Author: Tom (Page 258 of 428)

Educate Your Users in Open Source Software

August 4, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things that I’m working hard to have released by the end of the month is the latest version of the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate.

The latest version has been in development for quite a while now (a lot has happened offline so, you know, that’s how it goes).

The last time that I really spent any time talking about this project was in November 2013. A lot has changed since then. Initially, I was planning on a minor upgrade with some of the following features:

Releasing the version has part of the 2.x.x versioning
Including a class specifically for administrative functionality
Fixing issues with symbolic links and textdomains
Including more TODO’s for users to find what needs to be changed
…and so on.

But when I got started on the next version of the Boilerplate, a lot of things changed. The short of it is that it’s being completely re-written from the ground up and the code and documentation are being split into to separate things for the sake of user education.

I’ll spend more time talking about the Boilerplate in a future, but one of the things that I wanted to share that’s related to running a project like the Boilerplate has to do with open source, contributions, lack of a vision, and how this can negatively impact your project and your users.

Start Nitpicking Your Source Code (Or Someone Else Will)

August 2, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

Earlier this week, a fellow WordPress programmer whom I respect (and who is doing amazing things with his Aesop Story Engine) shared the following tweet:

cheers to the nitpickers.

because it matters what’s on the side you don’t see.

— Nick Haskins (@nphaskins) July 31, 2014

Truth be told, I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not. This isn’t his fault, of course, but my own ability to discerns, y’know, tweets. So I did what anyone would do in that situation: I asked him if he was being sarcastic or not to which he replied:

nope no sarcasm there. the nitpickers provide amazing value

And he’s right.

Someone is going to be nitpicking your source code.

This post is not about my opinions or observations as to how we tear one another down online under the guise of trying to help one another (that’s another post for another time), but it’s about the idea for which I completely agree (and that’s mentioned in the tweet above):

because it matters what’s on the side you don’t see.

Because I believe it does, and because I think that a number of people are sloppy. There’s a just get it working mindset, and I’d love to see more people take pride in their work and stop shipping code that has the same amount of details “on the side you don’t see” as on the side that you do see.

Steps to Becoming a World Class Programmer (In a Lifetime)

August 1, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

One tensions that I’m not sure every goes away for programmers is that of “Am I learning enough?” If it does, I’d like to know when so I can prepare myself :).

Here’s the thing: Technology, and programming specifically, move really fast and there’s a lot not only to keep up with, but to be aware of on a week-to-week basis. Notice that I did not say that there’s a lot of to learn on a week-to-week basis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52UxIgsC_0g

Very, very early in my career I used to feel as if I needed to keep up with every single new programming language and/or related technology in the software world as it releases.

Talk about a fools errand.

Even as I began working with what is now known as Pressware, I was focusing both on Ruby on Rails and WordPress at the same time. Then something changed: I dropped Ruby on Rails (not because I dislike it – critiques aside, I actually am a big fan of Ruby and what the Rails framework offers), but because I began to think:

“If I dedicated my time to one area rather than splitting it into two areas, could I be a better asset to those whom I’m tying to serve?”

But this question can be generalized even further because our culture releases tons of new stuff every single day, and there’s an implied level of “you should learn this” that comes along with it.

And if there’s not, then either I’m misunderstanding the plethora of comments, blog posts, and other pressures induced by the Internet.

Learn to Build an Online Store With WordPress

July 31, 2014 / Tom

Comments are closed on this post. If you have a question, comment, or other feedback, then please contact me.

Just a little over a month ago, I shared a post in which I attempted to gauge interest about those who are looking for how to build an online store using WordPress.

In the post, I distilled it down to this:

I’m going to walk you through the process of what I did to launch The Pressware Shop and help you avoid the pitfalls that I encountered along the way.

Obviously, this is something that’s a bit niche in that it deals with WordPress and it’s talking about how to sell digital products using the platform; however, I received enough feedback to move forward with the event.

Stop Including Custom CSS in WordPress

July 30, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things that I think many, many young (that is: inexperienced) theme developers do is ship a custom.css file in WordPress. Years ago, I made the mistake so I’m just as guilty as the next person.

Unfortunately, this is something that’s still happening today – we need to stop including custom CSS in WordPress and use the native facilities to take advantage of the same functionality we’re trying to achieve with this particular file.

Here’s the thing: Normally I wouldn’t bother talking about something like this because the Codex does such a good job of outlining the proper way to introduce customizations into themes, but I recently received a comment (that I’ll paraphrase) in which I was told that:

In the real world not everyone uses child themes.

Odds are, many of us have heard the old cliché that:

The difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference.

And when you’re talking about something like a complex algorithm for traversing, say, the shortest path across a graph over a large network, or when we’re talking about something like properly handling memory in embedded systems, talking about theory and the real world makes sense.

That is, all of those cases are important and are worthy of optimization, but we’re talking about a single CSS file.

We’re not talking about a complex system.

And it concerns me that those who are contributing to the WordPress economy through products aren’t taking the built-in features of the application seriously. It’s seen as some bit of impracticality that they don’t want to pursue.

But this introduces it’s own set of challenges that negatively affect theme development from both a developer and a customer standpoint.