Author: Tom (Page 160 of 428)

It’s Not a Sad State of Web Development

June 7, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Like many of you, I use Pocket to file the articles I want to read or bookmark for future reference. Sometimes, I get around to reading them; other times, I never actually come back to them. The latter is a perpetual problem I have to get a handle on, but I digress.

Pocket

For the most part, I try to stick to a single topic of WordPress-related development on this blog. But there are times where I see things tangentially related as it comes to our industry (or even just our part of the industry).

Regarding Pocket, the whole reason I bring this up is that I was just spending time in my account preparing to declare bankruptcy in my set of articles. The goal was to clear out everything that was in there (isn’t that what bankruptcy is?), but I found some other articles that I still want to have available to read and to archive for reference.

But in deleting all of the articles that I found, I couldn’t help but notice a pattern of disappointing article titles and subject matter.

An Embarrassing First Release

June 6, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

I’ve talked before about my idea of shipping a “strong 1.0” when it comes to working on projects for yourself or other people but what if that version is an embarrassing first release?

There’s a quote that many of us are familiar with (and that I’ve referenced here before, too):

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, then you’ve launched too late.

It’s attributed to Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn.

I think it’s something that’s good to remember, but sometimes I wonder if we use it as a crutch when shipping something and as a rationalization to cut corners.

Timedropper – A jQuery Time Plugin

June 3, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

There’s some programmer joke that says there are two things hard in computer science: naming things and time zones. On second thought, maybe that’s not the joke at all (because it sounds too true to be funny).

Whatever. The point of this post isn’t to try to make jokes, but to share something useful for working with time zones in the context of JavaScript.

Specifically, I’m talking about Timedropper. It’s a cool jQuery time plugin designed to make it easy for you to implement options into your web application that gives users an intuitive way to work with time.

Postmatic for WordPress Comments (and So Much More!)

June 2, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

In November 2014, I stumbled across Postmatic which aimed to make WordPress comments a bit easier to manage (for those who end up getting any form of comments on your blog).

Postmatic for WordPress Comments

Since then, I’ve written several posts about the service. These articles span from 2014 up through the middle of last year:

And to this day, I’m still a fan. Jason, Dylan, and the rest of the team (along with some help from guys like Carl and Josh) have continued to put together an amazing service that makes responding to comments that much easier.

I know: This first little bit sounds a little bit like a sales pitch, and that isn’t my style, so I’ll refrain from talking about the plugin and the service from that angle anymore.

But I will say that I’ve been using Postmatic since the beginning and following up with comments has always been much more pleasant of an experience when I can do it from my inbox.

As the product keeps maturing, more and more useful features are being built into it.

Proposed WordPress Employee Benefits

June 1, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Though I don’t run a big WordPress agency or a large WordPress shop or anything like that, I often wonder what would a WordPress employee benefits package look like for those who do run those types of shop.

I’m not talking about the standard run-of-the-mill benefits like insurance, retirement, paternity, vacation, maternity leave, paternity leave, etc. I mean, those are all great – don’t get me wrong – but I’m talking about the kinds of things that businesses could offer to their employees that would help them invest in themselves and their career.

Not only would this benefit the employees, but it could help the company, as well.