As the tech industry continues to evolve and grow, the role of developer advocates has become increasingly important. These tech superheroes are the glue that holds the developer community and the companies they work for together, bridging the gap and ensuring that developers have the resources and support they need to be successful. But what exactly does a Developer Advocate do, and why are…
I've been using Vagrant and VVV with VV (a site creation wizard) for a while now as the cornerstone of my development workflow. I have customized my VVV quite a bit over the years, and - while I was happy with it - I was always on the lookout for something better to see if it would fit my development workflow better. On a…
When it comes to developing a new site, every developer has a stash of favorite code snippets or reusable modules they keep handy. It could be a homemade widget, a section or module that is adaptable to multiple sites, or custom code that you use to personally extend the functionality of WordPress, but every developer worth their salt has them. But over and over again I keep…
It's my firm belief that between CSS and jQuery, there's nothing on a page that I can't manipulate. CSS is amazing in that (as long as the proper hooks are in place) you can use it to manipulate elements with granular precision. What most people don't realize, however, is that you can use so much more than IDs or classes to select the various…
Including files in a PHP environment can be tricky for new developers. There are no less than four ways to include a file: include, include_once, require, and require_once. Moreso, there's very subtle differences in the reasons behind using each one. Throw in WordPress (which has its own specific flavor of include tag - get_template_part) and it can be downright confusing. Using the wrong one,…
My workflow, for the curious, looks something like this: Digital wireframe. Overlay wireframe on Photoshop (onto 16 column grid). Design mockups. Solicit feedback from client. Make changes. Get approval from client. Code mockup into CSS/WordPress template. Load Content Browser Check Responsive Check Final Client Check Launch Seems relatively straight-forward, right? I've been seeing post after post online saying that "designing with Photoshop is dead"…
If you develop WordPress themes, chances are that you fall into one of two camps. You may be the person who takes premium themes and customizes them to your client's wishes. Or, you may be a custom builder who writes everything from scratch. Chances are you use a lot of the same code, functions, and themes in your endeavors, and may even have a…
Edited 01/14/14 to work with WordPress 3.8 A few months ago I modified a really cool WordPress template and started using it for my own clients. As part of the overhaul, I realized that there was no really good way (included) to turn a WordPress unordered list into a menu that would work on a mobile device. I tried a few different solutions, but…
I wrote a post a while back detailing how easy it was to add a Login Box to your template. But, it's even easier, it turns out, to add one to your sidebar. Sidebar Login is a plugin that will let you throw a quick sidebar login box onto your site. And, it's AJAX compatable, which means that it logs the user in seamlessly…
I've migrated tons of WordPress sites in my tenure as a WordPress developer, but over the years one thing would always bother me: my widgets kept disappearing. I'd dump the SQL database and import it to the new server only to find that every single widget had vanished. So, I looked for a solution. WP-Migrate-DB (despite it's fancy title) keeps every option and SQL line…