practicing habitual skills
All things WordPress @ http://wordpress.com, http://wordpress.org, and WordPressMU @ http://mu.wordpress.org
I just submitted a patch file as an enhancement for the default comment form used in WordPress.
Here is the ticket: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/23870
I would be interested in any comments, please feel free to add your ideas below.
Wow … my first patch: s/Santizes/Sanitizes/ in phpdoc for sanitize_html_class(). props cais. fixes #22890. #WordPress
— Edward Caissie 🇨🇦 (@JellyBeen) December 20, 2012
It’s been busy but I finally finished updating all of the BNS Plugins in preparation for the pending release of WordPress 3.5
My self-imposed schedule had me a day late on two out of 16 of my WordPress plugins (BNS Featured Tag and BNS Body Classes) but their respective updates were of particular importance. BNS Featured Tag was brought in line with its cousin BNS Featured Category while BNS Body Classes has taken a turn to something potentially very exciting.
Look for at least one more update to BNS Body Classes later this month as my idea comes to fruition.
Just a quick note … BNS Bio is available from the WordPress Extend Plugins repository. The more current working version is available from this repository on GitHub. Enjoy!
I write WordPress Themes and Plugins and often contribute them to the WordPress community by submitting them to the relevant WordPress Extend repository. This provides an extensive distribution venue and allows these themes and plugins to be available to millions of users all over the world … all at no charge. Let me repeat that, with emphasis, no charge!
Now, let’s have a look at that idea. I have spent in some cases quite a bit of time developing a theme or plugin; and, I take pride in the work I do. I have spent many hours debugging and improving my themes and plugins with every intent to make sure they are of the best quality every time I release a new version. So, if an end-user points out something I’ve missed then by all means I note the issue and address it at no charge. Let me repeat that, again with emphasis, no charge!
Also, if an end-user of one of my themes or plugins offers an idea I feel would provide “greater good” benefit I make note of it; I review what would be involved to implement the idea; and more often than not I add it to the theme or plugin; and, yes, I do it at no charge. Let’s repeat that one more time, with feeling … no charge!
So, when someone expects me to provide “free support” for one of my contributions to the WordPress community I look at what I already offer and weigh if what the end-user is asking fits into the above ideals, or is more suitable to a chargeable customization … or if it’s just a Five-Minute-Fix:
The five minutes is purely subjective and completely based on my personal opinion. If I believe a project should take five minutes then that is how long the project will take. If it takes five hours, or five days, the cost will still be the same: free!
Be that as it may, I fully understand if an end-user expects “free support” for a “free product” downloaded from a “free source” and in many cases I also agree with their “reasonable” expectations as I still to this day have not been able to assign a value to the free advertising and exposure provided by the WordPress repositories.
Even though I agree with providing free support on items with “reasonable” expectations, I do not agree with nor do I offer support for unreasonable requests or outlandish ideas. If an end-user wants a specific customization, or requests a specific feature, that is not currently scheduled or under consideration to be added the end-user can just as reasonably expect their request to not be no charge.
If the end-user has modified the code in the theme or plugin; finds it no longer works as expected; and, then requests free support … really? seriously?! Why would that be no charge?
What support do you offer at no charge?
The core developers of WordPress have decided today would be the release date for version 3.5 beta … that being the case it’s time to show “I Drink The Kool-Aid” and start running the “latest” version of WordPress. If you would like to show your support for the continued improvement and updates to WordPress feel free to install and activate my plugin: BNS Early Adopter.
There’s a new Meetup group in town … the WordPress Greater Toronto Area Meetup group, or WPGTA for short. I have been considering starting a Meetup group focused more on WordPress design and development for the last several months but I have also felt there was never enough time to devote to organizing it.
Now, although I have not magically added more time to the day, I also feel if I do not simply get started the ideals I have envisioned for this group will never see the light.
Ideally this Meetup group will also serve as a complimentary one to the growing number of WordPress related ones in the area. The Greater Toronto Area, or GTA, itself holds a large percentage of the population and spreads over a very wide geographic region(1).
Although there is no established agenda, or a first meeting scheduled yet (keep an eye on the calendar one will be announced soon), I look forward to being able to share my experiences and knowledge; especially that gained working with the WordPress Theme Review Team as well as the knowledge I have gained creating and releasing WordPress Themes and WordPress Plugins into the WordPress Extend repositories.
Also, look forward to the WPGTA Meetups to take place in the Mississauga and/or Oakville area. One, I live in the area; and two, to be quite honest, I’m not a fan of driving “into the city” … and hopefully this will allow others interested in attending a WordPress Meetup group easier access.
We will probably start out meeting in coffee shops or other WiFi hotspot locations(2); moving into a community center, library meeting room, or other larger venue is well within possibilities as the group grows.
… and remember to bring your “tools of the trade”(3)
Although WordCamp Toronto 2011 was last weekend there were several ideas I will be taking away from it in regards to future development, best practices, as well as some interesting concepts and discussions. To keep it simple I’m just going to list these items (with their inspiration):
There were many more ideas and great pieces of advice, as well as some really sound tips and suggestions through the day (which I simply made myself comfortable in the Developer track for the duration).
The above were just the ones I specifically made note of (literally using the “Sticky Notes” program). Don’t ask me why I didn’t use EverNote at the time, but all of the above are now listed in an EverNote list for future reference and recollections.
Some of these ideas I am already putting into action, such as the inline documentation in a PHPDoc style; some items I had already been looking at; and others are more as reminders to keep thinking about what can be done.
Just like my site tagline at WPFirstAid: It’s WordPress … anything is possible!
After an interesting discussion on twitter with @curtismchale, @ericmann, @mikeschenkel, and @rarst I have decided its time to have another look at “local development”.
The basics so far have been the following downloads:
Tortoise SVN and Git are for the version control aspects of this project; WampServer (since I am testing on a Windows PC) is for the “local” environment; and PhpStorm is a recently discovered IDE that ties all of these together.
The next step was choosing a plugin and theme as well as setting up WordPress, my preferred CMS for development. I chose to go with the Nightly Builds version of WordPress, keeping it up to date via the core subversion access.
The plugin and theme are respectively ‘BNS Theme Add-Ins’ and ‘NoNa’. The first, a new WordPress plugin I recently released; and the second, one of my WordPress Themes due to be updated. To test the version control aspects these are now being maintained via github.
Although it has been a bit of a stumbling, grumbling affair I am finding the mix of these tools to have some interesting potential. I have been doing most of my current development work on “live” test servers (all I need is access to the Internet) and have always found everything goes quite well.
Transferring an existing project into the new process goes along these lines:
Starting a new project would work in a similar fashion … maybe.
The discussions on twitter gave me reason to reconsider local development so I will give this some time, namely the 30 day demonstration period attached to PhpStorm. If all works out I may just spend the $99 for the application and make this my new workflow.
Sometimes I look for any reasonable excuse to post; this one is just to hard to pass up as a new “status” post.
The following is from one of the newer Plugin repository enhancements: an email notification when an update is made to a plugin you contribute to.
- Revision
- 445926
- Author
- cais
- Date
- 2011-09-30 22:30:33 +0000 (Fri, 30 Sep 2011)
Log Message
Added Paths
Diff
Property changes: bns-theme-add-ins/tags/0.1
Added: bugtraq:number
Added: bns-theme-add-ins/tags/0.1/bns-child-theme-add-ins.php (0 => 445926)
Long story short: the first iteration of “BNS Theme Add-Ins” is now available on the WordPress Extend Plugin repository.