For some projects, there are going to be times where there’s not a lot of new stuff to explore, you know? You get the requirements, you know how to solve the problems, and then you move forward with building the solution.

Then other projects that come your way and though you may not know how to do them at the beginning of the project, you know you’ll be able to do so programmatically because if it’s written in code, it’s going to be possible.

And the more you become familiar with a given set of tools or platform (like WordPress), then the more likely you are to “think in terms” of that platform, right?

Perhaps one case in point is working with the administration menu in WordPress. When it comes to projects that others build, I don’t know if they aim to create as positive experience on the front-end as the back-end, but I think it’s import to consider the entire application as an experience for the user.

And that’s why when it comes to little things – even the menu, for example – that it’s important. But what do I mean by that?

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Whenever you’re working with WordPress and third-party APIs, there’s always a chance that you’re going to run into issues where the third-party API is not prepared to handle certain characters that exist in a permalink.

Depending on one’s permalink settings, though, this may or may not be an issue. For example, you may have your permalinks set to something like ?p=123 for each post. In that case, it’s not much of an issue.

But if you’re using “pretty permalinks” and your permalink includes something like a trademark symbol or a copyright symbol, then it may cause problems whenever you’re communicating with said third-party API.

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As long as I’ve been working with WordPress, the conversation (and I do use this term loosely) around what versions of PHP it should or shouldn’t support has been ongoing.

• The short of it is that some see it as an application as large and popular as WordPress that powers so much of the CMS-based websites should be able to use its clout to foster more innovative solutions.
• Others see that people don’t often upgrade, are on budget hosts, or simply do not care (let alone bother to know) what version of PHP they are running.

These two points could yield a post and comments for days, but I’m not interested in that. Because my team and I are the business of building custom solutions for others, we have the flexibility of taking stock of where the users host their site or application, deploying it, and leveraging features of PHP offered by their hosts.

There are, however, times where I’ve encountered some people running versions of PHP as low as 5.3.

So what then?

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