It’s been a while since I’ve written about what I personally find the single most annoying thing in WordPress, the issues around dependency management. When I started thinking about the project that eventually turned into the Mozart package, I knew that it eventually had to support processing of a full dependency tree. Today is the […]
Author Archives: Coen Jacobs
Embracing Gutenberg
Wow, this is actually my first post written with the new Gutenberg editor that recently shipped with WordPress 5.0. I have done some testing with the betas and release candidates and have often criticised the lack of opt-in for users and eventually the seemingly rushed release schedule to get it out the door before WordCamp […]
Use a global .gitignore file to ignore commonly ignored files
Accidentally committing sensitive information to a GitHub repository can have costly effects. This tweet of someone committing their AWS private keys in an .env file by accident, surfaced only a couple days ago. I’m sure something like this has happened to so many people already. It’s easy to commit a file that you do wish […]
Decouple from WordPress databases by using repositories
A quick and easy way to decouple your code from WordPress logic, is by using repositories. Repositories are standardized ways to get and put data in a data store, usually databases. WordPress introduces a couple functions to interact with various database tables (get_post_meta(), get_option(), etc.) that are commonly used inside plugin and theme files, that […]
Class constructors should only setup the object
It’s common practice in the larger PHP world, but something the WordPress ecosystem has yet to catch up on. All too often, I see WordPress plugins and themes setup actions, filters and use other WordPress specific functions in class constructors. This leads to a class that is directly coupled to WordPress logic.
Gutenberg is progress
Over on the Mindsize blog, I have published my thoughts on why I think Gutenberg is just the progress WordPress needs: A lot has been already said about Gutenberg and whether it should be included in WordPress core. How should it behave once it is included? Should it be the new editor for new sites […]
A new adventure awaits
Exciting news! I have joined Mindsize as Director of Products. The past two weeks have been filled with getting to know the team and the projects that are currently in the works. I’m being tasked with pushing our line of products to the next level. Our leadership team consists of three fine, bearded gentlemen, who […]
Learning what is most important in life
When times are tough, you learn what is important in life. The past couple months have been a bit of a disaster for me on a personal level. I’m not going to explain details on any of it in this post, as most of it is in the past now, where it belongs. The British […]
Mozart monkey patches WordPress’ lack of dependency management
A first proof of concept version of Mozart is now available for public testing. Mozart is a command line tool for wrapping PHP packages inside your own namespace. This is the least bad solution for solving most dependency management issues inside the WordPress ecosystem. The fundamental lack of dependency management support inside the WordPress ecosystem […]
Analytics spammers now use legit websites as referrals
Sigh. Where do I start on this? Everyone who owns a website these days and has some sort of analytics tool active has seen the lifehacĸer and É¢oogle domain spam (note the weird characters). For the last couple months, the amount of spam like this has been growing slowly but steady. Annoying, yes, but also very easy to […]