WordPress

Photo by: Alexey TopolyanskiyPhoto by: Alexey Topolyanskiy

Testing JavaScript: The WordPress Way!!!!

This goes with my talk “JavaScript Testing In And Around WordPress.” It’s a two part talk, first about testing React apps. The second part gives applies those topics to WordPress plugins that add blocks to the WordPress block-based editor. I’m really geeked about this talk. Testing JavaScript apps is really important. Also, a lot of […]

Read More →

Resources About Gutenberg For Site Builders!!!!

Last week I gave a talk called “Introduction To Gutenberg Block Development” at WordCamp Pittsburgh. It was a developer-facing talk about how to build a custom block type for the new WordPress block-based “Gutenberg” editor, coming very soon to WordPress. You do not need to create your own blocks to use Gutenberg. I had one […]

Read More →

Some Quick Thoughts On LoopConf!!!!

I was super lucky to be able to attend LoopConf last week. Ryan Sullivan and his team put on an amazing conference. I’ve never been to a fancy developer conference before, and I had a blast. Thanks Ryan for having me! I just wanted to share a few observations about what made LoopConf special and share my […]

Read More →

2016 FTW!!!!

2016 was a really challenging year for me. At times I considered giving up on running my own business, but the work I put in to fix those problems has made me love what I do more than ever.

Read More →

WordPress Authentication (over) Concerns: A Quick Case Study!!!!

One concern about the WordPress REST API has been adding a new authentication system. I think this is because of all the excitement about fun new apps that we could build connecting outside of WordPress. That’s cool, but WordPress’ existing authentication system is all we need for the cool things we could use the REST API for in WordPress core as well as plugins and themes.

Read More →

I Can Do Anything! So What?!!!!

the lesson I’ve learned about business, by thinking as a developer about Ingot, as a business. There was a time, let’s call it the last few years of my life, when I rushed from “great idea” to prototype. I’ve spent a lot of time coding an idea before even considering the business’ unique value proposition, or whether such a thing exists.

Read More →

The Typical WordPress User!!!!

Attending WordCamp US and The Community Summit was a highlight of my year and a huge privilege. But hearing so many people put down the intelligence of WordPress users was a huge disappointment. The challenge of defining a single profile for the typical WordPress user is impossible, and trying to do so leads to a dismissive view of those who make this success of the WordPress ecosystem possible.

Read More →

I Just Wandered Into This!!!!

When we deny compliments we are not only being rude to a person who is being incredibly kind to us, we are tearing ourselves down. I’m working very hard not to do this, and I’d like to combat that publicly by taking stock of all I’ve done in 2015.

Read More →

Learn The WordPress REST API With Me!!!!

I’m happy to announce I’m working on a four part video course, teaching you how to use the WordPress REST API to exceed expectations of what WordPress can do, deliver more “WOW” to your clients and ensure you are ready for the future of WordPress.

Read More →

Extending The REST API Talk!!!!

My fall 2015 WordCamp talk is on extending the WordPress REST API. I love doing tweaky server-side PHP development, so I fell in love with the REST API, and even more with the extending it. I’m excited to be giving this talk a few times and hope to have video of it up soon. You can […]

Read More →
Cliff over waterCliff over water

On Confidence!!!!

I once told a therapist that I felt like my lack of confidence in my own abilities was holding me back. He told me that I couldn’t have confidence in my abilities until I achieved something. Despite the fact that I thought that therapist was full of it, I still bought into that BS he fed me […]

Read More →

Inspiration Is Either Awesome or A Trap!!!!

Inspiration from the awesome support you get as part of the WordPress ecosystem is either an awesome motivator or a way to fall into the trap of jealousy. It’s your choice. Personally, I’ll admit at times I catch myself choosing wrong.

Read More →

Why The WordPress REST API Must Be In Core!!!!

The WordPress REST API’s inclusion in core “sometime in 2015,” something everyone is excited about, has until this week and everyone couldn’t wait. Now that’s not so certain. But it’s a feature we need in WordPress, and it’s ready. To waste this opportunity now would be a huge mistake.

Read More →

Read The Source Luke!!!!

WordPress is a free software, and those freedoms are partially about providing the ability to learn from the software. Reading the source will provide you with an understanding of your software, and a learning experience that no documentation can provide.

Read More →

Why All The #wpdrama ??!!!!

