Tag: WordPress (Page 101 of 219)

Articles, tips, and resources for WordPress-based development.

Running a Business in Technology, Part 2

April 28, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Yesterday, I started a recap of the talk that I gave at WordCamp San Diego 2016 in which I discussed what it’s like to be running a business in technology.

The Beaches of La Jolla

If you haven’t read the article, the general points were:

Technology drives our business
We should elegantly solve problems
This helps us; This helps our users

And that was the first part. The second half deals with how actually to keep up with technology, especially as it changes seemingly every single week.

This part of the talk focused on those who are managers of developers, those who are developers managed by someone else, and those who are self-employed.

Running a Business in Technology, Part 1

April 27, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Running a business in technology can be a challenging thing especially if you have a background in technology.

No, it’s not that I elevate those in technology above anyone else in any other field, but it’s that I know this field, and I know the challenges that come with how we may want to implement solutions versus how others may want the solution implemented.

Talking about running a business at WCSD. Photo Credit to @damiensam.

In a sense, we have to balance a level of pragmatism with what we’re delivering to the business and with how we may want to engineer the final solution. At the same time, we have to do this while keeping up with the changing landscape of technology.

At WordCamp San Diego, I spoke with Personal Growth – Running a Business and Keeping up with Changing Technology. In this post and the one following, I’ll be discussing some of the points outlined in that presentation.

A WordPress Plugin Bootstrap File

April 19, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

The longer I work with building custom solutions for others in the form of WordPress plugins, the more I am a fan of having a WordPress plugin bootstrap file.

Honestly, this isn’t anything new, but it’s something I like to discuss periodically because the methods in which we build plugins, the ways posts can become outdated, and the strategies that we employ as we get better at what we do for a living change over time.

At least I hope they do. If you’re doing the same thing now that you were three or four years ago, then you’re a stellar developer. Or you haven’t grown that much. :)

But that’s content for another post.

When it comes to the work I do for others, the work is primarily in the creating plugins (which I enjoy building). So it’s only natural that I’d have things to add continually to this topic, right?

Installing WP-CLI with MAMP

April 13, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

About four years ago, I shared a post about WP-CLI. It wasn’t exactly a new project at the time, but it was far less developed than it is now.

The WP-CLI Homepage

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, one of the things that we’re doing with is making sure that all of our work is unit tested from the initial version.

And when it comes to unit testing in PHP, many of us are familiar with PHPUnit; however, when it comes to unit testing plugins that are integrated with WordPress, it helps to have a test environment set up.

Sure, it’s possible to set aside a test database, test content, and then defined mock objects based on interfaces (and I’m not here to dissuade anyone from doing that). But WP-CLI offers a much easier way to go about doing just that in a more automated manner.

But first, it’s important to make sure that it’s correctly installed on your system.

Improve Your WordPress Skills with Hookr.io

April 8, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the most important things you can do to improve your WordPress skills is to learn all about WordPress hooks. If you’ve spent any time looking through code, trying to write a plugin, or referencing the Codex then you likely know:

Hooks are provided by WordPress to allow your plugin to ‘hook into’ the rest of WordPress; that is, to call functions in your plugin at specific times, and thereby set your plugin in motion.

Yes, I think it’s important to understand the event-driven design pattern. And it’s one thing to have a comprehensive list of everything that’s available regardless of if it’s an action or a filter but it’s another thing to actually see it action.

Given that we all have different learning styles, sometimes I think having a reference is only one way to go about learning how to leverage the system. Another way would be to use a plugin like Hookr.