Tom McFarlin

Software Engineering in Web Development, Backend Services, and More

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WordPress Messages via Custom Code

WordPress messages, especially custom messages, are becoming a bit of a sore spot for developers, bloggers, content managers and so on.

And with good reason: It seems like every plugin has this desire to display tooltips, messages, promotional content, and so on every single time it’s activated or updated.

WordPress Messages aren’t inherently bad, but they’re abused. Still, they serve a purpose and can (and arguably should) be used sparingly when the opportunity presents itself.

In a series I’ve been working on for Tuts+, I’ve been walking through the process of creating a custom system for implementing, displaying, and customizing WordPress messages.

And how to do so in a way that’s reusable across various projects.

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Control Activation of a WooCommerce Extension

When creating a WooCommerce extension, it’s important to consider that when the extension is activated, the user may not have WooCommerce installed or active.

And though an extension might activate, it won’t do anything. This can ultimately provide a level of confusion for the user.

WooCommerce Extension

In cases like this, I think it’s important to make sure an extension can only be activated if the core plugin is installed and active.

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PHP Autoloading: Object-Oriented Programming

PHP autoloading is a topic that, once you’ve begun to employ it in your projects, is hard to avoid doing so in any project moving forward.

The challenge with learning how to do it, though, is learning aspects of object-oriented programming and what facilities the PHP standard library has to offer. On top of that, there are other advanced tools like Composer that make it possible, as well.

You have to walk before you can run, as they say, so in a recent series on Tuts+, I walk through how to perform PHP autoloading using object-oriented programming in the context of WordPress.

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Merry Christmas!

It’s a couple of days early but given that Christmas is on a Sunday this year, it seems to make sense to say this today rather than sometime during the weekend.

Especially since most of us will be spending time elsewhere than on this blog, right? 😎

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WordPress Payments: Plasso, Array, EDD, or What?

Years ago, I started using this little service called Spacebox (and I briefly mentioned it about three years ago) to accept one-off payments from clients, family, and friends for different things.

Not long after that, Spacebox changed its name to Plasso, expanded its offering regarding what could be done with it, and I continued to use it for one-off payments.

Fast-forward to yesterday and the company comes out of the gate swinging with some different products for WordPress payments. These include a couple of themes, a plugin, and so on.

And I’m pretty stoked to see what all it has to offer especially with dealing with accepting self-hosted payments (well, as far as accepting things within the context of WordPress).

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