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Making Anonymous Functions Maintainable

September 3, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

Obviously, the majority of the content that I write for the site deals with WordPress in someway, but there are times where I talk a bit about JavaScript, related libraries, and so on.

The Face of Anonymous Functions

Generally speaking, a lot of the JavaScript that’s written in the context of WordPress is done using jQuery because it’s the library that ships with the core applications, it’s tried and true, and its a good fit for a lot of the DOM manipulation that happens in themes and in plugins.

But one of the things that I’ve begun to notice over the past few years is that writing maintainable JavaScript (using jQuery or not) gets a bit more difficult when using anonymous functions.

The WordPress Plugin Boilerplate 3.0.0

September 2, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

A few years ago, I started the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate project as nothing more than a GitHub repository used to store code that I found myself frequently using in both personal and client projects.

As I became more involved with WordPress, as I began to build more plugins for fun and profit, and as I began updating the repository, it grew into something a little more than I had expected.

Over time, people began to open issues, offer pull requests, perform code reviews, and create their own forks of the project. I learned a lot over the next few years, and I honestly couldn’t be more excited to see such a little project become, you know, such a slightly less little project.

Months ago, I mentioned that work on the next iteration of the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate was started and I’m excited to announce that, as of today, the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate 3.0.0 is officially ready for use.

And it comes with a lot of new and neat things to boot.

Let’s Tilt The Pods Framework Conference!

September 1, 2014 / Tom

For those of you who aren’t familiar, the Pods Framework, it’s a relatively simple concept that introduces some really neat, advanced features into WordPress.

Pods Framework Homepage

Straight from the website:

The goal was to create an interface and PHP codebase to easily create, extend, and manage content types within WordPress. While the normal WordPress content architecture is limited to the built-in tables, a primary feature of Pods allows you to base content types off of their own custom tables designed around each content types’ needs.

Neat, right? What’s even cooler is that the Pods development team is hosting their very first conference this October in DFW.

Removing HTML Comments in WordPress

August 30, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

Some time ago, I began removing the HTML comment label from beneath the standard WordPress comment form (no, not the Jetpack-enabled form – the one that ships with a default WordPress theme).

Most of you are familiar with the form as it generally looks something like this:

HTML in Comments

Generally speaking I find that that block that usually sits between the textarea and the submit input to introduce complexity and likely cause more confusion than anything else.

Adding Plugin Config Files to WordPress

August 29, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

Almost everyone who has worked with WordPress has dealt with wp-config.php. I know – there are a lot of managed hosts out there that take care of a lot of this for you – but even though a person may not have directly edited the file, they have definitely interacted with it.

For those who are unfamiliar:

This file is located in the root of your WordPress file directory and contains your website’s base configuration details, such as database connection information.

Anyway, for sometime now, I’ve been working on a relatively large plugin for a client and have recently taken to introducing a similar type of configuration files. So this raised that question, do what you think of plugin config files?

Tom McFarlin