Category: Articles (Page 82 of 258)

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

Preparing For Memberships and More

August 8, 2017 / Tom

For the better half of at least a couple of years, I’ve blogged nearly every day of something related to WordPress. This may be something dealing with blogging, speaking, resources, programming, notes, or other various articles.

To say that writing is something I enjoy doing is an understatement, and being able to do it using software I like and on which we build solutions for others is something that isn’t something I don’t take for granted.

For those who read every day, you’ve likely recognized that I’ve not been posting as frequently as I normally do. Part of this is simply because life has gotten extremely busy. The other part of it has to do with what I’m planning to do with this site in the coming weeks.

Debugging WordPress with Valet Error Logs

August 1, 2017 / Tom

I’ve written a number of posts about Valet (here and here) and why I think it’s a solid option when it comes to working as a local web server for WordPress-based development.

Valet Error Logs

It’s easy to setup, it’s got built-in support for WordPress, it uses Nginx (which is often faster than Apache is my experience), and it provides a great way to allow others to tunnel into your machine for testing if that’s something you’re into doing.

But if you’re someone who spends time debugging both through Xdebug and through reading through error logs, then you may be interested in reviewing the Valet error logs (if you can find where they are kept) when debugging your projects.

A Few Thoughts on Team-Based Pragmatism and Engineering

July 31, 2017 / Tom

When it comes to doing any type of development – I don’t care if it’s for the web, for mobile, or for some other platform – there are plenty of books, online courses, and so on that make it incredibly easy to learn whatever it is you want to learn.

To be clear, I’m not knocking any of the ways that are available to learn, either. After all, we all learn in different ways, right? And who am I say which way is better than any other way especially given the fact I write daily about topics here on and on other sites?

But I can definitively say for me – someone who has enjoyed both learning through formal education, tutorials, courses, and so on – the best way to gain experience in this industry has been two fold:

working with other people,
breaking things, and learning how to fix them.

Do I mean doing it in this specific order? Nope. Does this mean I’m leaps and bounds ahead of others? That’s laughable.

But as I have had the pleasure of working with others on multiple projects, talking with others via Twitter, conferences, and so on and experienced both the good and the bad, it’s something I think everyone should have the opportunity to do at some point.

If I had to summarize it, I’d say that it’s about finding a balance of team-based pragmatism and engineering. Why, though, if nothing of the above is new (given software companies have existed for decades) am I bothering to write about this now?

PSR Logging Interface (And Why Logging Matters)

July 27, 2017 / Tom / 0 Comments

Two features of PHP that I believe are often overused when it comes to “debugging” are using echo and var_dump. I’ve talked about this in a few different articles around debugging (like in here and here).

And as much as I am a fan of using a debugger, I think it’s also important to implement a type of logging system so that you or your client can go back and review the activity that’s been happening within the system as they or their users have been, you know, using it.

There are two aspects to doing this, though, especially if you’re looking to following the PSR logging interface and they are:

the rules for the actual logging interface,
a project that properly implements said logging interface.

So why not tackle both in this post?

What Are Programming Side Effects, Anyway?

July 26, 2017 / Tom / 0 Comments

Whenever we talk about certain programming concepts, I think it’s important to take a step back out of whatever specifics we’re discussing and look at things in the context of the bigger picture.

Some modules introduce side effects; some don’t. It’s okay.

For example, yesterday I briefly touched on the idea of programming side effects, but I did so when talking about using PSRs. And for those who are simply interested in aspects of programming in a more general sense, it’s important to understand them, too.

Remember, the idea of side effects as stated in PSR-1 is:

A file SHOULD declare new symbols (classes, functions, constants, etc.) and cause no other side effects, or it SHOULD execute logic with side effects, but SHOULD NOT do both.

In this post, I’m not so interested in discussing logic with side effects (because there are times where side effects will happen). Instead, I’m more concerned with understanding programming side effects (what they are, what to avoid, and so on).

After all, talking about side effects in one context may mean one thing whereas, in programming, it may mean another.