Author: Tom (Page 348 of 429)

Support Doesn’t Scale (or “Avoid Free WordPress Support”)

February 26, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Recently, I’ve been talking quite a bit about profiting from open source software, strategies for supporting WordPress plugins, and debating just how much to support to offer.

To say that I’ve been exploring business models and support offerings for my plugins would be a bit of an understatement. Clearly, this has been something that’s been on my mind for the last few months.

The thing is, this won’t be the first time that I’ve ventured into this territory. In fact, I’ve done this for two plugins – WP Social Icons and Author Admin – that I retired some time ago. Ultimately, I want to make sure that if I do this again, I do this right.

But while I’m still working on the logistics of everything, I thought it’d be worth sharing why I’m even doing this.

Quite simply: Support doesn’t scale.

Introduction To WordPress Theme Development

February 25, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking to my local WordPress Developer Meetup group on an introduction to WordPress theme development.

Ultimately, the goal was to give a foundational talk so that more advanced topics in theme development could be shared throughout the rest of the year all of which I’d love to continue to share here, should it pan out. Continue reading

A Look at The UI Design Process in WordPress Plugins

February 22, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

I’m no designer. I don’t aspire to be one, nor do I claim to be one that; however, I am interested in the topic and enjoy seeing the work that others do as well as following blogs, articles, books, etc. on the topic.

Though user interface design is a bit of a different field, it hits much closer to home for me than other types of design. After all, a user interface is basically the face of the code that we’re writing.

And if we’re not careful, then we’re going to continue perpetuating the stereotype that developers do not care about design.

I’ve spoken previously about sharing case studies on WordPress projects, and though I don’t have a full project to share right now, I thought it might be fun to look at some I’ve been working on and the evolution of a particular user interface that evolved from a first pass, to discussion, then from mockup, to implementation.

Object-Oriented WordPress Plugin Development

February 21, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

When it comes to writing plugins – specifically those that are object-oriented in nature – many of us do so because we’re obviously fans of writing object-oriented code.

Personally, I’m a fan of it because it helps to separate the responsibilities and concerns of a requirement into its own logical unit.

Sure, this can be done with several function files as well, but I come from an object-oriented background, so when I approach a problem, I automatically begin thinking in terms of classes and their relationship to one another.

And I know that other developers do the same.

The thing is, I think some of us – myself included – have gotten lazy or we only half-bake our object-oriented-based plugins. That is to say that we may be using classes in writing our plugins, but we don’t do such a good job of taking advantage of other object-oriented principles and features.

Support Doesn’t Scale (or “Avoid Free WordPress Support”)

Introduction To WordPress Theme Development

A Look at The UI Design Process in WordPress Plugins

Object-Oriented WordPress Plugin Development

Tipsy Social Icons Now on GitHub