Tag: WordPress (Page 184 of 219)

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

Shipping Software in WordPress (Why Perfection is Unattainable)

July 25, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

One of the blogs that I enjoy following – much like most developers, designers, and techies – is the 37signals blog.

Generally speaking, it’s a great blog to read if you’re into following a company’s philosophy and process, but one of the guys – Nick – shared a great post the other day that struck a chord with me personally as it relates to shipping software especially in the WordPress economy:

Shipping beats perfection.
Be open. Share your work.
Anybody can fix anything.

– Khan Academy’s development mantras are stunningly simple and powerful.

Good stuff, right?

But how exactly does this apply to me (or even others) in the digital publishing space.

Backing Up WordPress To Dropbox

July 19, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

There are a lot of services out there that provide stellar experiences as it relates to backing up your WordPress installation, but one plugin I’ve always been fond of is WordPress To Dropbox.

In short, the plugin is a free plugin with a couple of premium upsells one of which I have found to be completely worth the purchase.

Additionally, this is one way that you can keep costs low for backing up your site if you aren’t able to pay for some of the premium services or if you’re already paying a pretty penny for Dropbox.

Properly Setting Up WordPress Cron Jobs

July 18, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

As it relates to scheduling events in WordPress, there’s a lot of articles that already exist on setting up a WordPress cron job, but – and for what I believe to be a number of reasons – there’s a surprising lack of clarity around the topic.

Of course, I could be wrong – maybe I’ve just been looking in all of the wrong places.

Whatever the case may be, this is something that I’ve been dealing with in a couple of projects, and I thought I’d capture my notes here if, for no other reason, than to reference in the future.

Your WordPress Plugin Idea – What’s The Point?

July 11, 2013 / Tom / 0 Comments

When it comes to coming up with WordPress plugin ideas (or themes or general applications on any platform, for that matter), we all have different ways of going about doing it.

Some of us do it by scratching our own itch, some of us do it by modifying or adjusting an existing project to meet our needs, some of us dream up a random idea, and some of us do all of the above.

But coming up with an idea for a project is only half of it – you’ve also got to determine if your project serves a particular purpose, solves a particular problem, or has a particular use case.

I mean, very few things in this world are created “just because,” right?

Adding PDFs To WordPress Comments with PDF Comments

July 9, 2013 / Tom

This plugin is no longer maintained or available and comments on the post have been closed.

When I first got into WordPress development several years ago, I began experimenting with selling two premium plugins for approximately one year. During that time I learned a lot about what makes or breaks a successful plugin (and what kind of things can seriously drain you from a support perspective).

In fact, I eventually killed both of those projects off because I no longer had the desire to work on them, maintaining the support required more time than I currently had, and I had not really selected the best business model for selling them.

Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time working on client projects, free projects, writing, speaking, and working to build other WordPress-based products.

For those who have been following this blog for some time, you know that I’ve been doing research on WordPress support systems, I’ve been working to rebrand my LLC, and I have been refocusing all of my efforts specifically on WordPress (and dropping support for other platforms, frameworks, etc.).

Today, I’m happy to announce that I’ve recently partnered with the guys at FooPlugins to release my first premium plugin in the past couple of years which makes adding PDFs to WordPress comments a breeze.