Here’s the thing: I am extremely tight with my money. Some might go so far as to call me stingy. I really don’t like spending money on things, as a rule. On top of that, as a developer I have released plugins into the WordPress ecosystem that are free to download. Even given those two…
I might get some flack for this: but I think most SEO experts are con artists. Sure, there’s room for legitimate folks who study Google (and other) algorithms. Some of them are extremely knowledgeable, and do great work. But there is a serious undercurrent of snake-oil salesmen and half-baked “consultants” in the field. Here’s my…
This is the guide to the hidden features of the Better Click To Tweet WordPress plugin. To start with, here’s a bit of philosophy. (If you want to get straight to the how-to, skip to the appropriate sections below) Why Hide the Power Features? WordPress is a fantastic tool for publishing. The low entry bar…
As of version 3.0, The Better Click To Tweet plugin now supports the option to use the built-in WordPress shortlink system. While this doesn’t change the allowable number of characters in the tweet (my plugin does the math based on Twitter’s built-in and unavoidable t.co shortened URL length), it does allow you to use the…
When you are driving on an icy road in a neighborhood, it makes sense to only go as fast as you are comfortable running into something. This has been the lesson I’ve learned looking out my front window over the past few days. The same can be said for web coding. Let me tell you…
Blogger.com is like your rich and slightly neurotic girlfriend Julie’s house: Great for visits, bad place to live. When you live there, at first it’s a storybook! She pays for everything, lets you live there rent free, makes it easy for you to do what you want, and you can just keep adding stuff to…
Based on my experience since becoming a web developer, I’m glad I don’t work in television, because I’d never enjoy shows the same way. Last week I went online to purchase a ticket to a local sporting event, and was greeted with the bright red text “Please refrain from using any special characters in your…
I don’t primarily sell web code; I sell peace of mind. I could easily market to fear. Fear sells extremely well: just check out the 24-hour news channel to see what I mean. The quickest way to make money in maintenance or insurance is to create a boogeyman and then be the hero who saves…
Today, I learned that if you are old-school and haven’t set up a site icon (a feature introduced in WordPress 4.3 I didn’t see the need for because I had already set a custom favicon using other methods back-in-the-day) , when your posts are embedded on someone else’s site (a feature introduced in 4.4 this…
“Im going to regret this moment” I said out loud as I ignored my own advice about having a server-level backup before I started messing around with my server settings. When I am working on client sites, I am beyond careful to never code on the live site, and to have multiple redundant backups, so…
Last week I watched live as the WordPress core developers rushed down to the wire to release version 4.4. It was the first release that I’ve been around to watch be pushed live, and it was really fun. I make my money on keeping people’s WordPress installs up to date and backed up, but I…
As I write this, the onslaught has already begun of companies offering absurd deals on their products in honor of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Businesses You Should Support Sunday, Cyber Monday, and Please Somebody Give Me Money Tuesday. It’s the week where we all try to sell you stuff. As a freelancer with a…
Easily a top-ten mistake I see beginner WordPress users making is updating plugins, themes, and other code on the live site. Updating your code on the live site, without checking to see if it’s going to break stuff, is what developers call “Cowboy Coding,” and it’s an epidemic among beginners. If you update it on…
We just finished WordCamp Raleigh 2015, and I wanted to take a few minutes to verbally process what went down. First, I was not an organizer, and feel like the height of an imposter when I call myself one, but my name tag did say “Organizer” right there on the bottom, so I suppose I…
Still Processing how great WordCamp Raleigh 2015 was for my first time pseudo-organizing and helping out. You can expect a post about that soon. But here’s a bit of a rant that I drafted before the conference. I see too many DIY WordPress folks trying to do these four things: learn enough code to make…