Tag: WordPress (Page 41 of 220)

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

The WordPress Developer’s Guide to MySQL Data Reconstruction

April 26, 2018 / Tom

At some point in every developer’s career, there is going to be a time where you do something that tanks production.

Maybe you’ll push code that ends up busting a cache that serves data to millions of people,
Perhaps you’ll update an application and end up blowing away information that’s not backed up,
Or maybe you’ll push a change that “works on your machine” but completely hoses the source control repository.

And there are plenty of other examples. I’m sure you can quickly name five more yourself.

I’ve committed (pun intended, sort of) my fair share of all of the above but one of the things that I see from people working in our space.

That is, those who work with database-backed web applications – is the lack of understanding of database organization at the file system level and how it is possible to reconstruct data even when you don’t have a standard backup off of which to work.

In this post, I’m going to take a deep dive into MySQL database organization at the file system level, how you can restore information from that versus a backup file should you find yourself in that situation, and provide references (or bookmarks) should you need them.

Learn The New Thing! (Wait, Not So Fast)

April 24, 2018 / Tom

One of the things that I dig about the software development industry (others, too, but this is where we are, right?) is that it requires some degree of constant learning.

For some, that can induce a level of fatigue. And I get it because I’ve felt it. I don’t know if it’s an age thing (I’m not old, yet, but there’s a lot to be said from going from just yourself into an apartment into a house and a family, but I digress). I think that comes with a bit of thrashing is continually trying to keep up with every new thing that comes out.

The thing is that the further I get into my career, the less I’m interested in the learning The New Thing the moment it’s released.

Remember when this was The New Thing?

And I say this knowing full well it’d be easy to dismiss what I have to say since I’ve written on going deep rather than wide with technology.

But this is a bit different.

A Short-Guide to Changing Valet’s Top-Level Domain

April 19, 2018 / Tom

For years, developers have used the dev top-level domain as a way to work with local development versions of their projects.

But Google changed all of that last year.

If you’re interested in reading a bit more into this, check out the post by Justin from WebDevStudios does a good job of going into some of the details (as does this post via Daryl Koopersmith – previously working on WordPress, now working at Medium).

But for this post, I’m trying to keep it short and pragmatic. So, the former is this:

If you’re using HTTPS and a dev domain on your local machine, it’s likely going to stop working. Yes, you can add an exception with some browsers, but not all.

Changing Valet's Top-Level Domain: Firefox Security Exception

If you’ve read this blog for any particular length of time, then you know that I’m a fan of using Valet as part of my local development environment. Part of doing that means that I also secure the local sites to simulate, as much as possible, but staging and production are going to be like.

By default, Valet uses dev as it’s top-level domain, so how do we change that? Luckily, it’s pretty easy.

Customizing the WordPress Administration Menu (For User Experience)

April 9, 2018 / Tom

For some projects, there are going to be times where there’s not a lot of new stuff to explore, you know? You get the requirements, you know how to solve the problems, and then you move forward with building the solution.

Then other projects that come your way and though you may not know how to do them at the beginning of the project, you know you’ll be able to do so programmatically because if it’s written in code, it’s going to be possible.

And the more you become familiar with a given set of tools or platform (like WordPress), then the more likely you are to “think in terms” of that platform, right?

Perhaps one case in point is working with the administration menu in WordPress. When it comes to projects that others build, I don’t know if they aim to create as positive experience on the front-end as the back-end, but I think it’s import to consider the entire application as an experience for the user.

Customizing the WordPress Administration Menu

And that’s why when it comes to little things – even the menu, for example – that it’s important. But what do I mean by that?

How To Remove Special Characters from Permalinks

March 27, 2018 / Tom

Whenever you’re working with WordPress and third-party APIs, there’s always a chance that you’re going to run into issues where the third-party API is not prepared to handle certain characters that exist in a permalink.

Depending on one’s permalink settings, though, this may or may not be an issue. For example, you may have your permalinks set to something like ?p=123 for each post. In that case, it’s not much of an issue.

But if you’re using “pretty permalinks” and your permalink includes something like a trademark symbol or a copyright symbol, then it may cause problems whenever you’re communicating with said third-party API.

The WordPress Developer’s Guide to MySQL Data Reconstruction

Learn The New Thing! (Wait, Not So Fast)

A Short-Guide to Changing Valet’s Top-Level Domain

Customizing the WordPress Administration Menu (For User Experience)

How To Remove Special Characters from Permalinks

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