Author: Tom (Page 381 of 427)

Don’t Feed The Trolls (or What I’ve Learned About Negativity on The Internet)

September 3, 2012 / Tom / 0 Comments

Last week, I commented on a blog post on the Mika Epstein’s blog – also known (or perhaps more commonly known) as @Ipstenu – on Handling Negatives.

In the article, Mika talks about the fun that comes with developing plugins, themes, and generally any product where customers can share their thoughts with you. And if it isn’t obvious by the title, she covers how to handle negative feedback.

It was a good read and fun discussion and it definitely rings true for anyone who is an open source developer, but I think that it rings true for anyone who’s an aspiring developer, photographer, videographer, blogger, and so on.

So, I thought I’d share my thoughts on the pervasive negativity on the Internet and how it’s hit home for me.

How To Get Started with WordPress Theme Development

August 31, 2012 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the questions that I’m often asked from developers is how to get started with WordPress theme development. Sure, there are great resources like the Theme Development guide, but if you’re looking to dive headfirst into working with an existing theme, your options are limited.

At least, that used to be the case.

Yes, you can tinker around with Twentyten, Twentyeleven, or another theme, but sometimes the best place to learn is to watch someone develop a theme from the ground up. Thanks to GitHub, being able to do this is easier than ever.

Brian Krogsgard is currently in the process of building a theme and he’s made his work available on GitHub.

How I Organize My Files When Developing WordPress Plugins

August 30, 2012 / Tom / 0 Comments

So much of software development consists of actually maintaining projects after they’ve been released. Unfortunately, that’s where a lot of time is actually spent refactoring that didn’t necessarily have to occur if more planning had been done from the outset of the project.

Sure – some teams get this right, some teams don’t, and sometimes it’s just the nature of bad luck. After all, the best we can do is try to make the smartest decisions possible given the initial requirements.

When it comes to building plugins, there’s a specific way that I organize my WordPress plugin files that I’ve found to make bug fixes, future updates, and overall development much easier as a the lifetime of a plugin increases.

Professional WordPress Development

August 30, 2012 / Tom / 0 Comments

Professional WordPress Development is a topic that’s something I obviously discuss quite a bit here – I believe that WordPress has matured to a point where its potential for building not only blogs, websites, or content-managed sites has grown to where it’s a viable platform for building applications.

In order to share my thoughts on this with a wider audience, I’m currently running a series on Envato that’s all about professional WordPress Development.

How To Add Custom User Meta During Registration

August 29, 2012 / Tom / 0 Comments

I’m currently working on an application that requires users to register before logging into the site. The application is based on WordPress, but the registration process is using a custom template and requires some extra information.

As an example, I thought I’d share how I’m programmatically creating a user during the registration process, adding extra information to the user’s profile, and then displaying it in the user management dashboard.