Category: Articles (Page 140 of 258)

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

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.

What is WordPress kses?

December 4, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

Work with WordPress long enough and you’re bound to come across something called “kses” or the wp_kses function. Perhaps this comes with writing your own code, or it comes with reading someone else’s source. Or maybe in reading core.

kses

Whatever the case, the function has a weird name, right?

I mean, a lot of the WordPress API functions have clear names so it’s easy to know what you’re doing. This one is more of the exception than the rule. That doesn’t change anything, does it? I mean, it still raises the questions:

What’s the purpose of the function,
Why does it matter,
Why should we use it,
And what purpose do its variations serve?

We should be asking these questions for all functions with which we work. But when the name isn’t clear, the answers aren’t as easy to deduce.

Priority of Ajax in WordPress

December 3, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

Let’s say that you’re working with Ajax in WordPress. And let’s say that, whatever you’re building, is using object-oriented programming.

Depending on the complexity of your work, you may find that how you’ve implemented your Ajax functionality doesn’t work.

That is:

You’ve implemented the proper hooks
You’ve got the callbacks defined
You’re `echo`ing the data properly
You’ve got the `wp_die()` call at the end of each request
And you’ve setup `console.log()` or other debugging statements in your Development environment

But you’re still seeing the request return 0 for everything you’ve implemented.

What gives?