Category: Articles (Page 239 of 258)

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

Everyone Should Learn To Code (Whatever “Code” Means)

March 11, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Last week, the Everyone Should Learn To Code video was making the rounds around the web. If you’ve haven’t seen it, I’ve shared it below.

In short, the video opens with a quote by Steve Jobs:

I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think.

In short, it’s an inspiring video that features some of the most popular technologists discussing their thoughts on programming, their foray into the industry, why others should follow suit.

This idea isn’t new, but the popular nature of this video has really gotten me thinking about my particular stance on this issue. In fact, I read a strong rebuttle to the video last week that – whether or not you agree with it – is a well-written piece.

I shared my candid thoughts with my team on our back channel which resulted in a bit of a discussion primarily between John and myself. The more I’ve thought about it, the more of an opinion I’ve developed, and thought I’d share it here.

TL;DR: I’m not completely sold on the fact that everyone should learn to code. First, I think we need to define what it actually means to code.

A Case Against WordPress Shortcodes

March 6, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

At my recent WordPress Developer Meetup, the topic of shortcodes came up as a point of discusion. When talking about it, I realized that I’ve never actually talked about them here on the blog, so I thought it might be worth bringing up for discussion.

For those of you who have seen any of my plugins, you see that none of them include shortcodes despite the fact that people have requested functionality offered by them.

For the most part, I dislike WordPress shortcodes. I think they are unintuitive, difficult to use for the average user, and go against much of what the core functionality of WordPress aims to offer.

But the challenge is that there’s not yet a suitable alternative.

My Day-To-Day: Managing Social Media

March 5, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

Last week, I wrote about my first Day-To-Day post on Getting Things Done. In the comments, Kevin asked the following question:

Tom, do you schedule time to use Twitter and general interneting or are you able to work with intermittent distractions?

The truth is, I was actually going to include this in the original post, but it was getting a bit long so I thought it made more sense to break it out into a separate post.

TL;DR: I don’t use a Twitter client on my phone, I check in a few times a day, I generally don’t use Facebook, and I use Path for my closest friends and family.

Of course, there’s a bit more to it than that.

Some Thoughts on Building WordPress Plugins

March 4, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

With the exception of Standard and contract projects, I generally don’t build WordPress themes for release.

I tend to favor plugins because I’m attracted to the functionality that they are able to introduce to the core WordPress application and, frankly, I don’t have the design chops required to produce a theme of high enough quality.

Simply put, I try to focus on what I’m good at doing so others can do the same.

Last week, I talked about the problem of offering support for free WordPress plugins, the challenges that I’m currently facing, and ultimately what I’m aiming to do about it.

So in keeping consistent with trying to share my general thought process on both plugin development and moving to a better business model, I thought I’d also share some thoughts on building WordPress plugins. Continue reading

Incorporating The jQuery Date Picker in WordPress

How To Include The jQuery Datepicker in WordPress

February 28, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

In the first quarter of this year, I’ve been working on two client projects both of which have called specifically for incorporating advanced date management into various aspects of WordPress.

Because of various formats, user error, and so on can make working with dates a bit difficult, I’ve always been partial to working with date pickers to make date selection and management a bit easier.

And since WordPress includes both jQuery and jQuery UI, I tend to use the features that are included rather than introducing yet-another-library.

In my latest series on WPTuts+, I walk through the process of how to incorporating the jQuery datepicker in WordPress.