Software Engineering in WordPress, PHP, and Backend Development

Category: Articles (Page 175 of 258)

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

Yes or No To WordPress Frameworks?

Comments are closed on this post. Please leave your comments on the original article.

I don’t know if there’s ever been a time in WordPress-history where we’ve had such a plethora of options from which to choose as it relates to WordPress frameworks.

We have anything from drag-and-drop page builders to code-level abstractions that aim to make it easier to work with a variety of APIs.

But is using a framework always the best idea? Maybe. In my latest article on Envato, I weigh one of the pros and cons of using WordPress Frameworks in order to help determine if this is something that you may want to use or not.

Continue reading

Use Source Control and Diff Tools with WordPress

Every now and then, developers will ask – or will be asked – what is one of the most important things I should learn in order to get involved when writing code?

Obviously, this assumes that the person already knows how to write code, likely knows how to upload a site or compile the source code into an executable or any of that, but maybe they’re looking for something to amp up their development process.

Whatever the case, the rest of this content is for those who have been working with WordPress for a while, but are looking for some additional tools to help improve their development-fu. If you’re an intermediate to an advanced developer, this may not be of much interest.

But for the rest of you, I can’t recommend source control and differential utilities enough when amping up your development.

Continue reading

Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Help

This weekend, a fellow tweep and developer shot me a short question that I think hits home for anyone who’s involved in development regardless of skill level:

Question for you, do you find it hard to ask for help when you get stuck on some code?

Perhaps I should’ve just easily said “Don’t be afraid to ask for help!” but my short, 140-character-or-less answer was:

no. early in my career i did, but not anymore.

But this is one of those things that’s so common for many of us and since Twitter greatly limits just how much we can say (which is a good thing, in some cases), I thought it worth talking a little bit more in-depth about it

Continue reading

Premium or Commercial Themes (Which is it?)

One of the discussions that I’ve seen crop up more than once is the debate as to which should those themes for which we pay be called Premium Themes or Commercial Themes.

Though I personally call them Premium Themes, there have been times in which I’ve casually referred to something as a Commercial Theme. And this is something that we could all debate ad nauseum and probably still not come up with a definitive answer, so I realize the potential futility of writing a post like this, but my curiousity is piqued:

What is the best term to use when talking about themes that much be purchased?

For me, it’s a matter of looking at the basic definitions.

Continue reading

The WordPress Post Editor Doesn’t Suck (Though We Might Be Lazy)

There was a great article written on WP Tavern yesterday entitled Why WordPress Doesn’t Need To Fear Ghost, Yet.

And before I go any further, I want to be absolutely clear that as much as I know that people who are involved in WorPress love a good dramatic story – especially one that involves mudslinging and controversial statements that generate all kinds of fun conversations in comments and on Twitter – this is not one of those stories.

WP Tavern

Don’t read it that way, don’t spin it that way, and don’t try to twist any of the words that are in here as that’s that the purpose of what I’m trying to say.

Instead, this is my take on two of specific topics that were discussed in the article.

Continue reading

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2026 Tom McFarlin

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