Software Engineering in Web Development, Backend Services, and More

Category: Articles (Page 224 of 258)

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

Software Milestones: Keeping Track of All The Things

One of the challenges that comes with managing any software project is making sure that milestones and deliverables are handled on time. The thing is, it’s hard – from the project outset – to always to predict some of the things that will crop up within each milestone.

If you’re using source control, this can make it difficult to keep your source control in sync with what milestone on which you’re working.

For example, I typically like to work on a milestone, then tag it, and release it. After that, I may do something like `milestone-1.1` or `milestone-1.2` as changes arise, but the more work that arises with each future milestone, and the various impacts it has on previous milestones, the more difficult it can be to truly track each milestone.

So what are we to do?

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The Danger of Third Party APIs

Generally speaking, the majority of the work that I do with third party APIs is done so in the context of WordPress, but the truth is that what I’m about to say is subject to whatever platform you’re work with – be it .NET, Rails, COBOL, or whatever you or your dad maybe using :).

But a feature in Standard recently quit working because of an underlying change in a third party API. Now, to our credit, we normally do a good job with following blogs and release notes when an API is going to change.

In this case, there was no documentation on any of this – something just stopped working, so we needed to dig in and fix it. The fix is under testing and will be released later, but the point that I’m trying to make is that there is always a danger in working with third party APIs.

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WordPress Directories: inc and lib

In the previous post, I spoke briefly about WordPress directories. Specifically, I talked about placing files in an `inc` directory whenever building a theme. This lead to a comment by Richard that I thought was worth covering here:

In the theme folder, sometimes I see people use “lib” to include theme assets and other times I see them use “inc”, as you’ve done here. Is there a reason for one vs the other?

I gave a short response in the comments, but thought that this warranted a longer form explanation to share my perspective, and to hear what you guys have to say, as well.

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Not Everything Can Be a WordPress Plugin

One of the things that I – and most developers, designers, and implementors – love about WordPress is how easy to is to implement new functionality through the use of plugins.

Yes, I’ve shared at length my thoughts on the plugin economy and it’s not coming from a point of disdain. Of course not. It’s coming from a place of appreciating something, wanting to see it being made better, and simply sharing gaps in experience.

But a second thing that I’ve begun to notice is that people want plugins for everything – even things that I believe should remain core business logic.

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Save Time with WordPress Shortcuts

Comments on this post have been closed. Please leave your comments on the original article!

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of being featured on the ManageWP blog with some other fantastic writers, developers, designers, and bloggers all of whom opted to share their favorite WordPress shortcuts, tools, and tricks for getting their work done faster.

Overall, there were 28 people who were featured all of whom had some great things to say.

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