Category: Articles (Page 219 of 258)

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

WP Comment Notes (And What We Can Learn From It)

October 1, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

About a year and a half ago, I released the first version of Single Post Message for WordPress which is a simple plugin specifically for adding a notification at the top of the bottom of a given post.

For whatever it’s worth, it’s one of the plugins I’ve enjoyed creating the most not only because it scratched my own itch, but also because it’s an extremely lean, focused plugin that aims to solve exactly one problem.

The other day, Pippin William tweeted the following:

Good plugin idea for someone: add metabox to edit screen that allows notes to be entered and displayed just above comment form for that post

— Pippin Williamson (@pippinsplugins) September 28, 2013

To which Japh Thomson replied:

@pippinsplugins Sounds like a feature request for @tommcfarlin’s “Single Post Message” plugin: http://t.co/boCu7LdmSO

— Japh (@Japh) September 29, 2013

And to which Andrew Norcross built and responded with:

https://twitter.com/norcross/status/384463729578225664

You can read the entire conversation, but there are three things that I really dig about this particular exchange and the plugin that came out of it. But before discussing those, I think its worth checking out the WP Comment Notes plugin itself.

My Day-To-Day: Taking Notes

September 27, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

When it comes to taking notes, I’m a bit obsessive about it. In fact, I used to carry a notebook with me everywhere – literally – in case any kind of idea, thought, or something I forgot to do (or needed to do) struck me wherever I was.

For me, it wasn’t enough to jot down a note in whatever piece of paper I had available – I needed I make sure I had a “catch all” notebook of sorts. This is a habit that I developed in college (in fact, I actually still have some of those notebooks in a drawer!) and has persisted ever since.

Despite the fact that I don’t think I’ll ever really stop using notebooks, I have been trying to go as digital as possible. Case in point: Not long ago, I shared how I take notes using Bamboo Paper.

But for quick little notes, personal reminders, and ideas, that’s a bit overkill right?

Deep and Wide: The Tension of Software Development

September 26, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the things I talk a lot about both with small groups of friends and during speaking events is the idea of going deep rather than wide.

In the context of software, I’m typically referring to the idea of going extremely deep within the languages and tools that you’re using on a daily basis so that you may become the best developer that you can possibly be in that area.

But there’s a tension that I think most programmers feel and it’s that there are so many neat things out there to learn. Couple that with the fact that others can sometimes make us feel inferior if we don’t know what they know, the tension grows even stronger.

I’m not sure if I’m making much sense.

A Guide To The WordPress Theme Customizer

September 24, 2013 / Tom

Comments on are closed on this post so we can keep the discussion on the original articles.

One of the neatest, and nicest features of WordPress (since 3.4) has been the WordPress theme customizer.

In fact, I’m such a fan of it that I think that it has the potential for us to decrease or even remove our theme options pages by giving users all of the tools they need straight in the Theme Customizer.

But as with any new feature or API, there’s a lot to learn and things to understand about how it works, how to implement it in our day-to-day work, and how to use it in place of APIs we previously used.

So in my latest series on WPTuts+, I’m looking at doing exactly that.

My Day-To-Day: Path

September 20, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Earlier this year, I talked a little bit about how I deal with social media during the day-to-day. In that article, I shared that I’m a big fan of Path. In fact, I said this:

Yep – I actually use Path. I know, I know, few do, right? But the thing about Path is that my immediate family and my closest friends all use it so I’m actually able to get the benefit of using that particular application more so than any other.

Months later, I’ve continued to scale back my social media involvement to the point where I’ve killed my Facebook account, I don’t use Instagram or any other social service, but have continued to use Path as they’ve continued to grow their service, and I’ve enjoyed every feature – and the frequency thereof – that they’ve rolled out throughout the year.

At this point, the only two social networks that I’m currently using are Twitter and Path.