Category: Articles (Page 226 of 255)

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

My Day-To-Day: Inbox Zero, Revisited

June 28, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

A couple of months ago, I shared my strategy for trying to get to inbox zero. In short, I mentioned the following points:

I think that trying to get to inbox zero is a myth at worst, and a slippery slope at best
I outlined my strategy for dealing with email on a daily basis
I talk about the software I use as well as various things such as newsletters, after hours, etc.

Since that post, I’ve changed up my strategy a little bit and since email seems to be a common issue for everyone with – well, y’know – an inbox, I thought I’d share what I’m currently doing to manage my inbox.

Help Scout Workflows — An example of a Help Scout Email

Using Help Scout For WordPress Support

June 27, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

A few months ago, I wrote about Finding The Right WordPress Support System in which I laid out my points for what I’d look for in a support system. The post ended up generating a lot of really good feedback, and – as of last week – I officially chose Help Scout as my WordPress support system.

Obviously, it’s been about three months since I originally published that post so I clearly took my time (read: evaluated services after the responsibilities of my day job) deliberating on which service I to use.

As with any more decision, there were a number of factors that contributed to this decision.

The Truth About Building Premium WordPress Plugins

June 26, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Earlier this week, I was talking with a fellow developer about building premium WordPress plugins (though this is true for any premium WordPress product) and he simply remarked:

It is amazing how much work goes into a single premium plugin.

Nothing profound, sure, but there’s a lot of truth to it, and I periodically get emails asking what all should one expect when it comes to building and releasing free and/or premium WordPress products.

With that said, here are some of my thoughts on all of the above.

The Great Expectations of Modifying WordPress Themes

June 20, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Earlier this week, I was talking with Chris – our product midwife at 8BIT – about the differences in expectations between engineers, developers, designers, tweakers, and end users when it comes to modifying WordPress themes.

I started my career in software engineering – specifically, I used to work in .NET followed by Ruby on Rails – as well as object-oriented programming before moving into fulltime WordPress development.

And you know what they say: Old habits die hard.

Did someone say “die hard?”

Case in point: ask my team what I did when I first became the lead developer of Standard. I spent more time yanking out template code, abstracting it into `functions.php` and a collection of other files all of which would make sense to someone comes from a different background, but not WordPress.

And here I am, years later, where I’m significantly more familiar with “the WordPress-way” (even writing blog posts on Coding Standards and various APIs even) and there are still issues to be solved around this very issue.

My Second Post on Medium: Do For One

June 19, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

A few years ago, one of the most profound and influential pieces of advice that I’ve heard is the following:

Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.

The thing about hearing things like this is that it always lands in different places with different people. Like I said, for me, it’s ended up being something that’s profoundly influenced certain things in my life; however, for others, statements like that don’t land anywhere near a point of significance.

And that’s okay – if we were all influenced and persuaded by the same things, we’d all be doing the same things and that’d make for a boring world.

But for those of you who have been following this blog, read some of my other contributing articles, or seeing what we’re currently working on at 8BIT you know that education is a big interest, and is important to me.

So in my second post on Medium, I attempt to explain something that I’m currently working on that jives with the statement above.