Author: Tom (Page 316 of 429)

The Danger of Third Party APIs

August 15, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Generally speaking, the majority of the work that I do with third party APIs is done so in the context of WordPress, but the truth is that what I’m about to say is subject to whatever platform you’re work with – be it .NET, Rails, COBOL, or whatever you or your dad maybe using :).

But a feature in Standard recently quit working because of an underlying change in a third party API. Now, to our credit, we normally do a good job with following blogs and release notes when an API is going to change.

In this case, there was no documentation on any of this – something just stopped working, so we needed to dig in and fix it. The fix is under testing and will be released later, but the point that I’m trying to make is that there is always a danger in working with third party APIs.

WordPress Directories: inc and lib

August 14, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

In the previous post, I spoke briefly about WordPress directories. Specifically, I talked about placing files in an `inc` directory whenever building a theme. This lead to a comment by Richard that I thought was worth covering here:

In the theme folder, sometimes I see people use “lib” to include theme assets and other times I see them use “inc”, as you’ve done here. Is there a reason for one vs the other?

I gave a short response in the comments, but thought that this warranted a longer form explanation to share my perspective, and to hear what you guys have to say, as well.

The WordPress Theme Customizer: Adding a New Setting To An Existing Section

August 13, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Since the release of the WordPress Theme Customizer, my team and I have been more and more interested in using it as a way for users to make changes to the appearance of their theme without the use of the dashboard.

As powerful as the dashboard is, the “Appearance” section creates a disconnect between what the user toggles (or selects, or inputs, etc), and what they see on the front end.

The Theme Customizer mitigates that issue.

The thing is, there are a few nuances that come with implementing it in your theme. Though I’m not trying to cover everything here, the point of this post is show how you can introduce a new setting into an existing section.

Not Everything Can Be a WordPress Plugin

August 12, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things that I – and most developers, designers, and implementors – love about WordPress is how easy to is to implement new functionality through the use of plugins.

Yes, I’ve shared at length my thoughts on the plugin economy and it’s not coming from a point of disdain. Of course not. It’s coming from a place of appreciating something, wanting to see it being made better, and simply sharing gaps in experience.

But a second thing that I’ve begun to notice is that people want plugins for everything – even things that I believe should remain core business logic.

Featured on 27 Good Things

August 9, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

This week, I had the pleasure to be interviewed by Mike Dariano of 27 Good Things for nine different things that I recommend people read, watch, and/or use.