Category: Articles (Page 119 of 258)

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

What Are WordPress Plugins, Anyway?

August 5, 2016 / Tom

For those who work with WordPress on a daily basis, the ideas of WordPress themes, WordPress plugins, and other WordPress-related topics become second nature.

As is the case with anything any of us do on a regular basis.

Anyway, when there are others who are interested in getting started with WordPress either as content managers, bloggers, or developers, there’s a lot to learn. And sometimes, when we talk about WordPress plugins in blog posts, WordCamp presentations, and podcasts, we assume that the audience already has some understanding of the words we’re using.

But that’s not always the case. Some time ago, I started a series for Envato on Understanding WordPress Themes and Plugins.

Recently, the second portion of the series ran in which I talk about WordPress plugins specifically targeting those who are looking to have a greater understanding of what they are, how they work, and how they fit into the overall WordPress economy.

How To Concatenate JavaScript Files with CodeKit

August 4, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Of all the various build tools that are available right now (such as Gulp, Grunt, and others), I still find myself using CodeKit. I’ve been a fan of it for a long time, and it still fits well into my workflow.

Concatenate JavaScript Files with CodeKit

It’s not that I’m making a case for you to use it, but if you are using it, then there are some that it offers that aren’t immediately evident. Things that other build tools tend to make a bit easier to achieve.

For example, when I’m working on a project for WordPress that will focus on a single area of the application, such as the administration area, then I prefer to take all of the various JavaScript files I’m writing and then concatenate them into a single, minified file.

CodeKit makes this possible in two ways: Through the GUI and directives in an individual file.

How To Perform Unit Testing with Pressmatic

August 2, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

I’ve been using Pressmatic for some time now, and I’m enjoying it. I’ve written about it in several posts (many of which you can see here). And one of the things that I dig the most about the software is that it comes with WP-CLI out of the box.

Unit Testing with Pressmatic and WP-CLI

From the homepage:

Simple root SSH access to individual sites. WP-CLI provided. Simply type wp after opening site SSH.

I’m currently working on a project in which I want to do some unit testing with Pressmatic. And though WP-CLI comes with the software, I need to do two type of testing:

Unit testing with PHPUnit that does not require any WordPress scaffolding,
WordPress-specific tests that does require the WordPress scaffolding.

Because Pressmatic uses a virtual machine setting up the necessary software is a little bit different than when you’re using something such as MAMP.

The WordPress Framework (It’s Not a Framework)

August 1, 2016 / Tom

Those who are heavily involved in development of WordPress often times refer to “the WordPress framework” or “WordPress as a framework.” Perhaps you’ve heard this – it’s used in terms of building sites and creating blogs and things like that.

And I try not to be too pedantic about terms, jargon, and so on but there are times where I think it’s important to distinguish the terms that we’re using.

Conan O'Brien

I mean, who wants to be the person sitting there with their pointy-rimmed glasses far down on the bridge of their nose, pushing them up slightly, pointing into the air, and with as much of a nasal voice as possible, saying:

That’s not really true.

But I’ll be that person (except I don’t wear glasses and I don’t have a nasal voice).

A Simple Class For Ajax in WordPress

July 29, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Ajax in WordPress is something I’ve discussed a few times on this site. For example, I’ve touched on:

But you know how it goes: Over time, things change. WordPress matures, we grow as developers, and techniques and methods that we might have used yesterday (or last year) aren’t necessarily the best way to achieve the same thing as today.

Ajax in WordPress

And Ajax in WordPress is one of those things. Although the actual API may still be the same, the way in which we can build object-oriented solutions that communicate with it can be refined a bit more (at least in contrast to what I used to do).