Tag: WordPress (Page 57 of 220)

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

Adding Your WordPress Plugin To Packagist

June 26, 2017 / Tom / 0 Comments

When you start adding your WordPress plugins to GitHub, one of the next things you’re likely going to want to do is make it easy for other developers to begin incorporating those packages into their composer.json file.

That is, they don’t have to download your plugin, include it in your project, watch for updates, or anything like that. Instead, they add the file then run:

$ composer update

…whenever they are ready to get the latest version of your work.

But simply contributing your work to GitHub is not enough. You have to submit your WordPress plugin to Packagist (of course, this works with other projects, too, but that’s outside the scope of this blog, really).

And here’s how to do it.

WordPress Plugins I Use (As Of 2017)

June 23, 2017 / Tom / 0 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, an international WordPress-friend of mine, Thorsten Frommnen, tweeted the following asking what WordPress plugins I use (and others use) right now:

https://twitter.com/thorstenfrommen/status/873711220611846144

You’d have to click-through to see the whole thread. I’ve wanted to follow-up with the post for a little while now and just now have the chance.

For what it’s worth, I don’t know if it’s all that interesting to cover all the plugins that I have running. Admittedly, it’s not many (and no, it’s not because I get into the too-many-plugins-slow-down-a-site-debate), but it’s because I just don’t use that many to run this site.

With that said, here’s a rundown of the WordPress plugins I use, why, and where you can get ’em.

Simple Autoloader for WordPress Projects

June 21, 2017 / Tom

Earlier this year, I gave a talk at WordCamp Atlanta about Namespaces and Autoloading.

These are two topics that, even though we can’t often use some of the native features of PHP7+ in our work, I think that many of us should be using in our plugin development.

Sometimes though, I think the problem is that developers lack the time, resources, or experience to know where to start understanding autoloaders let alone write their own.

And I want to fix that.

For some time now, I’ve been using a very simple autoloader in my projects. It’s served me well, but I think it could it be more powerful and I think it’s something that others could easily use in their projects, too.

So I’ve started a repository that offers a simple autoloader for WordPress. No, it’s not for WordPress core nor is it meant to be used with themes, but it’s for those who want to begin using autoloading in their WordPress plugins and similar projects.

WordPress Queries with IN Clauses (Who Knew)?

June 20, 2017 / Tom / 0 Comments

A little over a year ago, I wrote a post on how to use WP_Meta_Query whenever you have a set of keys you want to use to help pull back information from the database.

What about the case, though, when you have a number of different keys that would result in creating a really long array for the WP_Meta_Query class? For example, what if you had to loop through a collection of data before even setting up the query?

On some level, it might feel that like the natural thing to do would be to:

iterate through the collection of keys,
dynamically build up the results,
combine them into a single result set,
then work with whatever you’re given.

But doesn’t that sound a bit cumbersome (let alone slow)?

When it comes to using the WordPress API, I do what I can to stick to it before talking, say, directly to the database but there are also times where it makes sense to write a raw query than to write some type of clever code just to get the WordPress API to work. Continue reading

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.