Author: Tom (Page 165 of 428)

A Plugin for Testing Custom Post Types

May 3, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

When working on the latest version of Easier Excerpts, we added functionality so the plugin would work any post type that had support for excerpts.

Testing Custom Post Types

Because you can’t know that different custom post types that a person may have on their installation of WordPress, I wrote a small plugin that creates a generic custom post type that can be customized, used, and abused in your development environment.

This way, you can install the plugin, activate it, and have a custom post type with which you can test against should your project call for it.

A Problem Installing the Certificate With Let’s Encrypt

May 2, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

When it comes to making HTTPS available for everyone, the Let’s Encrypt project is great; however, if you’re running a shared host and you have an add-on domain, then there may be a problem with trying to install certificates for each of the sites.

Fortunately, many cPanel installations have an option for installing certificates by Let’s Encrypt.

A Problem Installing the Certificate With Let's Encrypt

But what happens when you try to install a certificate, and you see the following error message?

There was a problem installing the certificate. Please contact support for more information.

Depending on your set up, you may never see this message. But if you’re working within a shared hosting environment or you’re trying to configure a certificate for a set up with an add-on domain, then there’s a specific way to resolve this.

Shiny Updates for WordPress

April 29, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

One 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 into WordPress core. They allow us to evaluate functionality, give feedback, and determine if a given feature makes sense to become part of WordPress.

Anyway, over the last couple of years we’ve seen an increase in ways that WordPress provides updates. Sometimes these are automatic updates, other times they are updates that happen inline.

One of the potential iterations coming to plugin updates is in the form of Shiny Updates for WordPress.

Running a Business in Technology, Part 2

April 28, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Yesterday, 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 helps us; This helps our users

And that was the first part. The second half deals with how actually to keep up with technology, especially as it changes seemingly every single week.

This part of the talk focused on those who are managers of developers, those who are developers managed by someone else, and those who are self-employed.

Running a Business in Technology, Part 1

April 27, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Running 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 solutions versus how others may want the solution implemented.

Talking about running a business at WCSD. Photo Credit to @damiensam.

In a sense, we have to balance a level of pragmatism with what we’re delivering to the business and with how we may want to engineer the final solution. At the same time, we have to do this while keeping up with the changing landscape of technology.

At WordCamp San Diego, I spoke with Personal Growth – Running a Business and Keeping up with Changing Technology. In this post and the one following, I’ll be discussing some of the points outlined in that presentation.