Tom McFarlin

Software Engineering in WordPress, PHP, and Backend Development

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Running Nginx on OS X for WordPress Development

Running Nginx on OS X is becoming a more attractive alternative to running some of the standard stacks that developers use to set up their environments.

That is, I think many of us are used to running something like this following:

  • Apache
  • MySQL
  • PHP
  • WordPress

That works because the majority of our hosts have these configurations, and it’s a good practice to have our development environment mirror our staging and production environments.

But Nginx is becoming a popular alternative to Apache and other web servers, so we need to update our local machines accordingly.Getting it set up on OS X takes a little more work.

Getting it set up on OS X takes a little work.

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Building Quality into WordPress Projects: A Practical Example

Building quality into WordPress projects is a topic that sounds a little subjective or maybe even a bit esoteric.

To be honest, I think it certainly helps to have a level of experience in general software development as well as with the way WordPress does things, but it’s something that anyone can learn.

I’d go as far as to say that many people who care about building quality into WordPress projects are people who are consistently learning new ways to go about doing so.

Anyway, in a recent article for Envato, I cover exactly this.

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Quality Code and Bloat in WordPress Projects

Quality Code and Bloat are two topics that I see a lot of developers either discussing and/or mentioning on the landing pages of their project pages.

I think the conversation around quality code is something that should always be happening. We should always be aiming to get better at what we’re doing, there is always someone who can help us, and there is always someone we can help.

It’s not that I think bloat is something we should accept, nor is it something that I think we should settle for in our projects (or those to which we contribute for that matter). But does it have as an objective definition as quality code?

It’s important to define clearly quality code and bloat as it relates to you, your team, and the solutions you’re providing for others. And I think this is true if you’re working for yourself, in a shop, for an agency, or even as a hobby and you’re building solutions for other people.

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Loading WordPress Tries to Download a File

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a few clients contact me saying that their website won’t load. Instead, their current installation of WordPress tries to download a file whenever they access their site.

This doesn’t matter if you try to access wp-login.php, /wp-admin, or any of the usual directories. Further, if you look at the permissions on each of the files, everything looks in order.

WordPress File Permission Scheme

On top of that, there are no suspicious (read: malicious) files in place that would be redirecting a user’s request or anything like that.

So what gives?

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How to Get Started With WordPress

For those who have been working with WordPress for some time, it’s easy to forget how to explain to others how to get started with WordPress.

That is, we take for granted what it’s like to set up a web server, database, PHP, install the software, find a theme, and install a few plugins. And I know: None of that has much to do with development, per se, but it can be a gateway drug for many.

I know more than a handful of WordPress developers who got started by just installing the software, writing a few posts, and finding out what it could do.

In an attempt to revisit the basics and help usher in a new class of people who may end up contributing to the community, I’ve written a series of posts geared directly to people like that.

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