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Improved Ajax in WordPress: Procedural Programming

November 12, 2015 / Tom

Years ago, I wrote a series of posts for Envato walking readers through how to use Ajax in WordPress.

Then, not long ago, I provided an updated walkthrough of how to do so with better practices (thanks to @gmazzap for the code review on that one).

One purpose of this blog is to provide articles for others who are getting started in WordPress development. That is, I want to share the things I’ve learned to help shortcut others’ learning.

Sometimes, this requires updating old content. Or it requires providing new ways of doing things already discussed.

Case in point: Using Ajax in WordPress.

Selecting DISTINCT Records in WordPress

November 11, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

If you need to write a query against the WordPress database, grab a reference to $wpdb and get to work, right?

In some instances, sure. I’m not opposed to this. After all, the API exists for a reason. But sometimes, I think we bypass built-in APIs. We go straight for $wpdb without looking to see if other hooks already exist.

Distinct

If a hook exists, why not use it? It’s one level of abstraction above the database and it uses the native API.

As mentioned in a previous post, I want to cover a few ways to customize queries that run against the database.

Case in point: selecting DISTINCT records from WordPress. Continue reading

The Spectrum of Open Source Philosophy

November 10, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

To me, one of the most interesting aspects of open source culture is the variations in open source philosophy we all have.

By that, I mean though many of us appreciate what open source has done, we have varying degrees on how much we use it. For example, some people use only open source software. On the other side of the spectrum, some people never use open source software.

Then, as expected, there are a lot of things that sit between these two points. You know: The proverbial gray area.

As of last week, an interest article has been making the rounds about Slack and FOSS projects. I’ll talk about it more in a moment.

But first, since I’ve never written about my own perspective on open source, I thought I might as well try it.

How To Display The Last WordPress Query

November 9, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

Have you ever had the, ahem, pleasure of customizing the WordPress query? One of the most useful things in debugging is displaying the last WordPress query.

Let’s say you’re working with taxonomies and/or post types and you’re passing custom parameters around. And then, you want to setup some debugging to see exactly what’s hitting the database.

This is helpful for a variety of reasons if for no other reason than to see what is running against the database. It gives you insight on what you’re requesting and thus what you’re presenting to the user.

Anyway, writing code to do this is easy.

My Suite of Apps: Kiwi for Gmail

November 6, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

When it comes to OS X, I’ve tried almost every email client I could get my hands on. To say that I’m particular about my workflow is an understatement. As such, it’s important that I have applications that don’t harsh getting work done.

I’m pretty sure every single one of you is the same way. How we get work done likely varies from person to person, but still.

Anyway, so when it comes to email I’ve not always had the best of luck. Either the client was unintuitive, I didn’t like the UI, the shortcuts what weren’t I wanted, or it didn’t have features that helped me get things done quickly.

And since I use Gmail as my main provider of email, I often found myself hopping back into the browser. It was, you know, comfortable.

But then I found Kiwi.

Tom McFarlin