Technology

  • The Hackiest Hack that Ever Was Hacked

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    I was first introduced to Plupload when I was building websites in .Net.  I had some great HTML5 file upload tools that worked wonders in my browser of choice, but most of my colleagues (and about 80% of our clients) were using a browser that didn’t support the API.  I used Plupload as a reliable…

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  • 1Password: Better and Worse for Personal Data Security

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    Ever since I was a victim of digital identity theft in college, I’ve kept a keen eye on data security.  I use long passwords that mix case, numbers, and punctuation.  I impose ridiculous must-change-passwords-every-6-months rules on myself.  And I never, ever write my passwords down for others to see.  But still, I feel like things…

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  • Don’t Dequeue WordPress’ jQuery

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    As a moderator on the WordPress Stack Exchange, I end up spending a lot of time on the site.  I see lots of great questions, lots of not-so-great questions, and several you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me questions.  But the question I see the most often frustrates me: How do I remove WordPress’ jQuery and use Google’s CDN version instead?…

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  • Distraction Free Reading Mode

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    I’m a big fan of the “distraction free writing mode” within WordPress. For those of you who haven’t seen it – launch a new post in WordPress and click the full-screen icon on the editor.  Your mind will be blown.  The sidebars, admin interface, and all of the other UI cruft of the WordPress interface drops…

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  • Making Singletons Safe in PHP

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    Last time, I argued in favor of the Singleton pattern in WordPress.  Singletons make sense in WordPress specifically for several reasons: They live in the global scope without using the already abused/overused [cci]global[/cci] keyword As a distributed application maintained by several hundred developers, they prevent problems that likely arise from others misusing your code But…

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  • The Case for Singletons in WordPress

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    Please also review my follow-up post, Making Singletons Safe in PHP. There has been a lot of discussion this week regarding the Singleton pattern and whether or not it has a place in modern software development.  Mike Schinkel wrote a tutorial about a Singleton factory.  I wrote one about using Singletons as a WordPress plugin…

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  • WordPress Plugin Structure

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    The power of WordPress lies in its pluggable infrastructure.  Unlike other content management applications which require you to edit the core code of the system to make changes, WordPress supports plugins.  These smaller applications tie in to a rich API provided by WordPress that allows you to change just about everything about the application and customize…

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  • Introducing WP_Session

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    Last time, I talked about what it would be like if WordPress supported sessions.  Well, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and actually took the time to build it. I’m proud to announce the very first release of an implementation of [cci]WP_Session[/cci].

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  • WP_Session: A Proposal

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    My first experience with WordPress was when a client asked me to hack apart the registration system to allow for simple custom referral links.  They wanted users to be placed at different user levels depending on the URL they used to sign up for an account. My initial attempt was … atrocious   When a user hit…

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  • There’s Nothing Wrong with Comic Sans

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    When I was in high school, my favorite football team wasn’t very good. I was excited when we’d win at least half the games in a season. I also distinctly remember once when the cable company switched to a “more competitive game” during the 2nd quarter because we were losing so badly. When the Ducks…

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