Tom McFarlin

Software Engineering in WordPress, PHP, and Backend Development

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My Productivity and Entertainment in 2015

Every year we end up trying out new services, solutions, communities, chat rooms, groups, apps, and other forms of technology that, by the year’s end, may be contributing more noise than signal to our day-to-day.

Perhaps I’m about idealistic, but I think that the majority of us are concerned with making sure that we have the tools that we need to get our work done and nothing more, nothing less (with the occasional game or book for entertainment and/or educational purposes, of course :).

But you get the idea of what I mean: We start off with the best of intentions in getting only what we need in order to get our work done and end up with a plethora of extraneous things that we don’t necessarily need distributed across our various devices.

Then again, maybe I’m the only one who’s suffered from this. But not likely. Here’s a run down of the things that I’m looking to employ day-to-day for both productivity and entertainment.

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My Suite of Apps: Living Earth

One of the most interested aspects of working with people all over the world – aside from the fact that, y’know, they’re all over the world – is coordinating time zones with people for phone calls.

Sure, it’s easy to coordinate one-on-one calls with people when it’s only two timezones you’re working with, but when it comes to adding three or more people to a call, things get more interesting.

Case in point: I’ve been in a number of calls where I’m chatting with people in the UK and in Australia all at the same time. That’s a pretty big shift in time zones, right? We’re about as spread out as you can get when it comes to setting up timezones.

And yeah, it’s easy to go about coordinating timezones through the use of various web sites that are out there, but there’s one app that I’ve found that I really like not only for that reason, but also for what it offers as it relates to other various information about the planet (yes, planet).

Check out Living Earth.

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What Are You Doing Inside of WordPress?

I know – the title of this post is kinda weird, but I figured it made sense given yesterday’s topic (that is, what are you guys and girls focusing on outside of WordPress in the coming year?).

After all, just because we’re looking to focus on things outside of WordPress, that doesn’t mean that we’re going to be moving on or moving away from WordPress.

And since WordPress is comprised of so much – that is, core developers, plugin developers, theme developers, documenters, teachers, educators, event organizers, and so on – I’m interested in seeing what you’re planning to do in the coming year, as well.

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What Are You Doing Outside of WordPress?

The end of the year usually breeds one of two types of posts (or, in some cases, both!):

  1. A look back over the year summarizing everything that you accomplished (or discussing what you didn’t get accomplished),
  2. Your plans for what you hope to get done in the New Year

And I’m no exception.

Granted, I’m not one that’s big on resolutions – I tend to think that the best time to start something new is whenever you decide to start something new, but I know that bringing in a new year brings with it that feeling of starting over or a clean slate and with that comes ideas for what you hope to get done.

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Using WordPress as a Backend

These days, it’s hip to say that you’re either working with a framework or you’re working with a content management system.

And, for one reason or another, Team Frameworks frowns upon using a CMS for building a site because it doesn’t require writing code, and Team CMS laughs at the idea of writing so much code to do the same thing they’re able to do without said code.

This is why, in previous posts and in other discussions, I’ve often referred to WordPress as a foundation off of which to build web applications. By that, I mean that WordPress is a content management system and that it is not a framework like Rails, Laravel, or .NET. Instead, its API gives us the ability to extend the application far beyond what it’s able to do out-of-the-box.

And I know, I know. This is all stuff that someone else has said before, but the point that I want to make in bringing this up is how those who are curious about using WordPress as a solution for their data may be writing it off simply because of its branding.

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