Category: Web Development

Extending WordPress Plug-ins

January 2, 2016

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Topics: Web Development, WordPress.

Awesome WordPress plug-ins are built making extensive use of awesome core WordPress tools: filters and actions. My own plug-ins are no exceptions. But the fact that I’ve used the awesome power of filters and actions in my plug-ins doesn’t automatically mean that you know how to use and implement them. There are some great tutorials available on how to use WordPress actions and filters (or hooks, as they’re known collectively): Learning to use WordPress hooks from Elegant Themes The Complete […]

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What I hate about themes

January 6, 2015

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Topics: Web Development, WordPress.

Just to disclose the truth: I don’t really hate themes. But as a plug-in developer with tens of thousands of users, what I hate is undisclosed conflicts – and themes are a big part of that problem. We’re talking about tech support. The other day, Pippin Williamson posted this Tweet: If you're a #WordPress theme developer, please do not modify file upload locations. There is zero reasons a theme should be doing that. — Pippin Williamson (@pippinsplugins) January 5, 2015 […]

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New plug-in released: My Tickets

December 9, 2014

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Topics: Web Development, WordPress.

One of the most commonly requested pieces of functionality for My Calendar is the ability to manage registrations and ticketing for events. But adding that functionality as part of the calendar would make for an absurdly complex plug-in to offer a feature that not all users would actually need. So adding ticket handling to My Calendar was never really an option. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t an important feature to offer! As of today, my new plug-in My […]

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The damage of examples

September 1, 2014

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Topics: Accessibility, Web Development.

These are lies we tell: “This is just an example.” “This is a demo, not for use as production code.” No, it’s not. You’re wrong. It may not be code you, the author, would use in production. But as soon as you published it, the likelihood that it will become production code in somebody else’s project skyrockets. And this is inevitably damaging. These examples can be horrible in many ways – reliability, portability, security – and accessibility. In a surprising […]

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The Visual-only icon problem

June 30, 2014

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Topics: Accessibility, Web Development.

This is something I’ve been seeing a lot lately, and it’s got to stop. This illustrates the use of icon only controls. In this case, using an icon font. (Similar problems show up using any form of icon-only control, however!) Now, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with icon fonts; but there’s often a problem with how they’re used. In this particular case, these are two links, used to toggle a particular preference. You can tab to them and activate them from […]

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