Category: Articles (Page 145 of 258)

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

Keeping Separate Files for Ajax in WordPress

October 15, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

When working with Ajax in WordPress, the general setup is pretty straightforward:

Register the `ajaxurl`, if needed
Define the hooks (or the callbacks) on the server-side
Register and Enqueue the JavaScript files
Have your JavaScript file(s) call to the defined server-side hooks
Update the front-end as necessary

And the front-end may refer to the Dashboard, the public-facing part of the blog, or the both. It depends on the nature of what you’re working on.

If you’ve worked with Ajax in WordPress in-depth for any amount of time, then you’re likely familiar with the above process. You’re also familiar with the challenges of maintenance depending on how the code was setup.

If you’re just getting started, then perhaps this post will help shortcut some of the learning the rest of us have had to do.

I don’t think the Ajax APIs are that bad. I know – this is subjective. But from the a maintenance standpoint I believe that there’s at least one thing we can do to make development and maintenance easier.

Showing Poor Source Code

October 13, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

The act of showing poor source code either via our blogs or our open repositories can be a scary thing. I mean, we’re putting out for others to read and critique that we’ve worked hard to complete.

Sometimes we do it thinking that we’re on the right track; sometimes we do it when we’re asking for it.

Writing

In the latter case, I’d say that it’s not so scary – we’re asking for critique. In the former, isn’t it a bit more challenging when we get that criticism?

That is, isn’t it harder to deal with the criticism that comes on to something we thought we were doing right?

Of course. Does that mean we should stop sharing our code? No way.

Tips For Daily Blogging (And How To Garner Blog Post Ideas)

October 12, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

Like anyone who blogs are regular intervals, be it a few times a week to daily, I’m asked how I write daily. In short, I wish I had a simple recipe to explain how to do it.

But I think this is something unique to every person.

Sure, I think people should write daily even if they aren’t publishing their content on a blog. I believe something happens when you articulate your thoughts via the written word.

You become better at thinking through some of your own opinions.
You get better at presenting ideas to other people even if they will result in a debate.
You reason through your own convictions for why you feel the way you do about a given topic.

Sure, this sounds a little silly when talking about writing about development. It’s not, though.

Our field is one that’s built on the idea of logic and having things work in a logical and efficient manner. It’s important to make sure that our reasons for why we do the things we do have been reasons through, as well.

But I’ll talk more on that in a moment.

Instead, back to the original question: How does one get into the habit of daily blogging?

Using Third-Party Code Is Not Immature

October 9, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

One aspect of growing in a career in development is knowing when to write your own code and when to use the work of others.

So many libraries available via others work.

This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but when we start out it’s like we want to roll everything on our own. I don’t know if it’s because we want to prove to our employer, our clients, or ourselves we can do it. Maybe it’s a mix of the two or maybe we just welcome the challenge.

Maybe it’s all the above.

Whatever the case, we’ll eventually work on larger projects and eventually become more specialized. That is, we’ll identify what we need to write and where we can use an existing library.

When Offering Programming Advice

October 6, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

A few weeks ago, I shared a post in which I walked readers through how to achieve something within the context of WordPress. It essence, it was programming advice.

Programming Advice

The post was received okay, though it wasn’t without its [valid] set of criticism (which I’ll address later). Luckily, most of the people who responded did so via comments and emails explaining why they took issue with part of the code, and how they would go about addressing it were they having to solve a similar problem.

Not everyone was like that (and they never are). Instead, if you share any code of any type in any fashion with anyone you’re likely to get some type of response reading something like

It’s okay, but it’s not how I would do it.

The problem with statements like this – especially for those who want to get better at what they’re doing – is it implies there’s a better way, but the way isn’t offered up as a solution.

Bummer.

Keeping Separate Files for Ajax in WordPress

Showing Poor Source Code

Tips For Daily Blogging (And How To Garner Blog Post Ideas)

Using Third-Party Code Is Not Immature

When Offering Programming Advice

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