Tag Archives: Programming

Bug Chasing

Okay, so in my post about Code Spelunking I mentioned about how working on a project can lead you to explore the code because you need to become more familiar with how the code works. But it can also lead you to explore the code to figure out why code doesn’t work. In this particular case, I spent many hours puzzling over why something didn’t work correctly, chasing down the root cause, and eventually finding a bug in the WordPress core. [...]

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WordCamp Atlanta

As I begin writing this, Jane Wells is delivering her keynote at WordCamp Atlanta, speaking about the upcoming changes in WordPress 3.0. On the one hand, WordPress releases are ’serial’, so an 3.0 release doesn’t necessarily have any bigger changes than when we move from 2.8 to 2.9. [...]

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I’m speaking at WordCamp Atlanta

I’m pleased to announce that I will be speaking at WordCamp Atlanta next month. I will be presenting an updated version of the Jumping Into WordPress Plugin Programming talk that I gave at WordCamp Birmingham in September. I think I can squeeze some more details in, and hopefully give some more detailed examples.

If you saw the original presentation (or just the slideshow), and you think there’s something else I need to cover, please feel free to let me know. [...]

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Suggestion: WordPress Option Namespacing

I happened to be poking around in my database a while ago, particularly in the WordPress ‘options’ table for this blog. There’s an awful lot of cruft hanging around from old plugins that I don’t use anymore. I cleaned a few things out, but something hit me as I was perusing all those options: I can’t always tell which options belong(ed) to which plugins, themes, or to the WordPress core.

In many cases, plugin authors tag the option names in a way that you can figure it out. [...]

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Jumping into WordPress Plugin Development presentation

Despite an extreme lack of sleep, I managed to make it through my WordCamp Birmingham presentation this morning on Jumping into WordPress Plugin Programming. I didn’t feel as prepared as I wanted to be, but several people gave me some kind comments, so I guess it must have gone okay. Here is the slideshow I used, which I’ve uploaded to SlideShare (where you can also find my presentation from last year).

Obviously, with the slideshow, you don’t get the extra patter and commentary (did anybody record audio?), but the essential pieces are there. [...]

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Getting ready for WordCamp Birmingham 2009

WordCamp Birmingham 2009In a short while, I’ll be leaving Atlanta, and heading west to Alabama for WordCamp Birmingham 2009. I’m giving a presentation on Saturday morning about Jumping Into WordPress Plugin Programming. Of course, my presentation still isn’t done, so I’ll be burning the midnight oil tonight, finishing up my notes, gathering up my bookmarks, and turning it all into a slideshow. [...]

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WordPress Webhooks Plugin

Check out this demo video of a new plugin by mitcho, called HookPress. HookPress adds the ability to use webhooks as WordPress actions and filters. Since webhooks run from a web server (not directly inside WordPress), this means that you could, for example, use scripts in python, perl, ruby, or whatever to extend WordPress. How’s that for nifty? And what’s extra nice is that the user interface for it on the WordPress side looks super simple to use.

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Unit testing in PHP with SimpleTest

simpletest-logo

I recently worked on a PHP project which required me to write a suite of unit tests to verify that the code worked as expected. While I’ve done unit testing before, and I knew that it was valuable, I have to admit that I’ve only used it very rarely. I’ve only had a few jobs/projects that required it, and most other projects didn’t want to pay for the extra time. [...]

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WordPress iPhone App beta testing

Do you use WordPress? Do you have an iPhone? Or do you just like beta testing cool apps? You could help beta-test the upcoming WordPress for iPhone 1.2 release.

The catch is, you can’t test unreleased apps on an actual iPhone. Instead, you have to download the (free) SDK, and run the code in the iPhone simulator. [...]

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WordPress Wednesday Kick Off

This is the first installment of “WordPress Wednesday”, which I mentioned in my previous post about making changes to my site. This first one is going to be a little long, and I’ve been editing the draft off-and-on for over a week. [...]

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