Author: Tom (Page 257 of 428)

Find Untagged Posts in WordPress

August 9, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

It’s common for people to categorize or tag their posts when using WordPress. This is true for the average blogger and for those who are using WordPress for its content management features.

For example, let’s say that you’re responsible for working on a site that has an RSVP custom post type and the post types can be tagged for certain types of events.

Tags may include:

Formal
Informal
Wedding
Birthday
Family
Friends
…and so on

Overtime, the database is going to increase in size and if RSVPs aren’t manually entered (that is, they are imported or maybe the database is even inherited and mismanaged), there’s a chance that some of the posts will not be tagged.

If you’re a developer, the odds are strong that you’re going to need to at least locate the untagged posts (and perhaps update them, as well).
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Steps for Soft Launching WordPress Products

August 8, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things with which I’ve just started experimenting is soft launches of product updates. That is, I’m providing updates to users of certain plugins through automatic updates in order to garner feedback – if any – prior to announcing it and launching it to everyone else.

For those involved in the software world, this is nothing new, but for those who are just getting into building products for others or who are looking for ways to test the proverbial waters of their projects without a public announcement for every single release, then this isn’t a bad idea.

Wikipedia defines a soft launch:

A soft launch is the release of a website, hotel, or other product or service to a limited audience. Soft-launching is a method for gathering data on a product’s usage and acceptance in the marketplace, before making it generally available as a hard launch or grand opening.

I think the idea of soft launches, open source, and the general WordPress economy is a really broad topic about which there’s a lot to discuss, but I thought I’d share some quick ideas based on my experience for those who are looking for a process on how to perform soft launches of their work with their existing customer base.

Code Quality, Disrespect, and Developers (Or “Do Not Be a Jerk”)

August 7, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

Yesterday, I received an email from someone who was kind enough to contact me about a security vulnerability that existed in one of my plugins (past tense because it’s been fixed :). This wasn’t so much an issue of code quality but potential security problem that could’ve been exploited by taking advantage of how PHP handles file uploads.

Generally speaking, this is one of the luxuries of open source – you’ve got other people who can spot vulnerabilities in your code and who can give you a heads up as to how to fix it. Of course, the flip side of this isn’t so nice – someone discovers a vulnerability, exploits it, and then you’re left dealing with whatever the fall out may come from that.

Lame.

Watch out for this guy. He’s after your code.

Anyway, the understood protocol with security vulnerabilities usually works like this:

The person who discovers the vulnerability contacts the developer(s) of the software to notify them of what they’ve found.
The author of the software has a chance to respond and/or patch the software.
Before the person who discovers the vulnerability opts to publicly share the story, the developers have 24-hours to provide a fix (or, at the very least, a statement about the problem).

This may play out in slightly different ways, but you get the idea. Naturally, you’ve got those who don’t follow this protocol at all, but that’s not really the focus of this particular post. Haters are going to hate and all that jazz.

Instead, one of the things that seems be happening more and more frequently is people calling other people out about the quality of their code via Twitter.

Should these situations be treated that much differently?

The Usability of WordPress Featured Images

August 6, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

Featured images (also referred to as “post thumbnails”) are nice features to include in WordPress themes, but there are times where I question their implementation.

I know, I know: talking about stuff like this can come off as frivolous, but I think that if you deeply care about what you’re working on, then evaluating the decisions – every one of them – that go into your product matters.

And since featured images are a decision that need to be made when working in theme development matter, then it’s worth evaluating their implementation.

Your Own Instance of the WordPress Media Uploader

August 5, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the nicest features of WordPress 3.5 was the introduction of a refresh of the WordPress Media Uploader.

For developers who aren’t familiar with the change, the short of it is a new version of the media uploader was built using Backbone.js and Underscore.js both of which are newer JavaScript libraries that introduce a different type of structure to creating JavaScript-intense web applications.

Sometimes, one of the challenges that comes with working with any new feature is the lack of documentation around how to take advantage of it. When that happens, you’re more or less left to dig into the core source code and/or the documentation for each of the specific libraries to learn how to use them.