Tag: WordPress (Page 72 of 219)

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

Writing Better Code For WordPress-Based Projects

January 5, 2017 / Tom

I don’t remember exactly when I first stumbled across Joel Spolsky’s blog Joel on Software, but it was at some point late in high school.

I didn’t know enough about the whole software development process to get a lot of what he was talking about really, but I enjoyed his writing style, and I enjoyed what he had to say.

Writing Better Code

In fact, I was such a fan that when I graduated, I went on to buy his books (which were collections of the articles on his site) and read them cover-to-cover. I kept copies of them on my desk at work, and I used one of his books – Smart and Gets Things Done – when I was a team lead.

The articles that stuck out the most to me, though, were those that were about writing better code. Here’s the thing, though: Those articles included nothing about actually writing code.

WordPress Plugin Adoption: Would You Like One?

January 4, 2017 / Tom

All of these plugins have been adopted. Thank you for taking the time to read and for your interest! I'll have more information about the new maintainer soon.

WordPress plugin adoption is a feature of the Plugin Repository that I think is a good idea for anyone who has a plugin that they don’t want to see die, but that they don’t have the time or interest to maintain anymore.

WordPress Plugin Adoption: My Plugins

As mentioned in a previous post, there are a few things that I’m looking to focus on in 2017 and so I’m looking to lean out the short list of plugins I currently have available.

Note that I’m going to be retiring some of them (as they are going to become a larger part of that I want to do with Blogging Plugins), but the others are ones that I don’t want to see completely die as they have a decent amount of installs.

2017 Plans: Blogging, Products, Consulting, and More

January 3, 2017 / Tom

Though yesterday’s post was talking about a new endeavor (or even just a single post, at the moment), it was in no place meant to ignore any of my 2017 plans I’m looking to accomplish this year.

This includes content around:

Start Here,
A redesign and restructuring of this site,
Products,
Consulting,
And more.

So before I get back to the usual type of content about which I write and as we are normally want to do, I thought it worth sharing what I’m looking to do in the long term over the next 365 days.

If nothing else, it’s going to be fun to look back at this post and see just how much was done and how much was not.

A Look Towards 2017 (Starting with 2016)

December 30, 2016 / Tom

With this being the last post of the year (and I look towards 2017), it’s easy to want to fall into the standard retrospective post. And there will be some of that.

Initially, I planned to keep this relatively short, but that didn’t work out. But I tried to make it as much of a quick read as possible. That is, everything is in a bulleted list.

No, not that kind of bullet. (I’ve been playing too much Super Mario Run!)

Here’s what I’m going to cover:

There are a few things I want to mention regarding the past year. Nothing too deep or analytical, but just some of the highlights.
There are plans for 2017 that I’d like to share that may or may not be of interest to you that I’m going to share.
I have a few future endeavors around writing (on a different platform, no less!) that I will share.

Now that you know, you can decide whether or not you want to read more or not. So here goes.

WordPress Messages via Custom Code

December 28, 2016 / Tom

WordPress messages, especially custom messages, are becoming a bit of a sore spot for developers, bloggers, content managers and so on.

And with good reason: It seems like every plugin has this desire to display tooltips, messages, promotional content, and so on every single time it’s activated or updated.

WordPress Messages aren’t inherently bad, but they’re abused. Still, they serve a purpose and can (and arguably should) be used sparingly when the opportunity presents itself.

In a series I’ve been working on for Tuts+, I’ve been walking through the process of creating a custom system for implementing, displaying, and customizing WordPress messages.

And how to do so in a way that’s reusable across various projects.