Software Engineering in WordPress, PHP, and Backend Development

Author: Tom (Page 351 of 427)

Save Custom Post Meta – Revisited, Refactored, Refined.

About a month ago, I shared a post that discussed the code that’s required to save custom post meta data. Generally speaking, this is a lot of boilerplate that’s required to make sure that the data being saved is permitted and that the author has permissions to do so.

Of course, depending on the nature of your project, the code will vary a little, but for the majority of the cases, it’s all the same.

But thanks to several commenters and contributors, the code has been completely refactored, and I’ve actually been using it in a recent project.

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Startbox WordPress and View Page Templates

One of the things that I love about the open source community is not only how others can contribute to your work to create a better product, but how your work can be folded into someone else’s work.

Last week, Brian Richards (who works on Startbox WordPress) tweeted me:

And I was more than happy to oblige.

This whole short exchange brought up several aspects of open source software that I really appreciate.

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Apps or Programs?

As with practically anyone who considers themselves a digital native, I dig using Twitter. One of the things I love the most is seeing various people’s opinions on many things (not everything, but I digress), especially when it’s related to an interest of my own.

Last week, Baratunde tweeted the following:

https://twitter.com/baratunde/status/296319290263629825

Though I respect the opinion, and definitely get where he’s coming from – probably more than I’m going to convey in this post – I disagree with the sentiment.

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Finding Functions in WordPress (Those Not in The API)

As significant as the WordPress API is in building plugins, themes, and applications, there are often times where we may find ourselves needing to write custom functions to achieve something that we know WordPress already does.

Case in point: With Page Template Dashboard, I wanted to be able to show the name of the template rather than the filename. I knew WordPress was doing it, but I couldn’t find an actual API function for it.

So what’s the best thing to do in this particular situation?

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Static For iPhone – Giveaway Results

Last week, I did a short review of Static for iPhone. Though you can read the entire review on the post itself, I think it’s worth reiterating a couple of points.

First, here’s Static’s claim:

Static is the easiest way to view the most important statistics from Twitter, Google Analytics, Instagram, Dribbble, and Github.

Secondly, I think that the app stays true to its vision. The user interface is intuitive, looks good, and the developers have released two small updates since my last review.

With that said, here are the winners (completely chosen at random):

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