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WordPress Meta Boxes: Each Component

May 21, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

This is the third post in a series on how to achieve simplicity with WordPress meta boxes.

In this series, I’ve been talking a little bit about how to simplify the code that we write by breaking it down into more modular components, and I’ve been doing so in the context of WordPress meta boxes.

To be clear, the point of this series is not simply to walk through how to keep the logic organized that goes into meta boxes, but to talk about the various parts that go into making up a component of a WordPress projects and how we can approach them through the their specialized areas of concern, and the how and why it’s important to do this.

In the previous post, I mentioned:

The Server-Side Logic
The Presentation Logic

And then I asked about how we actually go about representing the data. In this post, we’ll do exactly that.

WordPress Meta Boxes: Separating the Logic

May 20, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

This is the second post in a series on how to achieve simplicity with WordPress meta boxes.

In the previous post, I talked a bit about how working with WordPress meta boxes can be a bit of a hassle especially if you’re used to doing so in such a way the keeps all of the logic contained within a single file and a handful functions.

For example, if you’re working on a theme, then it’s likely that you’ve got a set of functions declared either in your functions.php file or file referenced by said file that is responsible for making a call to add_meta_box and all of the necessary arguments for rendering the meta box.

If you’re working on a plugin, it’s likely that this isn’t all together different; however, you may be approaching this from an object-oriented perspective. If that’s the case, then you may have a similar setup as above which isn’t really that different except you’re using classes and functions.

WordPress Meta Boxes: Aiming for Simplicity

May 19, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

This is the first post in a series on how to achieve simplicity with WordPress meta boxes.

For anyone who has does any kind of work with WordPress meta boxes, you know that it generally consists of the following steps:

Define the meta box
Define the callback functions responsible for displaying the markup

Pretty simple, isn’t it?

Of course if you’re looking to introduce a more advanced functionality into your meta box then you’re likely going to want to introduce stylesheets, JavaScript dependencies, nonce values, and perhaps even tabs to logically separate the options.

Given the fact that I’ve recently looked at some of the various ways to save data in WordPress meta boxes, I thought it might be work sharing one way to help separate the business logic from the presentation logic as it relates to incorporating WordPress meta boxes either in themes or plugins.

The Art of Solving Problems in Your Sleep

May 17, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

I don’t consider myself a “creative” – I think that term is usually designated for designers, artists, and illustrators, and other types. Developers – although we create things – are creative in a different way.

It’s more about problem solving, I guess.

Anyway, one of the things that seems to be the most common among people of the similar trade is the challenge that comes with having to solve problems that we’re stuck on during the daily grind.

I can’t speak about designers (though I know this is something that affects those who I do know), but in terms of developers, I know that the problem works something like this:

At some point during a project, we get mired in a problem and we’re unable to solve it. The more we try to solve it, the more the frustrated we get. Ultimately, we step away from the computer, but what happens in a few hours?

We end up solving the problem while focused on something else.

It’s an interesting thing, and it’s something around which plenty of research is done (and, I’m sure even has a proper name for it), but the point of all of this has nothing to do with mentioning the fact that this exists.

It’s how we – as developers or even those creative types – can leverage it to our own success. Continue reading

Looking at the Next Version of Dev Practices

May 16, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

For a little over half a year now, I’ve been running (or simply managing, at times) a Tumblr blog called Dev Practices. The whole idea behind the blog is simply this:

A day in the life of a developer as illustrated by GIFs.

But I’ve been surprised. The site’s been a lot of fun to manage, people have been contributing to it, and there’s a backlog of at least a month’s worth of content.

So, like any developer at this point, I’ve started thinking about Dev Practices 2.0 (of course, I should probably come up with a better than than name, right?)

Tom McFarlin