Author: Tom (Page 94 of 427)

Object-Oriented Programming in WordPress: Understanding Customer Expectations

November 16, 2017 / Tom / 0 Comments

As we continue to move forward discussion object-oriented programming in WordPress, it’s important that we make sure we’re not jumping ahead of ourselves when it comes to building a product for someone else.

So often, it’s easy to:

hear what a customer says,
build something out based on what we’ve heard,
turn it over to said customer.

But there is so much more to it than that. I’ve danced around it a bit in previous posts in this series; however, I want to start drilling down into what it means to hear:

What a customer says,
Develop a set of requirements,
And then create feedback loops around that.

Ultimately, we want to make sure the people for whom we’re working the and solutions that we’re building truly are solutions and not hindrances or hurdles over which they have to jump.

Furthermore, I don’t think it’s enough that a customer simply enjoys the experience of their final product, but with working with the one (or the ones) building the solution, as well.

With that said, let’s take a look at what it means to listen what they say and go from there.

Creating jQuery Components in WordPress

November 15, 2017 / Tom

Front-end development has taken great strides in the last couple of years (and continues to do so) through the use of CSS pre-processors and various JavaScript-based technologies.

The nice thing is that all of these can still be used within the context of WordPress development; however since WordPress includes jQuery, it’s not uncommon to continue writing jQuery-based JavaScript.

Despite all of the various technologies (such as Angular, Vue, React, etc.), I still find myself using jQuery and ES6 more than other libraries and tools.

For simple tasks, it’s not a problem, but when needing to, say, build more advanced components based on the response of an API call, using jQuery can be a bit heavy-handed.

This doesn’t mean it can’t be used – and I’ll walk through how to use it to build components momentarily dynamically – but I think it presents a case as to when other options are more variable.

But more on that at the end of the post.

WordPress-Related Resources: Staying Up to Date

November 14, 2017 / Tom / 0 Comments

Arguably, the single constant that exists in our industry is that we always have to keep learning. I consider that a good thing (who doesn’t?), though I know it also becomes a bit tedious (and even lead to burnout depending on the nature of your job).

And I’d say that’s true now more than ever, especially given the speed at which languages and related tools are moving.

But if you’re working in the world of WordPress and you’re looking to stay up to date with some of the technologies that are used to build products on top of it, I thought I’d share a list of some things I recommend checking out.

Object-Oriented Programming in WordPress: Analysis, Part 2

November 13, 2017 / Tom

In the first post in this series, I talked all about how I wanted to tackle about an introduction to object-oriented programming within the context of WordPress.

There are some great resources for object-oriented programming but they can use contrived examples, or they can move too quickly for those who are just looking to get started.

In an attempt to keep this from happening, I think talking about OOP in WordPress anchors us to a strong foundation and using practical examples will always be better than using generic examples that are difficult to translate to the domain in which we’re working.

For those who’ve yet to join or who haven’t caught up just yet, the first post hits on the following topics:

Object-Oriented Analysis,
Determining Must-Haves versus Nice-To-Haves,
And Why Is It Hard?

And that’s where this post is going to pick-up.

Object-Oriented Programming in WordPress: Analysis, Part 1

November 10, 2017 / Tom

When I first set out to offer memberships on this site, I knew the first thing I wanted to tackle was an introduction to object-oriented programming.

It’s something that seems to be interesting to most people who are working in WordPress, but there’s a problem that either turns a lot of people away or generates poor results:

Object-oriented programming can get complicated fast. And this gets demotivating.

Here’s what I mean: Say you’re a WordPress developer who starts to research object-oriented programming. It starts off talking about classes and constructors and functions, and all seems well.

But then it quickly gets into:

private and protected methods,
inheritance,
polymorphism,
design patterns,
dependency injection,
repositories,
and so on.

It snowballs, doesn’t it? And that’s not at all how it has to be, but it’s hard to find a proper introduction save for a few resources that are out there.

With all of that said (and serving as a backdrop for where I’m headed), I wanted to set out to create a series of content for those who:

are genuinely interested in object-oriented programming,
aren’t sure where to start,
want to grow their skills,
want to start from ground-zero without escalating into more complicated material too quickly.

And that’s what I’m starting today and in the first major serious planned for members. With all of that said, let’s get started.

Specifically, let’st started talking about object-oriented programming, analysis, design, and why she should start there.