Tom McFarlin

Happy Thanksgiving

November 26, 2020 / Tom

I never know how many people are reading articles like this the day they are published, but I’ve always been a fan of sharing a note of Thanksgiving Day (at least that’s what it is here in the USA).

Quick Tip: Get the Size of a MySQL Database

November 9, 2020 / Tom

TL;DR: In this quick tip, I provide a simple query for determine the size of a database (that includes all tables). This is useful when determine what the largest tables are, especially if there are custom tables in your WordPress installation, and how large they actually are.

Add a Custom View to the All Posts Screen

November 2, 2020 / Tom

TL;DR: I’m going to be working on a series that looks how to achieve a useful task with taxonomies, likely categories, then refector it into an object-oriented plugin that will serve as a utility plugin for taxonomies, in general.

A Brief History of OOP Posts

Some time ago, I did a lengthy series about the principles of object-oriented programming (and tried to share an amount as to how to achieve certain things within the context of WordPress).

I’ve also written a bunch of articles about the whole paradigm over the years for those who are interested in catching up on some of those articles.

And I’d be remised if I didn’t share that a good friend of mine has literally written a book on the topic, too.

And thus, as I’ve been thinking about various topics to write about (after taking an admittedly longer period time off than I planned), though that it might be worth talking about practical things we can do with normal APIs and hooks and then refactor that into a type of utility plugin.

It’s Okay to Write a Kludge, Sometimes

October 18, 2020 / Tom

TL;DR: Don’t avoid writing a kludge of code when the situation necessitates it. Sometimes, factors outside of our control dictate how quickly we can turn a solution around. At the minimum, leave a code comment that explains what the code does and optionally why it’s not included in a way that’s as consistent with the rest of the module in which you’re working.

When I first started in my career (as I imagine most people in our industry do), I was bent on writing the best solutions possible to the problems that I was given.

Nevermind that fact that I may not have had the experience of my peers, managers, or so on. I was bent on making sure that given the level of information I had, I was going to write the best code possible and aim to both prove myself but to show what I was capable of doing.

I was young. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Fast-forward over a decade, and things have changed.

Learn JavaScript, Forget PHP?

October 12, 2020 / Tom

The landscape of WordPress has changed.

time lapse photography of green field and clouds

A few years ago, we were all tasked with learning JavaScript deeply and rightly so. With the advent of Gutenberg and projects like Calypso, it’s obvious that JavaScript is becoming a dominant force in WordPress (not to mention the web as a whole), if you don’t consider it to be so already.

And for anyone who has read Coding Horror within the last decade or so, you’re likely familiar with Atwood’s Law:

any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript.
Jeff Atwood

But as this has happened, it seems as if its created a clearer divide between what constitutes a front-end developer and a back-end developer in the WordPress economy.

Personally, I welcome it as I find myself even more eager to learn, grow, and work on the back-end as PHP grows and changes. But that’s just me and there’s more to examine.