Being right about something is very tricky, especially when so many people disagree with you and its something everyone involved is very passionate about. Trying to understand the hostility will not make it go away, nor does it excuse those who have crossed the line, but understanding does help.

Read More →

Does Your Product Teach?!!!!

Some tools take training to use, and others you can learn like magic. Still others teach you how to use other, more powerful tools. I think we might have made one of those.

Read More →

WordPress Search, Custom API Endpoints, Woo!!!!!

Yesterday I published a post on Torque about extending the WordPress REST API & released a beta version of a plugin that extends the REST API for SearchWP queries. This new plugin not only gives a great example of how to extend the API, but frankly I think it is a better way to run queries then the default routes.

Read More →

Is Your Product Indispensable?!!!!

Some products seems to just take off — most of the time they are products that once you try them, you couldn’t live without them. They are products that become indispensable to their users.

Read More →

Was The #WooMattic Deal About The People?!!!!

A lot of people have assumed Automattic bought WooThemes, so they could use WooCommerce to power a WordPress.com eCommerce offering.

That seems like a funny reason to spend what is rumored to be $30 million. If they just wanted to use WooCommerce, they could have just installed WooCommerce like the rest of us.

Read More →

Making Change Requires Tough Choices!!!!

Changing your life in big ways requires a lot of choices. Many of which suck, that you have to trust are worth it in the long run. Last week we released Pods 2.5.2, which is a minor maintenance release for Pods, but it is a significant release for me. It will be the last Pods release that I will be actively involved in.

Read More →

Help Add A Contribute Tab In The WordPress About Section!!!!

When I first wrote a patch to add a “Contribute” tab to the WordPress “About” section, I was hesitant to share what motivated me to do so–the news that Kim Parsell had died. I didn’t know here well, but I know she inspired others to get involved, and that is what this tab is about–helping people visualize themselves as contributors in whatever form is realistic for them.

Read More →
HoloTree: Team Decision MakingHoloTree: Team Decision Making

WordPress, Acomplishments and HoloTree!!!!

Over the last 16 or so months that I’ve worked in the WordPress ecosystem full time I’ve reached a lot of important milestones. In the last few weeks, I’ve achived some important milestones on the project that actually brought me here: HoloTree. Today, HoloTree is a team decision making system, and is in private beta, with its first few users.

Read More →

New bbPress Slack Integration!!!!

Like a lot of WordPress plugins, at Pods we use bbPress for our support forums. Like a growing number of WordPress developers, we use Slack for both our support, development and internal chat. We’ve got Asana and GitHub integrations, all routed to the right channels. The one thing we didn’t have was updates from our bbPress support forums in our support channel. So I wrote one.

Read More →

Using Dropbox To Keep VVV In Sync on Multiple Computers!!!!

I’ve been plotting for a while now to get a kick-ass desktop for development. Since I work once or twice a week at a co-working space and travel for WordCamps or to visit family fairly regularly, I’m going to need to keep my laptop for those situations. Thanks to Dropbox and Scott Kingsley Clark, it’s actually really easy to keep your WordPress VVV-based development environment in sync across multiple computers

Read More →
http://joshpress.net/blog/category/wordpress/tutorials/solving-the-wordpress-template-hierarchy-puzzle/http://joshpress.net/blog/category/wordpress/tutorials/solving-the-wordpress-template-hierarchy-puzzle/

Solving The WordPress Template Hierarchy Puzzle: Conditional Tags for Posts and Pages!!!!

If you’ve been following my series you will know which templates you can add to a theme for displaying specific posts or pages, but also that for small changes, I recommend using conditional tags instead. Why add and keep track of a template if you just need to make one change? In this post, I will give you a simple, easy to use understanding of the conditional tags that you can use in WordPress to test for various single post views.

Read More →

Using Masonry In WordPress 3.9!!!!

WordPress 3.9 now includes a current version of Masonry, which means that step is no longer needed. That’s pretty cool on it’s own, but it’s especially cool for me since I wrote the patch for updating it, which is one of the reasons why I am credited as a contributor in WordPress 3.9. Enqueueing Masonry is a little diffrent based on if your initialization script written for Masonry 2 or 3.

Read More →

Is The Pilot of HBO’s Silicon Valley About Starting With Why?!!!!

The main character of HBO’s Silicon Valley, thinking he’s dying in face of interest in his product. Finding out why his product transforms him into a man on a mission. Simon Sinek’s theory on starting with why is important for marketing, but it might be just as important for the entrepreneur or content creator as it is to whoever they are selling to.

