Author: Tom (Page 299 of 429)

What’s After Standard?

November 19, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Since Standard is no longer is active development and support is currently being managed by the stellar guys at WooThemes, a couple of people have asked me what my preferred theme and/or my preferred theme shop is.

There are several amazing theme companies out there. I don’t have a favorite, but you likely already know the good ones by name because they are the ones who are most currently the most prominent.

If you were to select a theme from one of those companies, then you’d be good to go.

That said, as much as I’ve enjoyed building, using, and sharing Standard, and as much as I love supporting other WordPress companies (heck, I bought a theme from one of them just yesterday), I still see my blog as a very personal property – as many do – and since I clearly love building things for WordPress, I’m in the process of building a theme that will serve as the next iteration of this blog.
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Moving Away From RSS? Subscribe By Email!

November 19, 2013 / Tom

I think that the way in which we subscribe to our favorite sites is changing – that is to say that although I think RSS is here to stay and there are some really good apps available for it, not everyone is using that particular format as much as they once did.

It’s evident that some people are now relying more on services like Twitter, Pocket, and even email digests of weekly news.

And though I considered doing that for this site (and it was split about 50/50), I ultimately decided it would be easier just give readers the option to opt-in by email.

How To Setup a Custom Grunt Task For WordPress

November 18, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Now that WordPress 3.8 is in development, now is a good time to look into contributing a patch.

But seriously, if you’re looking into contributing to the codebase, then it’s important to be familiar with two things:

Where to grab the source code for the current release
How to use Grunt on your local machine to kick off the build process

Once you’ve gotten those two things setup, you can actually setup customized Grunt tasks (via your own options) that will help test the work that you’re doing without kicking off the entire process, a part of the process, or testing individual files.

The Paralyzing Fear of Committing To Open Source Code

November 15, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things that I think scares people off from committing to open source projects is the fear of “I don’t know where to start.”

Sure, there are other reasons as well:

“I can’t make the IRC/chat/AOL/whatever meetings.”
“I don’t understand half of what the others are talking about.”
“I only know how to work with [any given language].”
“I don’t think that I have enough experience.”
…and so on.

Honestly, you can rationalize your way out of anything that you’re afraid to do with a reason for which most people can’t fault you.

But if you’re even mildly interested in committing to an open source project – or, more specifically – helping out with WordPress, then I highly urge you do so.

Setting Up Grunt For WordPress

November 14, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

With the WordPress 3.8 development cycle underway, I thought it might be worth sharing how you can go about setting up Grunt for WordPress development on your local machine.

The reason for this is because WordPress is now using Grunt, JSHint, and a number of other utilities to help automate tasks, and if you’re looking to contribute to certain parts (not all, mind you) core, then these are the tools that you’re going to need – especially if you’re working on any tickets under the Build Tools component.