Technology

  • WordPress Core Proposal: Aribitrary File Upload

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    I’m proposing a new feature for WordPress that would enable editors to drag-and-drop new media anywhere within the admin interface and have those uploads added to the media gallery. It would streamline several of my workflows. Would it help yours?

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  • Ethics in Software Development

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    Where do we, as software developers, draw the line with releasing new software? Do we build software with the common good in mind and ignore the potential consequences of releasing such tools to the world? Do we hold back potentially groundbreaking achievements because they could be misused by the wrong hands?

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  • WordPress Core Proposal: SUDO

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    Logging in to your WordPress site as an administrator when your plan is just to write is a bad idea. The admin user should be for administration and you should use an editor-level user for writing. But this dual-login workflow can be needlessly complicated on many sites. Instead, I propose we introduce a SUDO mode…

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  • Photon and HTTPS – Making It Work

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    Jetpack’s Photon service doesn’t like it when image assets are served over SSL. I took some time to dig in to the issue and coded a quick workaround to enable Photon on a site locked down to serve all assets over SSL.

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  • Server-side Analytics through Google

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    Some of the products I build for the web don’t come with a website. But I can still use Google Analytics to track their usage. Thanks to a handy PHP library I found on GitHub, I now have the luxury of tracking the execution of server-side scripts in the same analytics dashboard I use to…

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  • Securing XML-RPC for WordPress

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    If you use WordPress, you’ve probably used one of the mobile apps for it. If you’ve used one of these mobile apps, then you’ve used XML-RPC. If you’ve used XML-RPC, then you’ve sent your username and password – in plain text – across the Internet. This is hugely unsafe, and I want to work to…

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  • Query, Template, Actions as MVC in WordPress

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    I love WordPress. I also love MVC design fundamentals. Unfortunately, these two loves of mine are at odds with one another, and that makes me sad. Here’s my simple idea to make WordPress’ built-in templating engine play nice with MVC sensibilities – everyone can win!

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  • Crowdfunding a New Year’s Goal

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    After watching a few sessions of WordSesh – particularly the podcasting roundtable – I’ve decided to take another stab at podcasting. This time around I want to cover a broad range of topics, and throw in some video. I’m asking for the community’s help getting this show off the ground, and I won’t be able…

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  • To Test or Not To Test: Unit Testing and Privacy

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    Determining which methods in your application needed testing used to be easy – test everything exposed by the public API. But once you invite other developers to contribute, you are exposing a whole other set of internal APIs to the team. The behavioral consistency of these methods is just as important as that of the…

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  • Linux-flavored Windows

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    I use both Mac and Windows for development because I’ve managed to set up a Linux-style command environment on both. Here are some simple steps you too can follow to have the power of Linux-style commands right from the Windows command prompt.

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