Tom McFarlin

Software Engineering in WordPress, PHP, and Backend Development

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Remote Requests with wp_remote_get

If you’re read any of my previous posts on retrieving remote files, then you know that old habits die hard as I often use file_get_contents rather than wp_remote_get.

So, as one does when blogging, I thought it would be helpful to share a simple example of how to use wp_remote_get in your day-to-day work.

wp_remote_get in the WordPress Developer Resources

The post below is merely a snippet of how to use it. That is, it won’t show how to designed, say, a class around it or a UI that allows users to upload a file. But this should be enough to get things started.

And I’ll include how to take the API documentation around it and understand how to leverage it when using a function like this.

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Programmers Should Blog (Including You)

I’ve long held the belief that programmers should blog (if they feel so inclined, of course).

Granted, I write about how to do things programmatically using WordPress, and I plan to get back to doing that later this week with the new year back in full swing. But I stumbled across a post on The Practical Developer this morning that I couldn’t help but offer my thoughts on it.

The post, Untold Benefits of a Software Blog, is something that’s relevant to any of us in the programming space but I share it primarily for those of us in the WordPress space. (After all, that’s where I’m focused, right?)

Programmers Should Blog

And I share it because I thought I’d share a bit about what the blog has afforded me over the last few years of writing and sharing content on this site.

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WordPress Plugins Are Adopted: Thank You!

A couple of days ago, I shared that I was looking to put some of my plugins up for adoption. I’ll go into a bit more details as to why later in this post, but I’m happy to say the WordPress plugins are adopted.

It’s funny to talk about little side projects as if they are your pets – then again, we do have the phrase “pet projects” so I suppose it makes sense in this context. ‍♂️

At any rate, as I said, they’ve all been adopted, and I couldn’t be more excited as to where they are going. Though it would have been fine for each one to go to a different developer, they’re all going to fall under Philip Arthur Moore’s ownership.

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Writing Better Code For WordPress-Based Projects

I don’t remember exactly when I first stumbled across Joel Spolsky’s blog Joel on Software, but it was at some point late in high school.

I didn’t know enough about the whole software development process to get a lot of what he was talking about really, but I enjoyed his writing style, and I enjoyed what he had to say.

Writing Better Code

In fact, I was such a fan that when I graduated, I went on to buy his books (which were collections of the articles on his site) and read them cover-to-cover. I kept copies of them on my desk at work, and I used one of his books – Smart and Gets Things Done – when I was a team lead.

The articles that stuck out the most to me, though, were those that were about writing better code. Here’s the thing, though: Those articles included nothing about actually writing code.

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WordPress Plugin Adoption: Would You Like One?

All of these plugins have been adopted. Thank you for taking the time to read and for your interest! I'll have more information about the new maintainer soon.

WordPress plugin adoption is a feature of the Plugin Repository that I think is a good idea for anyone who has a plugin that they don’t want to see die, but that they don’t have the time or interest to maintain anymore.

WordPress Plugin Adoption: My Plugins

As mentioned in a previous post, there are a few things that I’m looking to focus on in 2017 and so I’m looking to lean out the short list of plugins I currently have available.

Note that I’m going to be retiring some of them (as they are going to become a larger part of that I want to do with Blogging Plugins), but the others are ones that I don’t want to see completely die as they have a decent amount of installs.

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