Author: Tom (Page 379 of 428)

Use Markdown To Write Email (and Other Rich Text)

September 14, 2012 / Tom / 0 Comments

I dig markdown. Aside from the obvious uses on GitHub, I’ve also begun to use it in changelogs, README files, and general text-based notes that I take.

The other day, I sent the following tweet:

i wish i could write email in markdown

— Tom McFarlin (@tommcfarlin) September 5, 2012

And it’s true. If I could, I’d use markdown to write almost anything in place of using rich formatting. Once you get the hang of it, it’s faster, it has clean syntax that are even easy to follow if they aren’t styled, and it’s much simpler than, say, markup (hence, ahem, markdown).

Thanks to a tip from Bobby Shirley, it’s completely possible – and easy – markdown email.

Thinking Holistically About WordPress Plugins as Products – The User’s Experience

September 13, 2012 / Tom / 0 Comments

This is the final post in the Thinking Holistically About WordPress Plugins as Products series.

Throughout this series, I’ve been sharing my thoughts on what it means to think holistically about building WordPress plugins as products rather than simple utilities for blogging.

In the first post in the series, I defined this by saying:

Thinking holistically about WordPress Plugins is about the top-to-bottom, end-to-end experience that goes into building and that will go into using the product.

And in the second post, I shared my thoughts on the top-to-bottom – or the developer’s experience – of approaching WordPress plugin development as if we’re building quality products.

Similarly, I consider the end-to-end aspect of development to be epart of the WordPress Plugin user experience and that it’s arguably just as important as the developer’s experience.

So in attempt to continue thinking holistically about WordPress plugin development, here are my thoughts on the user’s experience – or the end-to-end aspects – of development.

How To Check If a User Has a Gravatar in WordPress

September 12, 2012 / Tom / 0 Comments

If you're experienced with programmatically creating pages, you may wish to skip down to the code.

I’ve been working on a project where the requirements simply stated this:

If the user has a gravatar, display it
Otherwise, give the user the ability to upload a profile image from their computer

The WordPress API offers the get_avatar function for easily retrieving a users gravatar image, but there’s currently no API function that allows us to check if a user has a gravatar.

WordPress Designer, Developer, or Blogger? Advertise!

September 11, 2012 / Tom

Comments are closed on this post. If you'd like to talk with me about advertising, email me!

One of the fun things about maintaining a blog and getting plugged into a community is that it affords opportunities both for yourself and others. In those opportunities, you also have the chance to experiment with a variety of options when it comes to monetizing your property.

For a couple of months now, I’ve been running advertisements on posts that are older than two weeks and that sit between the post content and the comment content. For example.

It’s proven relatively successful by my own internal metrics, so I wanted to continue the experiment. Today, I’m opening up more advertisements on the sidebar.

The short of it:

Sidebar 300×250: $20 / month for 30 days (which is currently filled)
2x Sidebar 125×125: $15 / month for 30 days

Thinking Holistically About WordPress Plugins as Products – The Developer’s Experience

September 11, 2012 / Tom / 0 Comments

This is the second post in the Thinking Holistically About WordPress Plugins as Products series.

In this series of posts, I’m sharing my thoughts on what it means to think holistically about WordPress plugins as products rather than simple extensions for WordPress.

In the first post in the series, I defined this by saying:

Thinking holistically about WordPress Plugins is about the top-to-bottom, end-to-end experience that goes into building and that will go into using the product.

I generally consider the top-to-bottom aspect of plugins as the developer’s experience and the end-to-end aspect of plugins as the user’s experience.

So while sharing specific tips for developing WordPress plugins, I’ll be looking at the developer’s experience – or the top-to-bottom approach – thinking holistically about WordPress plugins.