I will be the first to admit that I used to have a serious problem, one that still plagues me even as I write this. The problem is learning how to say “no” more, even when I’m really, really tempted to say “yes”. To those that have never experienced this problem, or have never realized…
Today WooThemes announced a major pricing change, and I back them 100%. There are aspects of the change that I don’t fully agree with, but I’m not privy to the numbers or other weighty factors that played into their decision, so it is not for me to begrudge them. I, too, recently underwent a pricing…
Late Sunday night my brother told me to take a personal day and spend some time doing whatever I wanted to; perhaps spend some time in my workshop, or work on setting up my basement entertainment center, or maybe go hiking or biking. My response to him was simply: I have way too much to…
One of the core responsibilities of WordPress plugin developers is to keep their users in mind and not place graphical barriers in place that prevent users from fluidly going from one task to the next.
The vast majority of developers will cringe a bit when they hear the recommendation against using curly brackets, {}, but I believe very strongly that when writing template files, in both themes and plugins, you should strictly avoid using brackets. The reason being that template files should be written for clarity, both for developers and…
WP e-Commerce is the oldest of the WordPress e-commerce plugins, the very first one I tried and used, and also one of my favorite plugins (that is not mine) to contribute back to. I’ve written about the subject of contributing to other people’s plugins before, but I really do believe it is one of the…
I believe firmly in the extensions model when it comes to large plugins, in the same way that I firmly stand behind the idea that the best way to implement major functional features in themes is through the use of plugins. In general this model is pretty well accepted, but occasionally there are users that…
This is a topic that has been covered numerous times, including several times on this site, but I still find theme and plugin developers that are either unaware of the negative consequences or simply disregard them. I’d like to talk a bit about why exactly removing the default version of jQuery in WordPress and loading…
Myself and other members of the WordPress community are in the process of launching a site that will help crowd fund WordPress projects. After tweeting about the idea, a huge amount of community support has already been garnered for the project and a lot of prominent members of the community are interested in the project.…
There is one, and only one, true way to get really good at development: writing code every single day. Period. Of course there are aspects to becoming a good developer beyond simply writing code (reading tutorials, listening to talks, watching videos, etc), but no matter how many “best practices” tutorials you read or watch, the…
One of the philosophies of plugin development that I believe in very strongly is that CSS should be kept simple and easy to override. Plugins are specifically built for functionality: they provide features that do not otherwise exist in WordPress (ecommerce, sliders, forums, etc). Themes are designed to control the visual appearance of WordPress websites.…
If you have ever released a plugin or theme for public use, it is very likely that you have received negative feedback from users. Regardless of how high quality your theme or plugin, there are always users that will dislike it for some reason or other, perhaps it’s because of a conflict with another plugin…
A topic that has intrigued me a lot over the last few months is how to build up a strong community of contributors to projects. When we write plugins or themes for WordPress, we release them under the GPL license (at least the code), which makes it so any one can contribute back to the…
I have been doing WordPress plugin development as a business for about two years now. When I first started, by releasing my very first plugin on Code Canyon, it was very much a side project that brought in a little side residual income. Today, I make 100% of my needed income and more off of…
If you hadn’t guessed it already, I really, really love WordPress plugins. I love writing them, using them, reviewing them, and everything else involved with plugins. There is just something about them that really excites me; I always love writing new plugins. I’d like to explore a few of the reasons why I have so…
