Tag: WordPress (Page 97 of 220)

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

A Look at Freemius Checkout

June 8, 2016 / Tom

At the end of last year, I had the chance to meet Vova Feldman and see what he was working on with Freemius. It was a cool product, to be sure, and it’s been neat to see it take off over the last few months.

Just as I did with Freemius, I had a chance to see what else Vova has been working on and this time it’s something geared towards those who are selling products via their site.

Thus, there’s the aptly named Freemius Checkout. This product is geared specifically to those who are looking to sell plugins or themes.

An Embarrassing First Release

June 6, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

I’ve talked before about my idea of shipping a “strong 1.0” when it comes to working on projects for yourself or other people but what if that version is an embarrassing first release?

There’s a quote that many of us are familiar with (and that I’ve referenced here before, too):

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, then you’ve launched too late.

It’s attributed to Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn.

I think it’s something that’s good to remember, but sometimes I wonder if we use it as a crutch when shipping something and as a rationalization to cut corners.

Postmatic for WordPress Comments (and So Much More!)

June 2, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

In November 2014, I stumbled across Postmatic which aimed to make WordPress comments a bit easier to manage (for those who end up getting any form of comments on your blog).

Postmatic for WordPress Comments

Since then, I’ve written several posts about the service. These articles span from 2014 up through the middle of last year:

And to this day, I’m still a fan. Jason, Dylan, and the rest of the team (along with some help from guys like Carl and Josh) have continued to put together an amazing service that makes responding to comments that much easier.

I know: This first little bit sounds a little bit like a sales pitch, and that isn’t my style, so I’ll refrain from talking about the plugin and the service from that angle anymore.

But I will say that I’ve been using Postmatic since the beginning and following up with comments has always been much more pleasant of an experience when I can do it from my inbox.

As the product keeps maturing, more and more useful features are being built into it.

Proposed WordPress Employee Benefits

June 1, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Though I don’t run a big WordPress agency or a large WordPress shop or anything like that, I often wonder what would a WordPress employee benefits package look like for those who do run those types of shop.

I’m not talking about the standard run-of-the-mill benefits like insurance, retirement, paternity, vacation, maternity leave, paternity leave, etc. I mean, those are all great – don’t get me wrong – but I’m talking about the kinds of things that businesses could offer to their employees that would help them invest in themselves and their career.

Not only would this benefit the employees, but it could help the company, as well.

Ignore Coding Standards in PHP CodeSniffer

May 30, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

For as much as I talk about writing code that conforms to the WordPress Coding Standards and for using tools such as PHP CodeSniffer, there are times where I’ve found that you need to silence the errors for the sake of something you’re trying to do.

Case in point:

WordPress uses global variables to maintain certain data structures. As per the coding standards, you should not change the values of global variables.

As a rule of thumb, this is true. But what about in the case where you need to make a modification to the admin menu (which uses a global variable)?