Author: Tom (Page 357 of 430)

Why I Terminate Blocks with Code Comments

January 17, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Thanks to a number of open source contributors, I released WP Audio Player 1.3 to the WordPress plugin repository. For one of the pull requests, I mentioned the following:

I always terminate my blocks with a closing comment. Please keep this in the file.

Travis Northcutt also asked me about it via Twitter:

@tommcfarlin curious about always terminating blocks with a closing comment – what's the rationale there?

— Travis Northcutt (@tnorthcutt) January 14, 2013

When it comes to writing code, I try hard to make sure that anything I do that’s outside of the normal coding conventions for a given platform has a rationale behind it.

Case in point: Ending my terminating braces with code comments.

Yet Another Blogging Podcast – Episode 3: Scheduling Your Time

January 17, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

In the last episode of Yet Another Blogging Podcast, I shared several tips for generating and collecting ideas. Specifically, I discussed using your opinions, learning from existing projects, various material that you read, watch, or hear, and/or inspiration that you garner from other sites.

As I’ve said in the previous episodes, this isn’t meant to be the definitive guide to blogging. It’s nothing more than practical advice that I’ve found that has worked for me, and that answers a number of questions that I’ve received in previous posts and/or emails.

So, with that said, hopefully there will be something useful in this episode.

WordPress Source Control: Commit Messages

January 16, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Although Automattic uses Subversion for source control both for its themes and plugins, I keep a number of my plugins in Git repositories during development.

Additionally, 8BIT uses GitHub to keep track of all of our source code, issues, milestones, and so on. When it’s time to make a commit, we usually sync the Git repository with its Subversion equivalent.

I’ve used a number of different source control systems during my career – some distributed, some not – and I’ve never been someone who fights a so-called religious war over which is better. Each source control system has its advantages, disadvantages, and each one fits differently within the context of how a person or a team operates.

Currently, I really like Git but a lot of that has to do with how GitHub, the site, fits into my workflow. Sure, there are things about Git that I like, but it’s GitHub’s organization that fits how I do work.

Anyway, overtime I figured I’d discuss my thoughts on WordPress source control. In this post: commit messages.

Streamlining My Application Workflows

January 15, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things that I’ve found myself doing more and more is experimenting with various tools, workflows, and actually not using certain applications just to see how it impacts my day-to-day.

Generally speaking, I’m the kind of developer who takes his time picking out his tools, creating his workflow, and then sticking with them – it takes a lot for me to change the way that I get my stuff done.

Case in point: I’ve written an entire post about the applications and tools that I use and I’ve rarely deviate from this.

But for the last two months or so, I’ve found myself beginning to experiment more and more with trying out certain tools, removing certain tools, or changing up my workflow to see how it impacts things (for better or worse).

Obviously, this is a bit of a less technical or a less WordPress-centric post, but I figure that I’m not the only one that does this. As such, I thought I’d share my application workflows, some of the things I’ve been experimenting with, the results, and even see what you guys are doing that’s similar.

Resolving The WordPress Multisite Redirect Loop

January 14, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Though I do the majority of my work using single site WordPress installs, there are a number of sites and projects in which I’ve used WordPress multisite and there’s a problem that I’ve experienced specifically with using WordPress multisite, subdomains, and shared hosting environments.

Specifically, the problem is this:

Install WordPress and activate multisite
Configure the installation to use subdomains (versus subdirectories)
Attempt to login and get stuck in a redirect loop

If you have a single instance of WordPress multisite installed on the same server, there’s no issue, but if you go beyond that then you normally hit a problem: a redirect loop.