A few months ago a new major version of PHP was released which brought many code style and functionality enhancements. A very useful update toward making PHP strict typed and running more computational complex programs natively on PHP. If you are running automated tests on WordPress it's likely you are running some form of the WordPress core integration testing library which is locked down to PHPunit version 7. Over the past couple years WordPress core was aware of this upcoming limitation … [Read more...]
Adding Custom JavaScript to Your Site
There are times when you need to add a little JavaScript to your WordPress site but don't want to spin up an entire plugin. Maybe you're doing some AB testing or don't want to edit your theme's JavaScript directly. Maybe you're adding some Google Analytics code. If you've ever requested a customization of the accordion functionality in our Advanced Sidebar Menu PRO plugin, you most likely needed to add some custom JavaScript. Whatever your reasons, there are a few methods to accomplish … [Read more...]
Writing a proper commit message
These days every developer is using some form of version control to manage their code bases and contributions from their team. Most predominantly we are using GIT as our version control of choice. No matter what form of version control you are using, the most important part of keeping a usable code history is, "Writing a proper commit message." Why? If you have ever used git log --grep or used an IDE to find commits you know the importance of having a relevant message to locate the … [Read more...]
Adding VAT to WooCommerce Billing Address
It is a common occurrence to receive requests for invoices that include a customer's VAT for use with their country's tax records. While WooCommerce does not ship with support for generating invoices, there are many great plugins which add invoice functionality. Previously, when someone requested a VAT to be added, we simply directed the customer to cram it into the existing address fields - not anymore! As of today, we've added a special field to the billing address for entering a VAT which … [Read more...]
Case Study: Displaying Highlighted Search Terms With Limited Content
As the content of a WordPress site grows (using this site as my case study) search results will also grow. Typically on a WordPress site the search results will either show the post content, the excerpt, or a limited version of the content. WordPress does not highlight the words in the content which match the search terms, nor does it automatically display the relevant sections of a post's content when using the excerpt or a limited version of content. This can lead to potentially unintuitive … [Read more...]
Node As A CLI
This is an exhaustive article on creating command line run scripts/executables with node and how it all works. It is broken into sections for convenience if you are looking for a specific topic. Otherwise, grab a coffee and prepare to learn more than you ever wanted to know about node cli. For the purpose of this article the words package and project are interchangeable and both mean a node app which is defined by the package.json standard. For the purposes of this article all project … [Read more...]