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An Interview with iThemes on Self-Employment

November 20, 2015 / Tom

iThemes is a WordPress-centric company that focuses on providing a suite of tools and themes for bloggers.

Some of these tools include things like BackupBuddy, Exchange, and Sync. From their site:

Since 2008, we’ve been creating WordPress plugins, themes and training for freelancers, marketers, entrepreneurs, designers and developers. We want to take the hassle out of running WordPress websites.

At the beginning of 2015, iThemes launched an effort called WProsper. The goal of of the effort is to help others “do well, do better with WordPress and iThemes.”

A Digression on The State of WordPress

November 19, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

For many of us, we spend our time heads down on projects trying to deliver solutions for a customers. That’s a Good Thing™, as far as I’m concerned.

But every now and then, I think it’s also a Good Thing™ to take stock of where we – as a development community are – where we’re headed, and the things that we’re able to observe about ourselves.

We need to observe where we are (and from where we’ve come).

Now and again, I’ll write about my own opinions about WordPress (the software, the community, the economy, etc.). I don’t always have a direct point, though.

Sometimes it’s just a smattering of thoughts about what I’ve seen. You know, like a digression. And that’s what this post has shaped up to be.

Paperback By Array Themes

November 18, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

Earlier this year, I talked about why I recommend Array Themes. I’m also proud to call myself a partner of theirs.

If you haven’t read the article, that’s okay (I don’t expect people to read everything here). The gist of why I’m such a fan and why I’ve selected them as my theme partner include the following:

They offer impeccable design for a variety of authors.
They have beautiful typography.
They follow the WordPress Coding Standards.
They sell within their own shop, WordPress.com, and ThemeForest.
They create themes for almost any niche of blogging.
They offer exceptional quality in a marketplace crowded by those with products that often fall flat.
…And more.

Additionally, Array offers a free plugin compatible with their themes that enhances native functionality.

So, if you’ve missed it, that’s why I’m proud to call Array a partner of this site. But that’s not what this post is about.

Instead, I’m excited to share their latest release (and offer you something special for it!).

Modifying the WHERE Clause in WordPress

November 17, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

When retrieving data, there times where you may want to change the WHERE clause in WordPress. That is, depending on what you’re retrieving, you may want to filter what it’s searching.

Using WHERE in WordPress to filter results

A favorite, but It’s not that kind of filter.

And that’s exactly what a WHERE clause does. But just as we’ve looked at content in other posts, we can alter the WHERE clause via the WordPress API.

In previous posts, I’ve covered:

Displaying the last query, which is useful when doing light debugging.
Selecting `DISTINCT` records
Performing a `JOIN` on two tables

Here, I’ll show how to use the API to change the WHERE clause so you’re not having to do so through a custom query.

Escaping Data in WordPress (And Why It’s Important)

November 16, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

You can read plenty of information about the importance of escaping information in WordPress via the Codex. If you’re new to the topic, I highly recommend it.

If you need a refresher, or are looking for a short description for why this is necessary, consider this the working definition:

For security on the other end of the spectrum, we have escaping. To escape is to take the data you may already have and help secure it prior to rendering it for the end user.

Clear enough, right? And WordPress offers plenty of functions to help with this.

How do we know which one to use, though?

Tom McFarlin

An Interview with iThemes on Self-Employment

A Digression on The State of WordPress

Paperback By Array Themes

Modifying the WHERE Clause in WordPress

Escaping Data in WordPress (And Why It’s Important)