Author: Tom (Page 142 of 428)

Software Development Soapboxes: The Industry’s Ego

October 11, 2016 / Tom

Software development soapboxes is a term that I use to describe whenever anyone tries to posit themselves as a superior developer because they use different tools than you.

Why, yes, my pipe is superior. Please hush and allow me to explain why.

For example, I just talked about my return to MAMP. It’s an option that we have, clearly.

Vagrant, Trellis, VVV, and other options are popular when it comes to building advanced solutions on WordPress. So when I wrote about my move back to MAMP, I expected some pushback or some argument(s), though I didn’t get any.

Perhaps no one cares, perhaps I’m writing into a void, perhaps everyone agrees with me (which is likely the case 😇), or perhaps it’s not worth talking about it.

I’m kidding, of course. Instead, I did receive one tweet that resulted in a great conversation. And I mean that non-sarcastically.

@fgacv asked:

have you tried vagrant? or the trellis box?

— The Notorious G.A.C. (@fgacv) October 10, 2016

And I think it’s a fair question especially because anyone who writes software in WordPress is likely to come across these (among many other) solutions, possibly evaluate them, and then find the one they like most.

MAMP 4 For WordPress Development

October 10, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

MAMP 4 was released recently, though, at the time, I was busy experimenting with Pressmatic. I think Pressmatic is a strong piece of software, though, for my day-to-day workflow, it doesn’t fully suit my needs.

So I returned to MAMP, and I’ve been thoroughly pleased with MAMP 4.

MAMP 4 Homepage

No, it doesn’t use a lot of the same technology some other applications do (such as virtual machines), but I’ve not found that to hinder the work I’m doing.

Custom Admin Pages in WordPress

October 7, 2016 / Tom

Custom admin pages in WordPress are one of those things that aren’t often needed if you’re using something like the Settings API, the add_menu_page function, or a similar API function.

And in many, if not most, cases all of the above suffice; however, there are times where you need more control over what’s displayed to the user, how the input is handled once it’s submitted, and then what’s returned to the user after the data has been saved to the database.

In those cases, it’s helpful to know how to write custom admin pages in WordPress and all that comes with it – from sanitization, custom error messages, validation, and page redirection.

Why You Should Learn Your Debugger

October 6, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

I’ve talked a bit about debugging (using an actual debugger) in a few posts, but I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about the challenges that come with debugging.

MacGDBp is one of the available debuggers.

First, in this context, debugging refers to using an actual piece of software versus various language features. Secondly, using a debugger has its learning curve just like any other piece of software.

And in this tweet, Julia Evans captures it perfectly:

https://twitter.com/b0rk/status/768300858450640896

Not bad, right?

Using WordPress Hooks Differently

October 5, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Using WordPress hooks is one of those topics that you hang around any Slack channel forum, email thread, Twitter conversation, or whatever and you’ll find that understanding them and using them correctly is key to working with the application.

Using WordPress Hooks

But if there’s one thing that I get obsessive about, is using the right hook (as opposed to the left hook 🙃).

Sure, that reads weird, but look at it this way:

each hook offers a variety of parts of the application available at a given time,
and each hook is given a specific name.

So it would stand to reason that we try to hook our functions into the hook that’s most closely aligned and appropriately named for our particular requirement, right?