Category: Articles (Page 100 of 258)

Personal opinions and how-to’s that I’ve written both here and as contributions to other blogs.

WordPress Versus Medium: Does It Really Matter?

January 17, 2017 / Tom

This past weekend, I spent time closing a bunch of sites, exporting content from one service to another, preparing to consolidate a couple of sites, and even shutting some sites down.

But the number one thing that has resulted in a weird bit of feedback is the idea that I opted to archive my data from Medium in preparing to move it to a WordPress-based site. This resulted in some weird WordPress versus Medium points from others.

Truthfully, I know this kind of argument will never die. But I digress for now.

And, I suppose, the reason this is weird is that I – like many who use WordPress – want the control that comes with owning your data. Perhaps it’s also about playing in someone else’s sandbox, too, right?

But there’s an inherent problem with sticking only with one CMS and neglecting what the rest of the industry is doing.

Visual Studio Code Debugger: A Primer and Screencast

January 16, 2017 / Tom

In previous posts, I’ve talked a bit about why using a proper debugger versus some of PHP’s built-in statements are important. In the last post, even, I walk through how to set up Xdebug with Visual Studio Code (and MAMP Pro, if you’re using).

But if you’ve never used a tool like this before, you’ve never seen how it works, or you’ve never seen why it’s so powerful, I want to cover that a bit in this post.

So I’m going to be walking through a bit of doing this within the context of a few definitions and screenshots as well as a short screencast at the end so I can show the Visual Studio Code debugger working in action.

Xdebug, Visual Studio Code, and MAMP

January 13, 2017 / Tom

Using Xdebug and Visual Studio Code is something that’s pretty easy to setup, but given that I’m still using Visual Studio Code should tell you something about how much I’m a fan of the IDE.

But here’s the thing:

If you’re a WordPress developer, debugging is something that you really need to learn. That is, don’t use print_r and var_dump if you can help it. Use a legitimate debugger. It will help you think as the interpreter thinks and it will help you learn a bit more about Core.

Now that I’m off my soapbox, getting the necessary tools installed is easy. The article assumes you’re using MAMP Pro (since that’s what I use), but if you have access to php.ini then you’re going to be able to follow along.

Using a WordPress Hook for Updating Options

January 12, 2017 / Tom

Updating options within the WordPress admin is simple, right? It’s a matter of filling out a text field, checking a box, or swapping a radio button then clicking save.

But let’s say that you need to set up a hook that fires that also updates a secondary, related option whenever one is toggled.

Updating Options Hook

For example, given an option represented by a checkbox, let’s say that you want to set an option in the database whenever the checkbox is unchecked and then delete it whenever said option is set.

There’s an action specifically for doing this that makes it pretty easy.

Remote Requests with wp_safe_remote_get

January 11, 2017 / Tom

Yesterday, I shared a post on how to use wp_remote_get but I left out an alternative function: wp_safe_remote_get. The original goal was to use the first post to show:

What the original function accepts,
How to use the original function,
What the original function returns,
What an implementation make look like.

And then I was going to take a look at wp_safe_remote_get. But there’s a challenge: I have smart friends. Shortly after I published the post, I get a response from Roy:

wp_safe_remote_get***

— Mildly Spicy Salsa (@royboy789) January 10, 2017

Thanks, Roy! (Be sure to say “Hi!” to him. :)

But seriously, the follow-up to yesterday’s post is exactly that: wp_safe_remote_get. And it’s how to determine the difference in the two functions and when you’d use one over the other.