Category: Articles (Page 221 of 257)

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

How To Move Your WordPress Database

September 5, 2013 / Tom

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

Last month, I shared my process for performing WordPress-based site migrations. For the record, this process is the one I prefer and that I’ve found best in my day-to-day work, but it’s not necessarily perfect for everyone.

So there are obvious alternatives some of which may work better for you than others.

In my latest serious on Tuts+, I’ve got a three part series that will walk you through how to move your WordPress database.

Why I Prefer To Use Hungarian Notation

September 3, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

When it coms to dynamic programming languages such as PHP and JavaScript, one of the things that people often debate is the use of hungarian notation.

Like most things with programmers, the debate can easily become something that resembles a religious argument. The debate normally hits on the following two points:

You shouldn’t have to use Hungarian Notation – the context of your code should provide enough information.
You should use Hungarian Notation – it helps with readability of the code.

For whatever it’s worth, I prefer to use Hungarian Notation. And though I’m not exactly one who elevates things to a heated debate, I’ve found as much as I’d like context to provide me with enough information, I don’t always see this as being the case in projects.

My Day-To-Day: Using Reminders To Get Things Done

August 30, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Earlier this year, I talked about how I use Things to help get things done. Since that post, a few things have changed.

As I alluded to last week, I’ve been purging a lot of stuff in my online life in an attempt to greatly increase the signal to noise ratio such that I’ve really only got the things I need to get done (or things that I enjoy doing) in order to make sure that I am as focused as can be with as few distractions as possible.

One of the transitions that I’ve been working on in the last few months is migrating my “Getting Things Done” model from Things to Apple’s Reminders application.

Optimizing WordPress on Media Temple DV

August 29, 2013 / Tom

I am no longer using Media Temple as my web host, so comments have been closed.

Though it’s typically applied to software, I tend to apply the YAGNI mentality to other things, as well. That is to say that I’d rather wait and upgrade when I need something rather than pay for something that I may never need.

Case in point: A couple of weeks ago, I outgrew my current host and needed to upgrade so I ended up going with Media Temple DV hosting.

In most shared hosting environments, you use whatever configuration they give you; however, because of the nature of the DV environment, the server is completely yours. That means that you’re responsible for tweaking Apache, PHP, and MySQL to make sure that it’s working best for your needs.

So what would a migration to a VPS environment be without a little bit of tweaking?

WordPress Project Management: Delivering Features

August 28, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

If you’re responsible for heading up a project be it for your team, your company, or even yourself, then odds are you can’t help but think in terms of milestones or features.

Honestly, if you’re working on something for yourself, this may not be as big of an issue, but if you’re working in the context of any larger environment in which you’re responsible for delivering a solution to a client, then there are a variety of ways that you may divide up the project in order to get provide some rhythm of delivery.

Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to work on larger projects in which I’ve had the ability to spend time thinking and experimenting with WordPress project management as it relates to delivering features (or milestones, to most of us), and I thought it’d be worth sharing here if for no other reason than to get others’ opinions on the two approaches.