Category: Articles (Page 208 of 258)

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

Developers Need Help Marketing WordPress Themes

January 15, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

If you hang around the WordPress Community long enough (that is, those people who are involved in working on WordPress or building something on WordPress in some way), you’ll notice that we all have a tendency to aim to build the best thing possible – whatever that may be.

At least, that’s what we claim to be doing.

And I’m just as guilty of this as the next person.

But let’s face it: developers need help marketing WordPress themes. Perhaps designers do, too. And let’s not forget plugins or other add-ons.

Basically, I think that we get so involved with the community of which we’re a part, we forget about the market and the terms in which they think. We’re busy trying to help one another other, perhaps even impress one another, and even working to try to out-do each other (I mean, come on, that is competition, right?), that we end up marketing our products in the same way every single time.

And you know what I’m talking about.

Officially Partnering with Envato and WordPress

January 13, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

For the past several years, I’ve contributed a number of articles and premium tutorials to Envato specifically around WordPress.

The content has ranged from topics such as Strategies For Supporting WordPress Plugins up through my current series on Using WordPress For Web Application Development.

To say that I enjoy contributing code and content to WordPress is an understatement.

To that end, I’m proud to announce that I – or, more specifically, Pressware – is officially partnering with Envato and WPTuts+ in 2014.

My Day-To-Day: Lift App, Part 1

January 10, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

When it comes to my phone, I’m one of those types of people who usually likes to keep a relatively clean home screen (and I even use folders in order to make sure I only have one home screen so I don’t have to swipe, but that’s fodder for an entirely other post).

Of course, this means that I keep myself relatively limited on the applications that I have installed and that I use. I’m not one for much having anything more than what I need when it comes to my phone.

Sure, I have just a small set of applications that are fun – who doesn’t? – but the majority of the applications on my phone serve a very distinct purpose for helping me get things done.

And one of the latest apps that I’ve been trying out recently is Lift App.

Granted, I’m one of those who’s willing to give each application a fair shake for about a month, so this may-or-may-not still be installed later this year, but so far, I’m really digging it.

WordPress Theme Development: Know Your Customer – The Blogger

January 9, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

When it comes to WordPress theme development, one or the areas that developers often find themselves wrestling with is just how verbose they should make their code.

For example, we’re often taught and strive from principles such as DRY and KISS, but it’s hard to maintain both of these when building WordPress themes from the ground up.

For example (and as according to the Codex):

At the very minimum, a WordPress Theme consists of two files:

– style.css

– index.php

And for anyone who has done extensive work in WordPress development knows this to be true; however, if you’re getting into theme development – that is, specifically for bloggers, or digital publishers – then you know there’s a wide variety of templates that are also supposed by the WordPress Template Hierarchy.

To name a few:

style.css
rtl.css
editor-style.css
archives.php
author.php
category.php
comments.php
date.php
index.php
single.php
tag.php
…and so many more

But here’s the deal: it’s nearly impossible to embrace DRY while simultaneously trying to implement each of these templates.

Instead, we’re left with having to repeat a variety of code all the while doing so when much of the code could be produced though template parts and conditional logic.

Though I’m sure we all fall somewhere in between on this issue, he’s where I’ve landed with respect to the various themes that I’ve developed over the last couples of years.

WordPress Settings API Wrapper? No Thanks.

January 8, 2014 / Tom / 0 Comments

From time to time, I end up having conversations with other developers about the state of the WordPress Settings API, whether or not there should be wrappers for it, and/or how the current API can be improved.

Each time the conversation begins, it generally stems from the fact that the Settings API is confusing, can be very intimidating to work with the first time, and it’s not as intuitive as some of the other WordPress APIs.

As with anyone who’s worked with WordPress long enough, I have my own opinions about this – and this is certainly not a “patches welcome” post – because this has been already been discussed at great length on Trac.

Instead, this is nothing more than my general stance on the WordPress Settings API, and how I see wrappers fitting into the scope of overall WordPress Development.