_match_all('/
foreach($matches[1] as $mid){

Great for use with the Widget Logic plugin. A reference for all the conditional tags that help you restrict a widgets viewing.

Warning: You can only use conditional query tags on or after the init action hook in WordPress. For themes, this means the conditional tag will never work properly if you are using it in the body of functions.php, i.e. outside of a function.