Read More →

WordPress Debug Bar Add-On Plugins That I Love!!!!

I’m slowly filling the internet with articles mentioning my love of the WordPress Debug Bar Console plugin. While it is my favorite and most used add-on plugin for the Debug Bar, it is not the only add-on that I use and love. Today I wanted to share my favorite add-ons, most of which are not included in the Developer plugin.

Read More →

Three Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Started Doing WordPress Development!!!!

I want to share the three biggest things I wish someone had told me when I started doing WordPress development, in hopes that others will read this and skip as much of the struggles I went through when I started. These simple things will not only make you more efficient as a developer, they will make you better. They may sound tricky, but they are easy. I got more done, solved more problems and was able to actually accomplish something.

Read More →

The Expertise Trap!!!!

The point of your blog should be to establish yourself as an expert in whatever field you want to sell yourself in. But what if expertise is over rated?

Read More →

The Suspension Of Disbelief!!!!

I’ve taken a little break from my content strategies for success series lately. I would have loved to have a better excuse than I’ve been busy and a little unsure of what the hell I was doing, even though both are true. What snapped me out of it was having two patches to WordPress itself merged into the next version of the software I use everyday.

The feeling that I still wasn’t good enough was keeping me from blogging, but the sense of accomplishment that came from becoming a WordPress core contributor has helped me get over my temporary crisis of confidence, but I never would have gotten to this point, if I hadn’t suspended my disbelief in myself along time ago. Remembering that I don’t have to know everything about what I do and blog about helped get me through my most recent crisis of confidence, more than any accomplishment.

Read More →

Evaluating Unset Goals!!!!

When I started this series, I said that I had originally intended to set some goals but then I read an awesome blog post about creating systems instead of setting goals. Thing is, in my mind there are still some goals there, whether I like it or not.

Of course, I will never be happy about not reaching some nebulous, undefined goal about how much I should be posting. So instead, I’m refocusing on systems. Letting the analytics guide my strategy, instead of guilt over goals I never actually set, is a smart system for success.

Read More →

What’s Your Blog’s Story?!!!!

You may not think of your blog as communicating a narrative, but it is essential to think of it as something that tells a story. Creating a compelling narrative is the only way to create an emotional connection to your readers and that’s the only type of connection that matters. We may like to think of ourselves as rational decision makers, because that supports the narrative that our conscious self is in control of our actions, but a brief study of the modern science of decision making, or a simple observation of the world around shows the falsity of that idea.

We make decisions based largely based on a subconscious thought process that is largely emotional and if your blog doesn’t make an emotional connection with your readers you will never influence their decisions.

Read More →

Thank You For Pointing Out My Failures!!!!

Recently, for the first time, I had a decent number of people using some of the themes I wrote. The best part about this experience was the people using my themes found the bugs I missed when I tested them.

I know that sounds sarcastic but it’s true, I really am grateful.

When we think about content strategy we often only think about in terms of a blog and marketing copy, but every interaction with user is an opportunity to bring them into the community or push them away. Not only that, how we shape our content can help make users feel a part of the community which can have a radical effect on how they deal with the bugs they will inevitably find.

Read More →
A yellow flower in out-stretched hands.A yellow flower in out-stretched hands.

I May Be A Giver, But I’m Not Exactly Altruistic!!!!

The WordPress community is woven from gifts–gifts of code, support, Meetups and WordCamps–gifts that people have given because they need them to exist.

Recently someone posted to a Facebook group I frequent an article that was wholesale copied from one I wrote. I was flattered. I know that sounds sarcastic, but it’s true. Really, it doesn’t bother me. I’m used to giving freely. Am I getting screwed a little on this one? Sure, but I don’t focus on every little exchange. Overall I’ve benefited more than I can possibly calculate by what I have taken from the WordPress ecosystem. Keeping score would be pointless.

Read More →

Getting Started With WordPress!!!!

I’d like to share some lessons I’ve learned about getting started with WordPress. Sharing, after all, is at the heart of what WordPress is about.

If it seems like everyone is using WordPress for their websites these days that’s because WordPress is no powering more than 20% of the internet. There is no better time to get started with WordPress to share your story and opinions as well to grow your business or start a new one. I can say from personal experience that learning these skills and getting involved in the WordPress community has been one of the more rewarding and transformational experiences of my life.

