Tag: WordPress (Page 136 of 220)

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

Is There a Lack of Integrity in WordPress?

March 12, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

A few years ago, I was working on a WordPress theme that had some really cool features (if I can say that without sounding as if I’m bragging). The features were brainstormed by a team and gathered through feedback through a number of customers and users, and all were implemented over a long period of time.

When the time came to actually release the theme, it proved to be worth it – it was well-received.

As with any product, we then went into maintenance mode doing the usual round of fielding bug reports, features requests, and so on, and then continued maintaining the product with periodic releases in order to provide bug fixes, minor feature updates, and so on.

Generally speaking, it was great. There was a lot to be proud of and things were going well.

But, as with anything, things couldn’t continue on the up and up forever and during one of the releases, I neglected to remove a line of code that was intended only for the development environment.

We shipped it.

And it negatively affected all of the customers who applied the update.

The Versions of WordPress and PHP

March 11, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the biggest challenges that comes with working with PHP and WordPress is determining which version of PHP to use.

From the WordPress.org Requirements page:

PHP version 5.2.4 or greater (recommended: PHP 5.4 or greater)

With respect to PHP, a lot has changed between 5.2.4 and 5.4. And the problem, for developers, usually comes down to something like this:

If we opt to stick with the oldest supported version then we have the largest audience appeal, but if we stick with newer versions then we get some nice, new features in the language but at the expense of certain hosts.

So when it comes to WordPress and PHP, what do we do?

Speaking at WordCamp Atlanta 2015

March 9, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

This year, WordCamp Atlanta is going to take place March 27th – March 29th and I’m really looking forward to it.

WordCamp Atlanta 2015

As it has been for the last few years, the event is going to be held at The Loudermilk Center in downtown Atlanta.

Two Take Aways From Jason Schuller’s Pickle Project

March 5, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

Earlier this week, WP Tavern wrote up an excellent piece on Jason Schuller’s newest project, Pickle.

I’ve ended reading over the article (and the comments) a number of times because I think there are some really, really great though as it relates to using WordPress as an application platform.

Jason Schuller’s Pickle Theme Re-Imagines WordPress as an Invisible CMS

This is something that I’ve talked about a number of times and it’s something that I really want to see happen more and more in the future; however, this is one of the first times that I’ve really seen someone take WordPress, use it as a foundation for solution that’s built towards a specific market, and then articulated it in such a way that does a great job of expressing what exactly it means for WordPress to be an application platform.

Using Transients For Storing Google Maps Data

March 3, 2015 / Tom / 0 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I shared a quick tip on working with multiple InfoWindows with the Google Maps API specifically within the context of WordPress.

Google Maps InfoWindow

When working with this API, there are a number of considerations to take into account each of which is going to depend on how much of the API you’re going to be using; however, one constant that’s going to remain regardless of how much you’re using is the rate limit.

That is, unless you’ve paid Google a decent chunk of change, then you’re going to have to take rate limiting into account whenever you’re working with this API. And if you’re charting quite a few locations for, say, several different pages or several searches, then you can hit that limit quickly.

If you’re not at the point where you can pay Google to up the rate limit, but you’d like to still make sure your project doesn’t totally bomb out if the rate limit is hit, then I recommend using transients to store Google Maps data for an interval of time so that you aren’t making frequent calls to the API.
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