Software Engineering in Web Development, Backend Services, and More

Author: Tom (Page 299 of 433)

An Easy Way To Check if a Post is Paginated

Out of the box, WordPress supports the ability to paginate individual posts.

For those who aren’t familiar, it means that you’re able to literally paginate your posts such that a post may consist of multiple pages (kind of a weird concept, huh?).

Paginated Posts

Some people may use this feature, some people may not; however, if you’re working on a theme, then you need to be prepared for this case and provide appropriate styling.

But the way if which you determine if a post is paginated or not can lead to a bit of cluttered code, so in order to keep the code as readable as possible (and to keep the logic separated from the template), here’s one way that you can check is a post is paginated.

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On Using Helper Files in WordPress

One of the things that I appreciate about certain application development frameworks is their approach to convention over configuration.

By that, I mean that they tend to take the approach of “a place for everything, and everything in its place” rather than setting a ton of variables in a set of different files to tell the core system where everything is located.

In my opinion, WordPress is a little bit of hybrid of this kind of stuff, but I tend to look at it in the direction of modifying configuration files.

After all, we have both `wp-config.php` and we have `functions.php`. Both of these serve their purpose, but `functions.php` can get specifically cluttered as a theme or an application grows.

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A Few Words About My Upcoming WordPress Theme

Several weeks ago, I wrote an article about a theme that I’ve been working on that I’ll be using in place of Standard once development has actually been completed.

When it comes to working on project, I think it’s fair to say that sometimes we start off talking about certain things that we’re working on, get sidetracked on something new, and never end up coming back to it.

So in an effort to not only keep myself accountable, but also to continue to give a bit more information on the theme, I thought I’d provide additional updates as to its status, potential release date, how I’ll be rolling it out, and all that fun stuff.

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Contributing To WordPress 3.8 (And Future Releases)

The first time that I talked about contributing to the WordPress codebase was just over a year ago today.

Time flies.

Granted, I’ve made other contributions that have been made to the WordPress project since then – updating Codex articles, working on the JavaScript standards, and so on – but I’ve not actually had a chance to commit code to the project until this release.

And like many of the people who are using WordPress 3.8 for the first time today, I’m more excited about this release than I have been for a long time.

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Software is Malleable (Or “A Case For a Strong 1.0”)

The longer I’ve worked in developer – and the more developers with whom I’ve interacted – the more I recognize that we all share a single trait:

We want to get our project right the first time.

Of course, this looks different depending on the type of project, but the point remains: We want to make sure that we nail not only the larger details, but the smaller details correct for the first release.

  • Have we detailed all the features?
  • Have we tested across every single device?
  • Did we select the right font size?
  • Should this feature automatically work, or should it have an element exposed to control it?
  • …and so on

And even though this is true, I think that deep down we know it’s not really possible to achieve.

In fact, I’ve talked numerous times about what I call a strong 1.0 which is essentially the idea that you focus very hard on an MVP – trim the features, nail down the specifics for the first release, and then iterate.

And when it comes to that compulsive need that we – as developers (and probably designers, as well) – have, this can go along way in helping to make a better product.

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