Author: Tom (Page 219 of 428)

An Interface For The WordPress Settings API

April 21, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

This is the first post in a series on An Object-Oriented Approach To The WordPress Settings API.

One of the things that the WordPress Settings API has going for it is that it makes it possible to introduce menus, pages, input elements, and so on into the WordPress dashboard that have a native look and feel.

But if you’ve never dug into the API before, it can be really daunting. It’s not really intuitive, there are some confusing parameters, there is some difficult terminology, and the way in which you go about introducing various menus, sub-menus, pages, sections, settings, and so on can get confusing especially if it’s your first time around the API.

A couple of years ago I wrote a guide to the WordPress Settings API and it’s held up pretty well, but the more we use certain aspects of a language or API, the more we learn, right? At least, that’s been my experience.

And in this series of posts, I’m going to cover exactly that.

Product Diversity in WordPress is Good

April 20, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

This is something that’s probably true of almost any industry, but when you read enough WordPress-based tweets, blogs, and so on, you start to notice a pattern:

Someone releases a project – it could be a theme, it could be a plugin, it could be a site that’s aiming to cover some aspect of anything involving WordPress – it doesn’t really matter what type.
Someone comes along makes a comment like “Why do we need [this] when we already have [that]?”

Maybe I’m missing something, but I do not get that mentality. At all.

Self-Imposed Pressure in Programming

April 17, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

The older we get or the more experienced we get in the field in which we work, the more knowledge and wisdom we [hopefully] accumulate. During any given work day, one of the things that I occasionally find myself thinking about is:

If I could go back and tell myself [about a certain aspect of programming] years ago, then it would go something like [this].

For example:

If I could go back and tell myself about programming when I first started, I’d tell myself so slow down.

But what does that even mean?

When Your WordPress Developer Fails

April 16, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

When drafting blog posts, I try not to single out particular tweets or comments unless they’re helpful or resourceful.

There are times, though, thoughts are shared either via tweets, emails, and/or blog comments that may be intended to be critical, but end up being really useful and end up proving exactly what we’ve been discussing all along.

Are You A WordPress Expert? (I’m Not, But I Want To Be)

April 15, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

Yesterday, I shared some thoughts on what I consider to be some qualifications to be a WordPress developer. The list and the post itself were by no means exhaustive, though I appreciated a lot of the comments and emails I received – there were some really good thoughts that came from the readership.

I think it’s an important to talk about.

But one thing I did want to make clear is that I don’t necessarily think that what I’ve written are the definitive things that one should consider in order to be a WordPress expert. We’ve all got different barometers and what not for what we consider to be experts – sometimes we say that they are just people who know more than we do; other times, we have more strict criteria.

To that end, although I’ve shared some of the things that I believe a WordPress developer should know, I wouldn’t consider myself an expert WordPress developer.

I know where I am, I know where I’ve been, I know where I want to be. And that’s what I use to gauge my personal level of experience.