Category: Articles (Page 201 of 258)

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

Dealing with Custom Post Types, Taxonomies, and Permalinks

March 31, 2014 / Tom

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

One of the most confusing aspects of working with WordPress is managing its rewrite rules. For anyone who has taken a dive into the Rewrite API and looked at how it works, and how to customize it to fit your own needs can vouch for this.

Honestly, if you’ve ever done any work with custom post types, taxonomies, and permalinks and worked with the rewrite parameter (or perhaps have left it out), then you’ve experienced a little bit of the confusion (or frustration, perhaps) that can come with it.

For those who have been wrestling specifically with the latter, I wrote up a short guide for making sense of this occasionally confusing aspect of WordPress.

Bug Ticket Triage for WordPress Themes

March 26, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things that I try to do with my projects is to create quick, iterative releases. When it comes to client work, I’ve made a lot of progress with this over the past year; however, when it comes to working on products (be it plugins, themes, or something similar), I’m not as good as I’d like to be.

Nonetheless, I’m still working on it and one of the ways in which I’m trying hard to focus on that is through creating a system of bug ticket triage.

Sounds all fancy, right?

Sounds fancy.

It’s not :).

Basically, it’s a way that I sort tickets as they come into the support channel and decide how I’m going to be resolving them according to their level of severity.

Though I don’t think there’s a definitive way to do this, I thought it might be worth sharing how I’ve been doing this with Mayer (as well as some other client projects) in order to try to create the leanest release experience possible.

Are You the Smartest Person in the Room?

March 24, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

Recently, I heard a quote that has stuck with me. I can’t remember word-for-word how it was used, but the paraphrase is:

If you’re the smartest person in the room, then you need to find another room.

It sounds a little weird (and potentially even a little offensive) without knowing the context.

In short, it was said during a conversation about leadership and the importance of surrounding yourself with other smart people (well, smarter people), knowing that just because you may be the first person at a place doesn’t make you the smartest, and not being afraid to ask for insight, criticism, and advice in a variety of areas.

The topic had nothing to do with programming, development, or anything remotely close to that; however, I’ve been thinking about not only how it relates to this particular industry, but how it relates directly to me and my career.

What Is a Developer, Anyway?

March 18, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

In the comments of a previous post, some commenters and myself began talking about the idea how the term “developer” is overloaded – that is to say, what is a developer, anyway?

Now, more than ever, when we have a culture that’s aiming to get more and more people learning to code than ever before, and when we have more technologies with which people can write code (and I do mean any kind of code – anything from HTML to assembly), we’re also paving the way for so many people to call themselves a developer [of sorts].

And you know how it goes: If everyone is a developer, then no one’s a developer. Yes, that’s a little trite. Perhaps a better way to say it that: if everyone is a developer, then everyone must develop the same type of things.

And those in technology know that that could not be further from the truth.

Should There Be Developer Documentation for WordPress Themes?

March 17, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

For anyone who has been involved with building and/or supporting WordPress themes, then it can’t be understated how important documentation for WordPress themes can be for customers.

Generally speaking, this type of documentation refers to a manual that walks users through how to use a theme, it’s various features, and so on. I think it’s hard to argue that this is something that should be made available for everyone, or, at the very least, for those who have purchased the theme (of course, having a freely available manual can also serve as a marketing resource, but I digress).

But one thing that I don’t think talked about very often is if there should be developer documentation for WordPress themes.