Category: Articles (Page 147 of 258)

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

The Perfect WordPress Host (It Doesn’t Exist)

September 17, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

Trying to find the perfect WordPress host is not an easy task. There are a lot of options out there – which is actually really cool compared to where we were just a few years ago.

Personally, I’ve shopped around, I’ve tried a bunch of them, some I’ve loved, some I’ve liked, some I’ve never left.

I was literally just telling a friend I have a propensity to try new hosts when come to market and have been established for a little while even to my own detriment.

January

I try wait for others to test the waters, then I’ll jump in. You know, it’s the whole “Come on in, the water’s fine” sorta thing. Sometimes I do better than others.

Really, the only conclusion I’ve been able to draw from trying out all of the options available is there is no perfect WordPress host.

You Should Be Budgeting Your Business

September 16, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

A little while ago, I started writing about self-employment and some of the things I’ve experienced. Note, however, that none of the things I’m sharing are aiming to be advice.

I mean, I’m not saying “this is what you should do if you’re working for yourself” or anything like that. Instead, I’m offering my thoughts on things I’ve done, why I’ve done it, and if it’s something that works for you, great; if not, that’s no big deal.

A little over a month ago I talked about how accounting – specifically as it relates to taxes – is one of the best things I’ve done since working for myself. It’s freed up so much time, simplified things so much, and taken a major burden off of my plate so I can focus on the core of what I’m trying to do.

But there’s another side or a sibling or a cousin or whatever family member you want to use to account and that’s budgeting.

Custom CSS in WordPress (Does It Conflict with Child Theming?)

September 15, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

From a developer’s standpoint, I have mixed feelings about having a built-in editor for editing custom CSS in WordPress. On one hand…

It’s a really easy way to make quick changes to the theme you have installed so you get the changes you want.
Then again, it also completely bypasses and defeats the entire child theme process.

As I’ve tried to think this through, I realize each serves a different purpose I’ll try to explain in a moment, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder if it makes things for difficult for users or more difficult for other developers than necessary.

Sounds weird, I know. But hear me out.

Maybe I’m Over Commenting Code (Are You?)

September 14, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with a friend and a fellow developer about code, clarity, and generally over commenting code (how meta, I know).

The following statement was made about some of the code I write – and before I share it, I take no offense to this whatsoever. I dig these kind of discussions between peers.

Truth be told, I kind of agree with it.

I’m definitely less comment-y than you

When it comes to commenting code, I’m pretty verbose. This means I try to DocBlock everything from the server-side code to the the JavaScript and even add code blocks to my Sass (or even vanilla CSS) code.

Furthermore, I’ll comment on blocks of code that are used throughout my functions even though they may be only, say, 15 – 20 lines long.

This used to be something I constantly debated about myself, but I’ve stopped with it and accepted this is how I write code.

Ajax in WordPress: A Strategy For Error Codes

September 9, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

If you're reading this post in an RSS reader, don't forget to click on the "gist" link to see the code for the post.

In the previous post, I talked through the basics of setting of Ajax in WordPress on both the server-side and the client-side and how we can echo statements back to the client-side and why this is useful.

Ajax in WordPress: Error Codes

What I didn’t cover, though, was why this is important and how we can take advantage of it for gracefully handling any errors that occur throughout our code.

Whenever you’re dealing with a number of different variables such as user input, values of input fields, talking to the database, and network connections, there are a number of places in which the request and/or the response can fail.

And in those cases, we need to be able to make sure our project handles the situation well so we’re able to diagnose the problem and so our users aren’t left wondering what went wrong.