Category: Projects (Page 5 of 33)

Posts introducing, updating, and covering various projects to which I’ve contributed or that I maintain.

Blogging Plugins: Better Blogging With WordPress

February 5, 2018 / Tom

Every now and then I end up having to call a few false starts on projects. Sometimes it’s scheduling, sometimes it’s because I realize that I didn’t do a good enough job coming up with what I wanted to do, and sometimes it’s simply because something else has come up.

Case in point: Pressware Plugins.

If you go back and read the post (which I don’t think is necessary), you’ll see that the goal was simple: To create a better blogging experience.

For me, the challenge was to identify exactly what that’d look like, how the business model would work, and how would it translate for those who are already people who use WordPress but in a variety of capacities.

So I pulled back, re-evaluated, and have been talking with others for quite some time now about refocusing the idea. And thus comes Blogging Plugins.

Scheduled Post Shortcut 1.4.1 Now Available

November 22, 2017 / Tom

Scheduled Post Shortcut is arguably my least popular plugins. That is, has an extremely low number of downloads based on what few number of analytics I have.

Scheduled Post Shortcut 1.4.1

Regardless, it’s one that I use (I mean, I technically wrote it for myself) and there are those who use the plugin if they write with any sort of regularity – whatever that may be for them.

However, it’s been brought to my attention by a number of people who joined up as members that they saw an error message in their dashboard whenever they logged into the site.

No good, right?

So as I head into the holidays, I wanted to get a quick fix for this out as a “thank you” to those who use it and for those who reported the error and who have signed up to join the site.

Adding Featured Mobile Images via CMB2

June 28, 2017 / Tom

The other day, I shared how to add your WordPress plugin to Packagist. In the post, I mention that I did this with a recent project though I didn’t go into any detail about it. In short, the purpose of the plugin is to make it easy to add featured mobile images to WordPress.

For those who are familiar with CMB2, then you know it’s often used as a way (if not the way) for many developers to incorporate custom meta boxes into WordPress. And for the requirements on a project, I needed to introduce the ability to have a mobile featured imaged.

So to gain experience with creating a CMB2-based plugin and to learn how to use Packagist, I thought I’d use the project as an opportunity to do both.

Simple Autoloader for WordPress Projects

June 21, 2017 / Tom

Earlier this year, I gave a talk at WordCamp Atlanta about Namespaces and Autoloading.

These are two topics that, even though we can’t often use some of the native features of PHP7+ in our work, I think that many of us should be using in our plugin development.

Sometimes though, I think the problem is that developers lack the time, resources, or experience to know where to start understanding autoloaders let alone write their own.

And I want to fix that.

For some time now, I’ve been using a very simple autoloader in my projects. It’s served me well, but I think it could it be more powerful and I think it’s something that others could easily use in their projects, too.

So I’ve started a repository that offers a simple autoloader for WordPress. No, it’s not for WordPress core nor is it meant to be used with themes, but it’s for those who want to begin using autoloading in their WordPress plugins and similar projects.

Where Do I Start With WordPress? (An Upcoming eBook)

March 3, 2017 / Tom

A little over a year ago, I launched my first membership site which I called The First Version.

The idea behind the name wasn’t anything clever – it was the first time I’d tried something like this, it was the first version of the site, so the name was something that was quick and easy to register and set up.

Then, for the second iteration of the site, I called it Start Here under the idea of answering the question “where do I start with WordPress?”

The original “Start Here” landing page.

Anyone who has jumped into WordPress and begun to develop (or begun to try to develop) themes, plugins, applications, or any other type of solution for others knows that it can be difficult to know where to start.

Rather than offering another closed membership site, I’m going to be publishing an eBook called Start Here which still aims to answer “where do I start with WordPress” but does so in an easier and cheaper format.