Tag: development

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Plugins Scalability

Recently, I've been thinking about the state of plugins. In my previous post I've mentioned the free and premium plugins, and additionally I could split them in other categories, such as: small and large, self-contained and extensible, user-oriented and developer-related, optimized and non-optimized. I could go further with secure/insecure and everything, but that's another story. I'd also like to cover the aspect of user-oriented plugins vs. developer helpers, which is a separate topic. Scalability According to Wikipedia: In electronics (including hardware, communication and software), scalability is the ability of a system, network, or process to handle a growing amount of work in… Continue Reading
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The Low Barrier of WordPress

Coen Jacobs wrote a post recently, asking Is WordPress Too Easy? I was about to follow-up on that, but due to time constraints, my thoughts flew away, but I felt the urge to do a part 2 on that series, with some other thoughts. What is WordPress? No, I'm not going to define that as most people are already in the industry. But I keep getting various mixed signals from other people around me. The casual one that you've already heard is: "but WordPress is just a simple blogging platform". I'm fine with that and I have a few canned… Continue Reading
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My Paradox With The Switch Statement

Ever since high school, I have always been suspicious when it comes to the switch statement in programming. It is quite intuitive if you think about it, but in my opinion it has various limitations in some scenarios: it's error-prone by missing a break; clause here and there chaining cases isn't always intuitive to read, in addition to the break; thing different languages have different rules for switch - such as the allowed switch types for input variables (Java used to disallow strings at all), objects, and especially what could be put in each case There are a few more,… Continue Reading
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Git and GitHub for SVN developers

My latest post on contribution tips I learned from scribu was mostly influenced by his work on GitHub on projects such as WP-CLI or wp-posts-to-posts, and his setup over there. I also had a few related contribution-related posts before than (and several more to come in the next few months). Ajay commented on one of them asking for some tips for migrating his work to GitHub (while he has numerous plugins on WordPress.org now). I'll post some of my favorite links I send to fellow colleagues starting with Git. My first SVN-revisioned work was in 2006 and I started working with Git… Continue Reading
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Contributing Together

Recently I've been spending a lot of time poking others' projects. Since I have more time than I had while working full-time for an employer, I'm polishing more of my snippets and I've been busy with small enhancements that couldn't find a place in my long list before. Additionally, I find myself sending more pull request than before and requesting from plugin authors to clone their WordPress.org project to GitHub as well for collaboration: https://twitter.com/no_fear_inc/status/377052160518672384 As a developer, I'm tempted by reinventing the wheel and releasing something on my own. But I try to be practical and I often browse… Continue Reading
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DX Plugin Base v1.3 with AJAX

Earlier today I pushed an update to my skeleton plugin builder - DX Plugin Base. The plugin is meant to be used as a base for creating new plugins, you can either copy-paste it and just delete and replace what needs to be changed (that's what the author of the Metwit Weather Widget did) or just use specific functions to create post types, meta boxes or anything like that in new plugins without having to browse again in Codex or old projects for "how exactly did I write that the last time". The new enhancements in version 1.3 are AJAX… Continue Reading
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Settings API in 9 Steps

I'm going to update my DX Plugin Base script soon with sample code, but Settings API are something that needs a few lines of text too. There are several good resources for that, such as: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_API http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2009/wordpress-settings-api-tutorial/ http://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-complete-guide-to-the-wordpress-settings-api-part-2-sections-fields-and-settings/ (awesome btw) But for the very quick overview of what to be done, that's needed: hook to admin_init with a function registering settings call register_setting to reserve a slot in the DB where the setting is to be stored (setting name for DB, how is it stored in DB) call add_setting_section to create a section for settings (setting name, setting title, callback func,… Continue Reading