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Mitch Canter

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Tutorial

Tired of Refreshing Your CSS Everytime You Make A Change?

CMDR Mitchcraft

Reading time: 1 minute

So am I.  I  make changes a lot live on the server (using the Web Dev Toolbar), and I have to hard-refresh every time I make a change.  Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it cuts down on valuable time that could be done… well, not refreshing a page.  There is a way; versioning your CSS file.  The upside: it makes changes go live automatically without having to clear the cache.  The downside: it’s difficult to do, because the correct way to do it is by adding v=XXX manually every time you make changes.

Unless… you can find a way to do it automatically.  And Mark Jaquith has done just that.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/style.css?v=<?php echo filemtime(TEMPLATEPATH . '/style.css'); ?>" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" />

So what does the ‘filemtime’ function do?  From the PHP website:

This function returns the time when the data blocks of a file were being written to, that is, the time when the content of the file was changed.

So everytime you change the file, the new change time gets parsed in using PHP and you’re able to have a new version every time.

Thanks to Mark for this great (and really clever) tip!

css, PHP
  • Freshly Pressed: A Wild New Plugin Appears! Custom Classes

    Freshly Pressed: A Wild New Plugin Appears! Custom Classes

    Reading time: 1 minute

    From time to time I like to surf through the repository and try out new plugins.  It keeps me in the know and I’m able to share those plugins with you.  So, here’s what I found as I was surfing this fine Wednesday: Custom Classes Justin Tadlock is a man synonymous with great plugins, and his latest…

    WordPress
  • Go Update W3 Total Cache, WPTouch, and AddThis RIGHT NOW!

    Go Update W3 Total Cache, WPTouch, and AddThis RIGHT NOW!

    Reading time: 1 minute

    If you’ve updated your plugins in the last 24 hours, go straight back into your website and do it again – there’s a chance you may have downloaded some infected plugins that were hacked into the repository. According to WordPress.org, the plugins AddThis, W3 Total Cache, and WPTouch were infected with a backdoor that lets…

    WordPress