The idea of “a basic feature” when it comes to creating software is such a weird notion to me. Last week, I was reading a blog and came across the following comment: I don’t have a [device redacted] but these all seem like extremely basic features that should be there from the start. And it’s […]
READ MOREQuality Code and Bloat are two topics that I see a lot of developers either discussing and/or mentioning on the landing pages of their project pages. I think the conversation around quality code is something that should always be happening. We should always be aiming to get better at what we’re doing, there is always someone […]
READ MOREIf you follow the WordPress economy via your RSS reader, favorite podcast application, and Twitter, then there’s a chance you develop a level of cynicism around the idea of another WordPress business starting up. By that, I mean that it seems like there’s something new every single week: It could be a plugin, a new […]
READ MOREWhen it comes to talking about program architecture and terms like that, it always sounds a little bit like we’re taking something a little bit more seriously than it deserves. This is a bit of a digression of my personal opinion, but I thought it worth sharing before getting into the actual post. Skip to […]
READ MOREOne of the things that I love about the ‘features as a plugin’ approach that the core team takes is that it allows us to evaluate plugins such as Shiny Updates for WordPress. To make sure we’re all on the same page, feature plugins refer to functionality that may or may not ultimately make it […]
READ MOREYesterday, I started a recap of the talk that I gave at WordCamp San Diego 2016 in which I discussed what it’s like to be running a business in technology. The Beaches of La Jolla If you haven’t read the article, the general points were: Technology drives our business We should elegantly solve problems This […]
READ MORERunning a business in technology can be a challenging thing especially if you have a background in technology. No, it’s not that I elevate those in technology above anyone else in any other field, but it’s that I know this field, and I know the challenges that come with how we may want to implement […]
READ MOREAs I’m decompressing from the whirlwind that was WordCamp San Diego, I’ve been going through notes and bookmarked posts on the topics for many of the things that were discussed. Taken at La Jolla Shores one evening after the conference. But my mind is also drifting to several emails, messages, and notes I’ve received this […]
READ MORELooking the most recent WordPress query that is run on a given page can be useful for several reasons: you see how the information in the database is retrieved, you learn how the underlying query system works, you’re able to benchmark your custom queries, and more. In a recent article for Envato, I share a […]
READ MOREIf there’s one thing that unites every single person who works with computers for the majority of their work, it has to be the amount of email we all receive. At least, that’s my estimation. I don’t know. I’ve been too busy responding to emails to conduct a scientific study. But seriously, there’s a lot […]
READ MOREWhen Evermore was first released in 2014 and participated in some in-depth coverage and discussion with Post Status, my interest was piqued. That is to say that I was interested in what they were doing, but I had no clue if it would pan or not. After all, in the last few years, we’ve seen […]
READ MOREThe longer I work with building custom solutions for others in the form of WordPress plugins, the more I am a fan of having a WordPress plugin bootstrap file. Honestly, this isn’t anything new, but it’s something I like to discuss periodically because the methods in which we build plugins, the ways posts can become […]
READ MOREWordCamp San Diego 2016 is taking place this weekend and I’m pretty stoked about it. This particular WordCamp is going to be a couple of firsts for me. Specifically… I’ll be speaking at any type of WordPress event that’s not in Georgia, I’ll be speaking on the business track (as opposed to the developer track). I’m also […]
READ MOREWriting good changelogs seems to be one of those things that many of us talk about doing talk about wanting to see, but often don’t do it. Or maybe it’s better to say that we often complain about the types of changelogs that we see, but don’t offer any advice of updates them ourselves. And maybe […]
READ MOREImage optimization is one of those things that anyone involved in web development should be thinking about if they aren’t doing so already. Personally, I think if you’re involved in the field, you eventually bump up against the need for it when working on a project for yourself or someone else. And in WordPress, there are […]
READ MOREPremium content is one of those things that means different things to different people whenever it comes to blogging. Sometimes, people think it refers to a pay-to-play forum; others believe that it has to do with some “I’ll give you my email address in exchange for your e-book.” I’m not knocking any of these approaches, […]
READ MOREAbout four years ago, I shared a post about WP-CLI. It wasn’t exactly a new project at the time, but it was far less developed than it is now. The WP-CLI Homepage As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, one of the things that we’re doing with is making sure that all of our work is unit […]
READ MOREYesterday, we released Easier Excerpts 1.1.0 into the WordPress plugin repository. In short, this update includes a lot of updates to the code of the plugin without a lot of user-facing functionality. But it does lay the foundation for future updates to this plugin along with how we’re going to be building plugins that we’ll […]
READ MOREI’m going to have a significantly longer post (or series of posts) that go more into detail about setting up WP-CLI, proper unit testing of WordPress plugins, and so on. But for those who are already working on setting all of this up and are hitting a couple of problems with trying to set up […]
READ MOREOne of the most important things you can do to improve your WordPress skills is to learn all about WordPress hooks. If you’ve spent any time looking through code, trying to write a plugin, or referencing the Codex then you likely know: Hooks are provided by WordPress to allow your plugin to ‘hook into’ the […]
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