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Tips For Generating Blog Post Ideas

January 15, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Recently, Chris Lema published a blog post titled Have You Run Out of Blog Post Ideas? And if you haven’t read it, then I highly recommend it. (In fact, if you’re involved in WordPress, I highly recommend you subscribe to his blog.)

Running Out of Blog Post Ideas?

In the post, he shares some practical tips for how he comes up with ideas for blog posts. If you’re someone who’s looking to blog more regularly but aren’t sure how to do it, then the post gives you some great advice for how to help capture ideas and turn them into posts.

Since I try to blog daily and I try to make sure what I have to say isn’t something that’s meant to fill some type of weekly quota, I thought I’d follow suit and share how I go about coming up with ideas for posts and then turning them into actual posts.

Our Critics and WordPress and The Silver Screen

January 14, 2016 / Tom

As much as I love movies (and I’d venture to say that few people don’t), I rarely talk about them on this blog. I mean, there’s very little overlap between whatever it is we experience in the theater or via Netflix that crosses lines into what we, as those involved WordPress, do for a living.

Sure, I mean there are plenty of TV shows and movies that try to show some type of computing or programming angle – probably now more than ever – but it’s rarely worth mentioning unless you’re simply writing to make fun of it.

But good movies, you know, those that make you feel something or that connect with you on a level that doesn’t happen often can end up creating some type of connection between what you’ve seen on the screen and what you do for a living.

So for a moment, let’s pretend there’s some type of connection that can be made between our critics and WordPress and the movies that we watch.

Where Do You Find Quality WordPress Support?

January 13, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Last week, I asked: “Should WordPress product support be in-house?” And the short version of the conclusion to which I came is simple: Yes. It should be. This still leaves a question about how to handle general WordPress support, though.

Specifically, the problem is when something goes wrong with your product, the general end user doesn’t know if it was your work, the theme, WordPress, or the environment on which all of the software is running.

And if your product is the last thing the user installed, then you’re likely going to be the first person contacted. So let’s say you are running a theme or plugin or WordPress product shop, and your customer has a problem, but it’s not related to the work you’ve done.

In other words, though you do (and arguably should) offer in-house product support, the problem isn’t related to your product at all.

What then?

WordPress and Data Ownership, Social Networks and Privacy

January 12, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

I try to be pretty open-minded about most things. That is, I try not to be legalistic or dogmatic about any particular idea. If something comes along that contradicts something I hold true or near and dear, I’m willing to evaluate the evidence and see if it reinforces or challenges what I believe.

Admittedly, there are people who are better at it than I am but I do my best.

But one thing I absolutely cannot get passed – and this is something becoming more and more prevalent the older I get and the more I work in software, specifically in open source – is the idea of data ownership.

And I believe there’s a direct result between what we’re able to do with WordPress and data ownership that can positively impact the type of solutions we release and we’ve yet to even realize we can build.

One Month with Boxy (Inbox By Google)

January 11, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

If there’s one thing about which I’m consistent, it’s consistently trying new things and moving something that better fits my workflow whenever the need arises. And such is the case with Boxy.

Boxy

But let me back up: A few months ago, I talked about Kiwi. A desktop Gmail client for Mac that I [still] think is great if you’re a fan of the original Gmail interface (that is, say, in contrast to Inbox).

The thing about Inbox is that I wanted to like it, and I wanted to use it. The problem is that I like having a consistent a consistent experience across my phone, tablet, and my desktop.

It’s a personality quirk, I know.

But still, the only available versions were the iOS version and the version that ran within a browser. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of web applications, but there’s something about having email as a separate application rather than a browser tab that works better for me.

Another personality quirk, maybe?

Tom McFarlin

Tips For Generating Blog Post Ideas

Our Critics and WordPress and The Silver Screen

Where Do You Find Quality WordPress Support?

WordPress and Data Ownership, Social Networks and Privacy

One Month with Boxy (Inbox By Google)