It’s no surprise I like to learn new things. I also like to read things when I can. Okay, a lot of the time I skim through things but I make an effort to learn from it. The last couple of weeks I’ve looked at working with the PHPCodeSniffer. I installed it and never really… Continue reading My tour of creating a PHPCodeSniffer Standard
Year: 2016
Creating a diff file
The other day I made a quick video on how to create PHPCS reports. Later on during the day I was asked about creating a patch to meta. Of course I’m going to make another video to help somebody else out. In the video I go over on how to create a diff file using… Continue reading Creating a diff file
Creating sample PHPCS reports
I created a quick video in hopes to help some people understand the great thing that is using the PHP_CodeSniffer and how good it can be for not only developing plugins but WordPress themes as well. In the video I create two sample reports. The first one a source report and the second just a summary… Continue reading Creating sample PHPCS reports
Lately I’ve stayed away from the theme review only because it can be such a negative feeling and a negative space. It’s not the people I interact with but rather those who feel like they have a solution for all the things.
I’m not saying I do and I don’t try to but what I do have is a feeling that things can only get worse.
Theme reviews have been great for my learning about WordPress as well as PHP. The last couple of weeks have been great in that we did manage to reduce the queue down by a lot and I mean a lot. We went from about 600 themes to 400. There were rules set in place and of course there will always be some sort of backlash whether it be from reviewers or authors. This time authors.
Okay, a lot of the time it’s authors.
I get it. I do. You want to share your creation with the world and the community. The thing many really forget is that you don’t have to have your listed in the repo for it to be shared.
Incentives
I’m for them but when it comes to certain things. I volunteer my time to conduct reviews and I don’t actually expect anything in return. Okay, that’s a bit of a lie because there is one thing I expect.
Gratitude.
The thing to remember is that I take time out of my day to look at code and pass on some knowledge when I can.
And it’s not a great feeling when you get back a slew of negativity and comments like it’s taking too long.
I’ll give an example.
Retail on Holidays
When I worked at Starbucks it would get crazy. We were one of the few places open. My last store we were open 24/7. You read that right. Rain, shine, local shoot-out, fire-next-door, gas line on fire down the street, we would be open. Okay a bit of an exaggeration but fairly true.
I recall one day we had not only a line in our lobby that was almost five feet out the door but we also had our drive-thru creating a circle around the building so as one new car would enter one would be leaving. This was Thanksgiving. This was Christmas week.
Every so often we would get one car that would chime-in with a solution:
You should limit to only one drink order per car.
Yes! Brilliant! This makes it so we only focus on one drink at a time. The thing is Starbucks standard is one drink at a time when you are on bar. Granted not always followed to the T but there is a great reason for that. Just ask any 5 year old partner and they will share knowledge with you.
Those holiday orders were always insane because a lot of the time it was 6 drinks for one car, 8 drinks for the next and the occasional food order with 4 sandwiches, a cake pop, and all the croissants in the store. This of course creates a new set of obstacles if you weren’t used to that but seeing how as a barista you only should be focusing on making one drink at a time it can take a lot of time for one.
Setting a standard workflow does make it easier because you can then crank things out in an expected amount of time per drink or even per order.
The one drink at a time standard is so that every single cup of coffee, frappuccino, tea, or latte is not only to your needs but a quality drink as well.
Comparison
Okay. That’s great but what relevance does it have, right? See in the example above the barista is the theme author. You are the creator.
What happens when you start skipping steps, start making drinks out of order, or even forget to make them? The customer gets upset, you start holding up the queue of drinks and possible others along the way. Your customers suffer from this. So really your users suffer from this.
Much like baby steps: One at a time.
This needs to be your focus.
If you are a theme author, a theme shop, or just wanting to create for the sake of creating themes, you should have a workflow in place if you don’t already – specially if you are going to submit a theme to the WordPress.org repo.
One I suggest:
- Design the theme
- Design review of the theme
- Begin coding the theme
- Code review
- Stress Cases
- Who are you really coding for?
- Testing Environment
- Testing of the theme
- Asking friends
- Asking family
- Reach out to community
Honestly, even having something in place is truly better than not. Asking for help is not a big deal in particular the testing of the theme. Reach out to your peers, reach out to companies, individuals. You would be amazed how much information you can actually get.
Don’t let your user suffer because you want to speed things up. I mean after all you don’t want to be giving out half empty cups of Gingerbread Lattes to an angry mother who is shopping for the last gaming console on one of the busiest weeks of the year, right?
WordPress and MediaElement styles
Okay, this is more of an experiment I was running because I was reached out by a friend about a theme question. This actually got me thinking about the shortcodes. The audio and video ones in particular. The reason is that when you use the [audio] shortcode WordPress will use MediaElementJS and enqueue both the JavaScript… Continue reading WordPress and MediaElement styles
Video: WordPress template hierarchy
Earlier today I had some time to make a quick video. I have written about the template hierarchy before and I’m sure there are tons of other resources available out there. This justs adds to that ever-growing-list. The reason it drives me crazy is because of that front-page.php file that I see every so often or… Continue reading Video: WordPress template hierarchy
Getting WordPress Custom Post Types in the customizer
It’s no surprise I love a good theme. I love it even more when I get a choice of what can go where – extra cookie points if I don’t have to input that information. A while back I wrote out a post about presenting content within themes. In the course of reviewing so many… Continue reading Getting WordPress Custom Post Types in the customizer
Grunt your way to automation
WordPress theme development can feel repetitive. At times there are things you are always doing over and over again. This is true when you are building a WordPress theme for distribution. Thankfully there are tools that can make your workflow a bit easier. Tools In order to make your theme workflow a little easier we… Continue reading Grunt your way to automation
Copy paste is hurting your theme
I’ve seen quite a few themes that have been doing this thing of passing an argument to the function when they could be using a filter. I get it we all have our methods. But when there is a better practice would you rather use the better practice or a wrong one? I choose the… Continue reading Copy paste is hurting your theme
Presenting WordPress content with themes
Themes are a great way of displaying content from your site, but what happens when you want to display other types of content? Things like testimonials, products, group members, or even portfolio items can be a little harder if you want to display those on the front page. How can we overcome this?