Read More →

Building An Email List From A WordPress Site!!!!

So far, the focus in my series on content strategy has been on attracting the right audience to your site, but maintaining your audience is just as important. So, today I will be showing you how I set up the optin slide-ins and pop-over optin forms for subscribing to this series. I will also be […]

Read More →

Marketing Your Authentic Self!!!!

If you were creating a content strategy for a magazine, it would be driven by what sells the magazine’s product, which is advertisements or subscriptions. On your personal blog, your product is your authentic self.

Read More →

Time To Modernize Custom Backgrounds In WordPress?!!!!

Is it time to update the custom background functionality in WordPress to provide better options for users and developers? When was the last time that you used a tiled background image on a site, or saw one used and didn’t chuckle? If you wanted to use a tiled background for an ironic laugh WordPress’ custom background function has that as an option. What it doesn’t have is the ability to set a fixed position, full-screen background.

Read More →
WordCamp Orlando 2013 LogoWordCamp Orlando 2013 Logo

The New Focuses & Strategies of WordPress Core Development!!!!

At the end of the first day of this year’s WordCamp Orlando, WordPress lead developers Andrew Nacin and Mark Jaquith discussed the changing trends in WordPress core development. They addressed shifting focuses and shrinking development cycles as well as the major change in development strategy for the current 3.8 development cycle. Nacin pointed out that […]

Read More →

Using The New Date Queries In WordPress 3.7!!!!

WordPress 3.7 added several cool new features, including the new date queries added to WP_Query. Date queries allow you to easily do some pretty cool things based on a post’s date. In this tutorial I will show you how to use them to show posts published one year ago, the most commented on posts in the last week and posts scheduled for tomorrow.

Read More →

Co-Creating A Better Support Experience!!!!

My first article for Torque, Co-Creating A Better Support Experience was published today. The article is based on my experience working for Pods, and taking some inspiration from an awesome talk by Syed Balkhi of wpbegginer.com at WordCamp Birmingham 2013 and incorporates a lot of what I learned in school about participatory design. It’s always […]

Read More →

Pods Tutorials!!!!

I recently helped design the new tutorials section for the Pods website, which features tutorials from around the Pods community. Right now it includes two tutorials I wrote, one on using Pods’ custom relationship fields, and the other is an eight-part series on using Pods to create a users directory.

Read More →

Creating and Compensating For Fixed Height Headers!!!!

In Gethen, my new child theme for _Second Foundation, I created an option for fixing the header to the top of the page. Its pretty easy to do this with a little css “postion:fixed”, but keeping it from clipping the top of the page content is a little trickier. In a static html site you […]

Read More →
WordPress VIP LogoWordPress VIP Logo

Browse Free WordPress Plugins Like A VIP!!!!

The official WordPress plugin repository contains over 27,000 plugins. Separating the good from the bad as well as the good from the ‘was once good but no longer works’ can be a challenge. Opposed to the theme directory, the plugins are not actively reviewed by a large team of dedicated volunteer reviewers. This leaves the […]

Read More →
Gmail Mobile MenuGmail Mobile Menu

Add A Slideout Sidebar To A Responsive Theme!!!!

Note: this is an updated version of my original post, with new and improved code and links to more examples. On any screen, not just the small-screen, getting your content front and center is important. One way to accomplish this is to do away with the once ubiquitous sidebar. Facebook, and other mobile apps have […]

Read More →

One (Askimet) Key To Rule Them All!!!!!

If you’ve ever set up a WordPress multisite network using Askimet for anti-spam, you’ve probably been annoyed that there is no network wide setting. Turns out there is, in wp-config.php. All you have to do is add this in wp-config and you’re good to go: define(‘WPCOM_API_KEY’,’your-key’); It would have been nice to see a settings […]

Read More →

What Is The Real Conversion Rate?!!!!

Mailing lists are a great resource, but they can be more than just a way to get people to keep coming back to your site–they can be a way to start a conversation. Building an email list is what I’m personally focusing on right now, but it’s important to not loose site of the real goal–new clients and new ways to serve the community. I’m not in the business of sending emails. I’m in the business of creating WordPress support systems and educational materials as well as building and nurturing user communities If I had 1000 page views in a month and two sign-ups for my email list, and my only goal was to build a mailing list, I’d be disappointed by that miserable conversion rate. But, if 2 of those 1000 page views turned into leads for new clients, I’d be a very happy boy.

Read More →