Author: Tom (Page 132 of 430)

Using Medium: An Experiment with Writing

January 2, 2017 / Tom

Using Medium is something that I’ve been wavering on doing for some time now. I mean, it’s not that I don’t understand how it works or why people opt to use to it.

Using Medium: The Medium Homepage

But I like WordPress; I’m a fan of self-hosted solutions, and I’m a fan of data ownership. So why would I bother with anything else?

Granted, Medium offers the ability to export that you own so you can take it elsewhere.

That’s a plus, right?

But there are a few reasons I’ve opted to give this whole thing a try. (And no, I’m not going to be duplicating content from this site to Medium – this is something completely different).

A Look Towards 2017 (Starting with 2016)

December 30, 2016 / Tom

With this being the last post of the year (and I look towards 2017), it’s easy to want to fall into the standard retrospective post. And there will be some of that.

Initially, I planned to keep this relatively short, but that didn’t work out. But I tried to make it as much of a quick read as possible. That is, everything is in a bulleted list.

No, not that kind of bullet. (I’ve been playing too much Super Mario Run!)

Here’s what I’m going to cover:

There are a few things I want to mention regarding the past year. Nothing too deep or analytical, but just some of the highlights.
There are plans for 2017 that I’d like to share that may or may not be of interest to you that I’m going to share.
I have a few future endeavors around writing (on a different platform, no less!) that I will share.

Now that you know, you can decide whether or not you want to read more or not. So here goes.

Apps For 2017: Everything I’ve Installed

December 29, 2016 / Tom

During the holiday weekend, I spent some time going through some tools and software that I have installed and determining what I wanted to continue using in the coming year (and what I no longer needed).

Ultimately, it was about coming up with the apps for 2017.

I guess it’s part of the “fresh start in a new year” kind of thing. But the short of is that given the goals I’ve set for myself (and some upcoming things I’ll discuss), I did an audit and paired down my system to exactly what I needed.

Sure, we’re all going to be using different software. And I know many of us – myself included – have talked about the things we use at the WordPress level, but what about the tools we use each day?

WordPress Messages via Custom Code

December 28, 2016 / Tom

WordPress messages, especially custom messages, are becoming a bit of a sore spot for developers, bloggers, content managers and so on.

And with good reason: It seems like every plugin has this desire to display tooltips, messages, promotional content, and so on every single time it’s activated or updated.

WordPress Messages aren’t inherently bad, but they’re abused. Still, they serve a purpose and can (and arguably should) be used sparingly when the opportunity presents itself.

In a series I’ve been working on for Tuts+, I’ve been walking through the process of creating a custom system for implementing, displaying, and customizing WordPress messages.

And how to do so in a way that’s reusable across various projects.

Control Activation of a WooCommerce Extension

December 27, 2016 / Tom

When creating a WooCommerce extension, it’s important to consider that when the extension is activated, the user may not have WooCommerce installed or active.

And though an extension might activate, it won’t do anything. This can ultimately provide a level of confusion for the user.

WooCommerce Extension

In cases like this, I think it’s important to make sure an extension can only be activated if the core plugin is installed and active.