Category: Articles (Page 140 of 258)

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

A WordPress Upgrade Doesn’t Break Your Site

December 14, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

WordPress 4.4 was released last week and there’s no reason for me to cover all the information about it. You can read all about it on:

As with any WordPress upgrade, there’s often the following commentary:

The latest WordPress upgrade broke my site.

And I get it:

You’re a user.
Your site is powered by WordPress.
You upgrade WordPress.
Your site breaks.
Thus, the WordPress upgrade broke your site.

I’m likely preaching to the choir with this post given the audience (at least of which I’m aware), but in case anyone reads this is not a WordPress developer and is someone who is tech-savvy and tries to say on the up-and-up with WordPress, then perhaps it’ll be useful.

If nothing else, I can reference this for others with whom I work as a means to explain something without doing so over and over again (and hopefully in a much clearer way).

The short of it:

Just because you upgrade WordPress and your site breaks does not mean that the WordPress upgrade broke your site.

This sounds a bit like circular reasoning, doesn’t it? Bear with me.

Getting Started with WordPress Development

December 11, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

If you spend enough time with WordPress, you may very well become interested in development. No, of course not everyone will do this.

They’ll continue to use it exactly as it is:

A blogging platform,
Or a content management system

But just as with operating systems, desktop software, mobile apps, etc., you may find yourself wanting to build things for WordPress.

So the natural question becomes:

“How do I go about getting started with WordPress development?

And there are tons, and tons of articles available for this. There are videos, there are courses, there are seminars, webinars, and so on.

So this is not going to be another post about the 10 things you need to do to get started in WordPress.

Instead, it’s going to take a different approach.

More and More JavaScript in WordPress

December 9, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

I wasn’t able to attend WordCamp US (cue jealousy rage! :), but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed many of the blog posts that I’ve read about the conference.

It’s easy to be proud of the software and to continue wanting to work with it, isn’t it?

With all the chatter around Calypso, React, and JavaScript, there’s a lot to cover. If you’re a web developer, this is something that may be overwhelming to take in. For some, this is a natural progression of their career.

Regardless, JavaScript is going to be playing a major role in both WordPress and the web in general. This is holding true to Atwood’s Law:

Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript.

Say you’re a WordPress Developer, but you’re just now getting a hold on jQuery. How are you – or we – supposed to pick up on all the new technologies

When WordPress Helps One Another

December 8, 2015 / Tom

When working with WordPress, one of the most impressive and humbling things is the people. Specifically, it’s how WordPress helps one another. That is, the WordPress community. Not sentient software. Please. We’re at least four years away from that.

But seriously, whether you’ve been around a while or are just getting started, the community has:

Helped fund various developers project work
Raised funds to help cover the costs of someone’s home
Crowd funded various efforts and causes for those invested in the community
…and much more.

There are generous people among us. To be clear, this post is not about my asking for help with raising money for a project or a venture.

Instead, it’s about helping to raise money for a fellow developer’s significant medical cost.

Looking For a Buyer For Live Theme

December 7, 2015 / Tom

Years ago, the previous team with whom I worked built a theme tailored for a live event. Once the event was over, we refactored a bit of the code and began selling it.

When 8BIT folded, one of the previous team members took it over and has been selling and supporting it. The theme has continued to sell well for the past few years.

So much so that a couple of years ago, Eric approached me about building out the next version of the theme. So, starting from scratch and using newer technologies, that’s what we began to do.

But as our businesses changed and the demands on our time changed, the focus on Live Theme changed, as well.

The short of it? We’re looking to sell the theme.