Software Engineering in Web Development, Backend Services, and More
Personal opinions and how-to’s that I’ve written both here and as contributions to other blogs.
Introducing Ajax in the WordPress Dashboard is a relatively easy thing to do as WordPress provides a standard set of steps to follow. Unfortunately, it’s not always done correctly.
In my latest set of articles over at WPTuts+, I give a Primer on Ajax in the WordPress Dashboard. Continue reading
I’ve shared my thoughts on WordPress as an application framework, but I think that simply making a case for how the core application can be used for web applications isn’t enough to help others see that it’s a viable platform.
Lately, I’ve had several conversations with others who are skeptical (and rightly so). Themes are often viewed as “skins” for WordPress and plugins are often viewed as little ways to add new features to a blog. If anything, I’d say that one could make a stronger case for plugins being software rather than themes.
But to a point, I disagree. There are several reasons why I think both WordPress themes and plugins are software.
In June, I wrote a three part series for Envato called Introduction To WordPress Unit Testing. The series provided an overview of how to configure local environment for tests and how to begin writing basic tests.
Last month, I continued to discuss the topic by giving a case for why unit testing is important in WordPress.
For years, I’ve been using PayPal and although I don’t hate the service as much as many (in fact, I have very few complaints), I really dig Stripe for its simplicity, design, and ease of integration.
On top of that, I’ve used it in a variety of client projects but I’ve never actually done anything with it myself.
But this past weekend, I finally had the opportunity to integrate Stripe into a page on my site, and I used the WP-Stripe plugin by Noel Tock.
This morning, I tweeted the following:
for an example of #wordpress plugin interface design done right, see @noeltock's work on wp stripe. http://t.co/lAetjqot
— Tom McFarlin (@tommcfarlin) August 6, 2012
This tweet sparked an excellent conversation in WordPress user interface design.
In this video, DHH – author of Ruby on Rails, partner at 37signals, and one of the developers that I admire most – talks about the idea of a pure programmer and whether or not programming is going to get easier as time progresses.
In the past couple of years, I’ve begun to drastically narrow the focus of my efforts into a few select technologies and there are three things than Hansson says that really hit home with me both as someone who has worked in software for several years and as someone who is now working primarily with open source software.
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