Author: Tom (Page 333 of 429)

How To Build a WordPress Plugin – Frequently Asked Questions

May 23, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

In about a week, I’m going to be hosting the first course in my How To Build a WordPress Plugin live workshop over on Envato. I covered the details in a previous post. Since the post has gone live, I’ve received a number of emails, tweets, and comments about the course so I wanted provide somewhat of a Building a WordPress Plugin FAQ.

For the record, this page will be a growing record of questions that I’ve received about the course so bookmark it, check it out, and feel free to leave comments.

I’ll do what I can to keep this page as current as possible. Continue reading

Introducing Markdown Code For WordPress

May 22, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

For those who have been reading this blog for sometime, you know that I’m a fan of using lines of code in my posts.

I’m not referring to the larger code block (I use SyntaxHighlighter Evolved for that), but for code that exists in a single line much like this. The thing is, when I’m drafting my posts, I often place those strings in backticks – `like this` – and then go through and replace them code tags prior to publishing the post.

Tedious, right?

And I love Markdown as much as the developer, but I’m not ready to fully abandon the WordPress editor for it. Instead, I’d rather have just a few tags supported that I frequently use and be able to have them replaced automatically.

So I wrote a really simple plugin for doing just that: Markdown Code For WordPress.

Defining a Custom WordPress Menu Hook

May 21, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

When it comes to defining custom option pages, theme pages, menu pages, and submenu pages, the provided API makes this trivially easy; however, one of the less used aspects of these functions is the ability to define a custom WordPress menu hook.

For example, in a recent project I needed to do exactly that when adding a submenu to the WordPress Tools menu so I thought I’d share my process for doing exactly this.

Note that if you’re looking to add a submenu to a different WordPress menu, then there are a couple of options that are available. First and foremost, the most common option is to use add_submenu_page and then use tools.php as the parent slug as specified in the Codex.

But if you happen to be working with the Tools menu, then the add_management_page function is your best bet because it’s designed for exactly that.

So for this article, that’s what I’ll be using.

My Thoughts on Finding The Next Steve Jobs

May 20, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Throughout the year, 8BIT tries to read through several books in order to find the things that can help make us a better team. This past past weekend, I read through Finding The Next Steve Jobs as it was the book that was next in our line-up.

At the end of this post, I’ll share all of the parts that I highlighted while reading the book, but I first want to share my personal takeaways from the material in the book.

Generally speaking, I enjoyed it. It reminded me a lot of Rework in which the book is primarily made up of a number of very small chapters each of which has a single point that it attempts to make. Of course, they’re different books with different tones and it’s not really fair to compare them.

So with that said, I thought I’d go ahead and share some of my personal take aways from the book.

My Day-To-Day: Blog Every Day

May 17, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

In recent months, I’ve received a few tweets, questions, and emails asking my strategy for how I blog every day. The truth is that I hesitate to answer this question because I think that so much of being able to do so has to do with each of our personalities.

For example, some of the most creative people I know can’t stand schedules, timelines, certain forms of organization, and what not – simply put, they find inspiration in the chaos.

This isn’t to say that I consider myself creative in the sense that many artists and designers are, but I think that we all have some form of creativity within us, but I digress on this point for now.

On the other hand, I’m one of those that tends to be more rigid with my time management. I try to have guardrails setup for social media, I like making lists, I think there’s something to be said about writing every day even if it’s not blogging, and I tend to “go dark” when I really need to focus on a certain task (and this is true both online and offline – just ask my wife!).

But if I had to generalize some tips on how to blog every day regardless of your personality, it would boil down to the following three points.