Category: Articles (Page 38 of 258)

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

Time Off 2019: Part 1 of 4 of Social Media Sabbaticals

April 1, 2019 / Tom

It’s been a while since I’ve published anything on a Monday (I don’t know if that’s notable or not but, as I’m writing this, it came to mind 🙃).

But since today officially starts the second quarter of the year it’s that time in which I also opt-out of social media, for the most part, and recap some of the things I’ve done and plan to do over the next month.

For those who haven’t read about this stuff before, you can see what I did last year in the following posts:

Every time I end up taking time off of social media in general, I never regret it. At the same time, I also find new things I want to do during that time.

And, this time, one of the things (among others I’ll discuss in a moment) is I want to work on really slimming down on the number of applications I have installed on my mobile device.

I’m already pretty good with managing my time (thanks to Screen Time and turning off notifications), but I have a good friend who said it like this:

I’m trying to Marie Kondo the number of apps on my phone.

And I liked that. So that’s part of what I’m planning to do over the coming month.

But that’s not all.

Privacy is Hard: Web Browsing

March 28, 2019 / Tom

Two weeks ago, I started talking a bit about my concerns regarding privacy – which may be the same as yours – and decided I’d start running down a list of things that I’m trying, using, and doing to adhere more to privacy-centric software and services.

Here’s the thing though:

what I’m comfortable with using may not be the same for you (and vice versa),
and privacy and security are not terms that I use interchangeably.

Going into this series, I want to make sure I’m working off of a consistent definition of privacy. You can see the whole definition here but for the purpose of these articles, I’m going to be using the following:

Privacy grants us freedom from the public; concealed.

So any service that compromises that definition on any level would be something that violates privacy. Furthermore, it’s hard to find things that are purely private is near impossible so we have to make tradeoffs.

And I’m going to lead with that.

Tools for Writing Better WordPress Code: Introduction

March 26, 2019 / Tom

Over the last few years, I’ve talked a lot about the nature of code quality and various tools, processes, and libraries that I recommend using when it comes to writing code for WordPress.

I’m also open that that majority of the work that I do is in backend development. This means that I work predominately on WordPress plugins using object-oriented programming and don’t work much with templates nor as much with front-end technologies.

It’s by choice, and I’m really happy with where I am. But I digress.

If you’re in the business of doing the same thing (or doing it as a hobby), it’s not just about writing the code. It’s about having proper tooling in place.

I’ve alluded to a few in these in previous posts, but I’ve not walked through the tools I use and the set up I use whenever I’m building a solution for myself or someone else.

At least not in an organized manner.

In this series, I’m going to do exactly that:

I’m going to cover the tools I use, the libraries I use, and how I use them.

Ultimately, the goal is that those of you who read this can incorporate them in your day-to-day work to write better code.

Considerations for Design Patterns for WordPress

March 26, 2019 / Tom

The longer you work with a given platform, the more you begin to recognize certain ways to do something. And it’s very likely that you’ll begin to recognize two things these things can be done:

in a way that’s fast to develop, but harder to maintain or
in a way that’s slower to develop, but easier to maintain.

Of course, like any project, requirements, constraints, budgets, and time are all going to impact what you’re able to implement. But what I’m getting at is that regardless of how you implement a solution, you begin to get familiar for how to solve a given problem.

If a problem has to be solved quickly, then you know the tradeoffs, but you likely know how to do it quickly. Similarly, if you have a little more time (and budget), you can develop it another way, and you’ll know how to do it and possibly even wrap it up with test suites if the constraints allow for that.

Regardless of how you have to implement a solution, you know the ways that you can do it.

And this raises a question:

Are there design patterns specific to a given platform? And if so, what are some of the design patterns that may be available in WordPress?

Including Custom Templates in Our WordPress Plugins

March 21, 2019 / Tom

I think that one of the more underrated aspects – or perhaps one of the rarely discussed aspects of custom plugin development – is the ability to include custom templates in our WordPress plugins.

And, to be honest, I get it: I’m one who is pretty staunch on what should a plugin and what should be a theme.

That is:

themes are for presentation,
plugins are functionality.

If I include templates in a plugin, am I not doing the same thing as when developers include functionality in their themes?

As with so many things in development, I think it depends. I mean, adding a lot of functionality that locks you into a theme is something of which I’m not a fan. Similarly, if you have a plugin that is meant to showcase data on the front-end and is theme agnostic, then it makes sense.

So you have to be judicious in your decisions.

Regardless, there’s a common set of steps we can use when including custom templates in our WordPress plugins.

And that’s what this post is going to show.