Category: Tips and Tricks

Let’s Tango

The past few months, I’ve been playing with Facebook’s React UI library and the coming REST API, and having a blast considering new possibilities in WordPress theming.

I recently started building up a starter theme called Tango, which attempts to bring everything we love and expect from Underscores, into a React-based and API-driven environment. Ultimately, I’d like it to become a sort of library of its own, that could be dropped into existing Underscores-based themes and handle as much (or as little) as a theme developer wants on the front-end.

Tango also relies on a little plugin called WP-API Theming, which fills some holes the current API lacks at this point when it comes to theme development. Anything theme-related specific to the API I’m just dealing with in there for now.

The coming API (and the modern development tools it allows us to use) is going to usher in an exciting new generation of WordPress themes, and I can’t wait to see what people do with it.

MEMP Stack on Yosemite

This is a great article on getting a MEMP stack running on OS X 10.10 Yosemite:

http://blog.frd.mn/install-nginx-php-fpm-mysql-and-phpmyadmin-on-os-x-mavericks-using-homebrew/

Personally, I skipped everything with regards to phpMyAdmin, since I use Sequel Pro for interacting with MySQL databases. You may notice that there’s a known bug with the current stable version of Sequel Pro (1.0.2) on Yosemite, but if you don’t need user management, you’ll be fine.

New Theme: Twenty Fifteen

My favourite default theme in quite a while. Congrats to all involved!

WordPress.com News

It’s that time of year again. The snow has started falling in northern countries, friends are gathering together to exchange presents, and it’s time to launch a beautiful new annual theme for WordPress.

Hello World, Twenty Fifteen is here.

twenty-fifteen

Twenty Fifteen is all about the details. Everything you publish is elegantly set in Noto Sans and Noto Serif, keeping the design harmonious and balanced in multiple languages around the globe. That polylingual pixel perfection is matched by its responsive design. From device to device, Twenty Fifteen will look smart and polished.

responsive-twenty-fifteen

The attention to detail is reflected in the menu design. Check out the descriptions under the links in the demo and the screenshots above. Learn how to add menu descriptions on the theme showcase page.

The fine details and strong structure make Twenty Fifteen look even better with a bit of customization. We have five featured color…

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On API Correctness

Great summary pointing to the heart of working with APIs.

Developer Resources

Developing APIs is hard.

You pour your blood, sweat, and tears into this interface that bares the soul of your company and of your product to the world. The machinery under the hood, though, is often a lot less polished than the fancy paint job would lead the rest of the world to believe. You have to be careful, then, not to inflict your own rough edges on the people you expect to be consuming your API because…

Using APIs is hard.

As an app developer you’re trying to take someone else’s product and somehow integrate it into whatever vision you have in your head. Whether it’s simply getting a list of things from another service (such as embedding a reading list) or wrapping your entire product around another product (using Amazon S3 as your primary binary storage mechanism, for example), you have a lot of things to reconcile.

You have your own…

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JSON in the Chrome Inspector

Sometimes you get back JSON data in a browser window, and it would be nice to just check it out without having to fire up anything else, or muck with copy/pasting. A quick Google search implies you need an extension for Chrome, but there is a simple (if somewhat buried) way to browse JSON objects with the Inspector: in the Network tab, select your source and then the Preview tab (beside the Headers tab). Enjoy!

What WordPress Themes are really about (and WordPress 4.1)

A good reminder of what meaningful theme development is all about.

Ian Daniel Stewart

I’ll be committing code to WordPress again with version 4.1! I made my last big contribution with Twenty Ten and Twenty Eleven where I had a hand in both design and coding. (It was with Twenty Eleven where I was actively contributing code). This time I won’t be working on a theme I designed. Instead, I’ll be helping to bring a design from my friend and colleague Takashi Irie to millions and millions of people. As cool as it is to work on the core WordPress project — it’s the software behind 1 in 4 of the websites you visit! — I think I’m just as excited, if not more excited, to work with Takashi on it.

Yes, he’s a great designer and a great person to work with but more than that he understands what themes are about.

  • How people use them as the foundation for personal expression on the…

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