Software Engineering in WordPress, PHP, and Backend Development

Author: Tom (Page 349 of 427)

Quit Your Day Job – My Interview with The Pro Guide

For those of you who have followed this blog for sometime, you know that I moved from corporate employment to self-employment several years ago. During that time, I’ve had the pleasure of working on both contract projects as well as helping to co-found and build 8BIT.

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by The Pro Guide on what it looks like to quit your day job.

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WordPress Refactoring: Refining Plugin Functions

Whenever it comes to writing code – be it starting a new project or working with an existing system – there are a lot of developers that aim to write clean, maintainable code.

It’s a challenge for sure, but it’s not impossible. Even if you’re responsible for simply introducing a new function into an existing system, there’s an opportunity to leave the place a little better than you found it.

Granted, trying to refactor a larger system too much can have serious unintended consequences, so I don’t necessarily advocate doing that, but if you have the opportunity to break a one larger function into several smaller, more focused functions, then I think the opportunity should be taken.

I recently had a chance to do a bit of WordPress refactoring in the context of a commissioned plugin I am working on, and wanted to share the process that I followed for doing so.

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How I’ve Been Using GitHub For WP Audio Player

For many, the nicest thing about GitHub is not just the open source nature of the site, but the social aspects of the site. And although I admit I’m not particularly fond of following my friends on yet-another-network, I do enjoy following the status of projects and being able to monitor them.

This morning, I spent some time cleaning up the issues that have rolled in for WP Audio Player. Granted, there aren’t many, but I want to make sure that there’s some organized vision, scope, and plan for the project.

As such, I thought I’d share my method for scoping issues, requests, and bugs as well as how I organize milestones while using GitHub for WP Audio Player.

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Your WordPress Developer Meetup

This post is Part 2 in Leading a WordPress Meetup Group. Be sure to read Part 1, as well.

In my last post, I talked about some of the things that my local WordPress Developer meetup did last year and what we’re looking to do this year. As much as I dig meeting other local developers, my own group didn’t start until just last year.

I think they can be an invaluable resource for a lot of people and I think it’s pretty stellar to see people putting together their own groups. But if you’re new to the whole meetup scene, there’s a couple of things you need to get started.

Here, I’ll outline a few things that you can do to get your WordPress Developer Meetup started using stuff that we’ve found successful.

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