Tag: PhpStorm

Adjusting the First PhpStorm Breakpoint

August 25, 2017 / Tom

Often, there are little idiosyncrasies that come with learning anything new. Thus, an IDE is no different.

And when it comes to learning a new IDE and how to use a debugger with it, there can often be small things that need to be adjusted or configured so that they help streamline your development.

For me, it comes with some of the default behavior of Xdebug. That is, if you’ve ever installed a new IDE and set it up to use Xdebug, you’ve likely experienced the behavior of having it start on the very first line of your web server or your application.

And this can be an annoying albeit preventable setting. If you’re using PhpStorm, here’s an easy way to fix it.

An Option for a PhpStorm WordPress Theme

June 19, 2017 / Tom / 0 Comments

Since talking about making the switch to PhpStorm, I’ve gotten feedback:

from “the first thing you need to do is to change your theme,”
to “what’s one of the first things I should learn.”

And I think all of that’s great because the whole point of starting off with a post about PhpStorm in general – as I have with other editors – is simply start from the ground up and show others how I’ve opted to setup my environment.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean that I think that choices I make are the ones others should make. But, at the very least, it gives an idea as to some of the tweaks I’ve made and as to why.

Over time, I’ll get into more technical things that I’ve chosen to do but, for now, I thought talking about the theme – a PhpStorm WordPress Theme, perhaps? – that I’ve been using as a place to start.

PhpStorm for WordPress Development: A Few Reasons

June 13, 2017 / Tom / 0 Comments

Yesterday, I shared this whole little mini-rant about all of the various IDEs I’ve tried (like Coda, Atom, and Visual Studio Code) over the past few years.

i think in the last five years, i’ve covered:

• coda
• atom
• visual studio code

..and probably more. i think it’s worth evaluating 1/6

— Tom McFarlin (@tommcfarlin) June 12, 2017

You can click through to read the whole thing, but this gist of it is that I’ve tried PhpStorm off and on for years, but it was never at a point that I enjoyed using it until the latest release (being 2017.1).

Using PhpStorm for WordPress Development: PhpStorm 2017.1

I think it’s important that if you’re going to be living in an IDE for a long project, let alone the majority of your day, it’s important that…

you’re comfortable,
that you enjoy it,
that it stays out of your way,
and that it helps you get stuff done well.

But if it’s slow and it’s in your way, and the interface is no good, and it’s generally all of the above things are not, then what’s the point of using it? So yes, I’ve been willing to sacrifice some of its power for lighter editors because I didn’t like how it handled certain things.

But that’s not the case anymore.

And originally, this post was going to be about how to achieve something within the context of PhpStorm. But I thought it might be worth doing some type of introductory post as to why I’ve finally started using PhpStorm for WordPress development in my day-to-day, why I’m [finally] enjoying it, and some other resources you may find useful.

Then I’ll get back to my usual “here’s how to do stuff using it” or “here’s how to do something in WordPress” type of posts.