Author: Tom (Page 19 of 426)

On the Magnitude of WordPress

July 22, 2022 / Tom

I’ve been sitting on writing this particular post (it’s easy to say “a post like this” but this is actually the post so here we are 🙂) for some time. When I look back and see how much I used to write versus how much I’m publishing now (it’s been two months since my last post!), it’s weird.

The Magnitude of WordPress

About a week ago, Post Status published an article on Market Size and Market Shares: Thinking Bigger About the WordPress Economy. From what I’ve read in other newsletters and on others sites (I’m off social media for the summer ✌️) there’s mixed opinions on the data in the article.

None of those opinions have bearing on this post, though.

Instead, I think Post Status’ work makes a case for something many of us who work in the trenches with WordPress every day fail to consider: The stuff that we’re used to focusing on day-to-day is very different in terms of the magnitude of WordPress against the backdrop of the entire Internet.

That is to say, I’m not sure we can truly conceive just how far reaching WordPress is or how far reaching the impact decisions have regardless of whatever numbers of marketshare we read.

Or maybe that’s just me.

There’s More to WordPress Than FSE and Headless

May 19, 2022 / Tom

I don’t know if this is just me, but at the time of this writing I think that those who work with WordPress for a living – usually those described as being part of the “WordPress Community” – can be grouped into primarily two camps:

those who are focused on React for the Block Editor and Full-Site Editing (or FSE),
those who are focused on Headless WordPress specifically with technology like Next.js

That’s good because we know that we’re going to eventually have the Block Editor and FSE working together and we know the Headless ability of WordPress allows for an array of solutions that can be built using alternative front-end technologies.

Based on newsletters, tweets, blog posts, podcasts, and all of the other way media is shared for the application, though, I think we’re also forgetting the fact that WordPress is far more malleable than FSE and Next.js or, more simply put, locked into having React be the primary thing on which we focus.

Using GrumPHP, Composer 2 and PHP 7.2

April 29, 2022 / Tom

I’m very much a fan of GrumPHP which I’ve written extensively about in previously posts.

And as my last past alluded, I’ve been adapting a piece of software so it maximizes its availability across all platforms using PHP regardless of now new or how old the platform is (at least between PHP 7.2 and PHP 8).

Here’s the thing, though: If you’re working with an older version of PHP then you’re going to need an older version of GrumPHP and if you’re going to use an older version, you may need an older version of Composer.

Except maybe not!

Installing Old Versions of PHP With Homebrew

April 28, 2022 / Tom

I love the speed at which PHP is moving these days and how fast the new versions are, too 🙂 but that doesn’t mean the software on which we’re going is going to consistently be able to keep up with the fast release cycles.

And that’s okay. It is part of software development and it has been since before most of us were writing our first lines of code (let alone before we were even alive). Obviously, this means that those of us who work with PHP are likely going to need to work with different versions.

Sometimes we’ll be working with the latest, sometimes we’ll working with a version or a few versions older, and sometimes we may need to work with something that’s deprecated.

And this is usually the part where certain engineers start saying we should upgrade all the things and stay with the newest version of languages and frameworks. But that’s not how it works.

What does this have to do with PHP, though?

Assume for a moment that you’re working on a project that was written with 8.0 but you start rolling it out to a suite of products. Some are running on a server with 7.4, some are running 7.3, and some are running 7.2.

Is it easier to handle all of the other software already running on their servers or refactoring your code?

A bit of a rhetorical question.

The Idea of Boxes for Multiple WordPress Projects in One Installation

April 19, 2022 / Tom

When working with multiple WordPress installations – that is, having to manage an array of wp-content directories for whatever it is you’re working on, it seems that it’s more often not common to suggest creating a new WordPress installation for each project.

This isn’t something necessary assuming the nature of your work can operate off of a single database and the same version of WordPress. This may or may not work for multi-site projects; I don’t deal with them so don’t count on this as being applicable.