Category: Articles (Page 138 of 258)

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

Don’t Over-Engineer Your Project

January 6, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Over the last few days, I’ve been building the site that’s going to power the membership aspects of the WordPress Development course I’m working on. Initially, I went into the project like any other developer: I was ready to sit down, start writing code, handle a bunch of configuration, and generally tweak my WordPress installation at a level that I was convinced would take me a long time.

But it wasn’t like that at all.

And that’s something I know developers are plagued with more often than they – or we – would like to admit:

We over-engineer our solutions all of the time.

It doesn’t have to be like that, though. It takes a slightly different approach and it requires that we fight our natural inclinations, but it can be done.

It just requires a more pragmatic approach.

Want a Pressware Shirt?

January 4, 2016 / Tom

In all of the time I’ve worked for myself, I’ve only attempted to print a Pressware shirt once. Even then, I placed an order for about 20 or so (and they were mainly used to give to friends and family).

Pressware Shirts

For 2016, I’d love to change that so for the first time, I’m holding a TeeSpring Campaign where I’m having some shirts printed up. At the time of this writing, the minimum order has already been fulfilled (which is really humbling); however, I wanted to let everyone know about this.

The only goal isn’t just to have some shirts made, though. It’s to help promote you, your work, or whatever cause you’d like mentioned here on this blog.

My Plans For 2016 (What Are Yours?)

December 30, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

This time of year, people usually do a sort of retrospective on their blog, their podcast, or whatever form of media they use most. And they are a lot of fun to read.

I’ve never really done that, though. Instead, I’ve often talked about what I hope to accomplish over the next year or so.

But last year, while working on some things, I decided that I wanted to continue to focus my efforts on WordPress and really work at learning as much as possible. It would help me grow my business, there are plenty of tangential technologies around it to keep my sharp on certain things, and it’s what I’m happiest doing. There’s almost no downside.

Anyway, I’m not one of those who subscribes to New Year’s Resolutions because I figure now is as good as time as any to start a new habit.

But when you’ve read the books you set out to read, finished the planned workouts, and achieved other goals you listed a little while ago, why not start over with a few more?

The thing is, it’s super hard to account for a variable amount of stuff that will inevitably show up over the next year that may disrupt your goals. And if you get too legalistic about said goals, then the things that come up may end up being far more frustrating than the positive experiences they could be.

With that said, I thought I might share a little bit about my plans for 2016. Specifically, what I hope to do and then maybe do a check-in every quarter or so to see how they are going.

If nothing else, it’ll be neat to review what I’ve set out to read and what I’ve accomplished.

Ship Fast and Iterate

December 29, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the phrases many involved in software will likely hear (especially early in their career) is “Ship fast and iterate.”

And there’s definitely something to that when it’s been implemented correctly. But when I’ve watched others trying to adopt this idea when building something for WordPress, it seems like something gets lost in translation.

Ship Fast and Iterate

No, this is not a critique of other companies or developers. No, this is not saying that we’re all like this. No, this is not saying that I’m above this.

If anything, it’s a reflection on the idea and what it means for those of us who are building things on WordPress and how we may be more more mindful of the work that we’re doing.

Don’t Report Issues on GitHub

December 28, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

In the admittedly short time I’ve worked in software development, I’ve rarely seen a site like GitHub have such a level of success especially for something as nerdy as version control.

Linktocat has always been one of my favorites.

Don’t get me wrong: Version Control is a must have for any serious software development shops – be it a single person or a team of people. But the fact the site works so well, has a variety of quality clients, and doesn’t look like, y’know, developers built the site is such a huge plus.

And as much as I love open source and what GitHub has brought us, I often see development shops asking users to report issues on GitHub whenever they see them.

That’s never sat well with me.

The thing is, even though GitHub looks good, even though it works well, and even though it does its job well at doing what it’s meant to do, it’s still targeting an audience that’s very rarely going to be our core audience.