Focus for longer, and understand the cost of admin work.

Long-time readers will know Cal Newport’s books and ideas are a favourite of mine – especially his “Deep Work” philosophy. This post combines Deep Work with some of the themes from Cal’s new book on Digital Minimalism, and he argues that admin work, and email in particular, is stopping leading academics from doing the work they’re best at, and having the creative breakthroughs that their predecessors have enjoyed.

This post specifically is applied to Cal’s “home” field of academia, but there are plenty of ideas which can apply to the WordPress world. The primary item is understanding the impact of any work which isn’t whatever you’re the very best at, how this interrupts your ability to focus for sustained periods, and what the opportunity cost of this is.

Slack comes to mind immediately; it’s an integral part of making WordPress, but it also demands our attention, all the time. Perhaps we need to create boundaries, and urgently get much better at doing so.

This post first appeared in MasterWP, a weekly newsletter for WordPress professionals.

Deploying a WordPress plugin to the WordPress.org repository has been challenging for most developers for at least a few years. Why? Mostly because almost no one learns Subversion (the version control system that WordPress.org uses) anymore. So we’ve all cobbled together different versions of things that kind of work. And at least for me, I often forget what mine is, and how to use it. (For those real nerdy folks, what I have used a variation of Scribu’s scripts: http://scribu.net/blog/deploying-from-git-to-svn.html. It works for me, but I wouldn’t really recommend it as the perfect system. It’s just good enough that I’ve not sought an alternative.)

For that reason, many people including me were quite excited to see this post on the 10up blog from Helen Hou-Sandi. What she announces is that using the new GitHub Actions (still in beta) feature, they’ve developed a way to fairly seamlessly deploy a GitHub repository as a plugin on WordPress.org. To get it working you’ll need to be approved for the GitHub Actions beta, or wait for its wide release. (I’m still waiting for approval.)

But anything that makes deploying plugins easier for most developers is very welcomed, so I’m excited for this. Yay Helen and 10up!

Alex on his little notebook.

I carry around a little notebook for recording ideas, and – this sounds a bit odd but go with it – it’s totally changed the way I approach ideas, and being creative. Like most readers, I’m sure, I have lots of ideas! They come and go, and using the little notebook is a way of making sure they stay and then get put into practice. For my work this has led to moving forwards on a bunch of ideas which would have otherwise been forgotten. This is a fun post, and worth a read.

This post first appeared in MasterWP, a weekly newsletter for WordPress professionals.

This is one of those articles that I’m linking 50% for its substance (which I regard as good but too brief) and 50% for covering and important topic. Specifically, how to manage and think about self-education. A lot, probably most, web developers I know and readers of WPShout I’ve talked to are self-educated in the web development field. Maybe you got college degrees, but few of those were “computer science.” Even if you did, Computer Science Degree often covers very little about web development. So most of us are just learning as we go.

What I really valued in the piece was Sarah’s transparency about the fact that she’s still learning (even while writing in a vaunted space like CSS-Tricks), and that she lays out specifically how she thinks about doing it:

If there’s an API I’m trying to learn, I’ll go to the main documentation page (if there is one), and list each of the things I’m trying to learn. Then I’ll divide the sections into what I think are manageable chunks, and spread the sections over my schedule, usually shooting for about a half hour a day. I do this with the understanding that some days I won’t find the time, and others, I’ll dig in for longer. Typically I aim for at least 2.5 hours of learning a week, because that pace seems reasonable to me.

This is so concrete, and quite different from the way I’ve ever thought about learning. (I’m much more “learn as needing by doing projects.”) But her success speaks for itself. It’s not easy to manage the continuous learning that computer-professionals require. But even you dismiss the specific schedule, Sarah covers also some great things about how to think about learning–how to practice, cognitive load theory–that’ll entertain and inform you as well.

From an internet marketing firm called Data Driven Labs comes this outstanding introduction to Google Data Studio, a Google product I’d like to know a lot more about.

I’ve just started trying to use Google Data Studio to pull together information on WPShout that I’m currently accessing through Analytics and Search Console separately. Like seemingly all Google interfaces designed for technical people, Google Data Studio is super confusing, and without the Data Driven Labs tutorial—which at least gives you sequential steps to start to follow to see stuff on the screen—I’d be staring at empty grid lines right now. Much appreciated!

The WordPress Governance Project working out who we are.

The WordPress Governance Project is trying to explore and influence the governance of WordPress and the open web, and it’s issued some new research. This identifies the stakeholders involved in the WordPress project, and does so with the aim of better understanding the needs and desires of those stakeholders.

The hope is that: “Understanding the nuances of each stakeholder and their preferences, actions or relationships can better articulate the needs for governance in the WordPress project.”

Some of what the research uncovers will be familiar, but it’s worth a read as it’s a great example of exploring “common knowledge” and working out what’s actually driving it. It’s also a great example of really nicely done project management: “Deep understanding of a target audience is fundamental to creating exceptional products”.

This post first appeared in MasterWP, a weekly newsletter for WordPress professionals.

When putting together WordPress Security with Confidence, one of the best sources about actual WordPress site comprises was the Sucuri hacked website report. While a lot of WordPress security content (including my own) is informed by a small number of real and important first-hand exposures to WordPress security issues, in a given year Sucuri has literally thousands.

And while there are great reasons that they may choose not to share any data (competitive advantage, the real human time such a report takes to release for public analysis), I’m grateful to see that they’re keeping up the trend of sharing some of their data with the rest of us.

I also love that they start with the executive summary. I’ll encourage you to click through, but here are a few as teasers:

• There was a notable decrease in the number of updated Joomla! installations at the point of infection.
• The blacklist telemetry showed a 6% reduction in sites being blacklisted. Blacklist authorities only detected 11% of the sites we cleaned as malicious in 2018, which speaks to the importance of proper scanning and detection controls.
• Our malware families analysis showed that SEO spam increased to 51.3% (up from 44% in 2017).

“Expert roundup” on what’s next.

I hesitated a little on linking this, as it’s obviously mostly trying to target search engines, and some of the analysis is a little soft: “The future of WordPress is awesome!” But there are also some interesting voices and takes on WordPress and Gutenberg, with the likes of Tom McFarlin chipping in with some insightful comments. This isn’t cutting-edge on the future of WordPress, but if you need a recap or something to send to a client this is a good start.

This post first appeared in MasterWP, a weekly newsletter for WordPress professionals.

Back in November I set aside this article from my friend Jeremy Ward about how to learn web development. I finally got to reading it and quite liked it. So I thought I’d share it with you. I liked that Jeremy started off with something I think about to little. The “circles of knowledge.” Here’s what he says:

For the purpose of this article, let’s assume you are interested in learning to build your first website. In the Circle of Knowledge, the outer edge broadly establishes the topic of Web Development. The inner circles define your level of familiarity with the general topic’s more specific subtopics. These interior circles divide your understanding of the larger topic into three sections: topics you know (or think you know), topics you have heard about, and topics you are unaware even exist.

Overall, anyway can learn something important from Jeremy’s article. Maybe it’s a reminder of how far you’ve come. Or encouragement to keep going on your path. All of those and more are what I take from it. 🙂

BTW, this article put me in mind of one I put together. As is too often the case (this means I’m getting old), what I thought was “about a year ago” turned out to be “four years ago.” In any case, I made my own little entry into the topic of learning web development (combined with WordPress) here:

Why WordPress is a Great Bridge into Being a Web Professional

Metabox Glue is a very niche plugin: its page on the WordPress plugin repository says “30+ active installations,” and that sounds about right. When you need it, though, it fits the job exactly.

The plugin works with metaboxes: the little areas that can be added to the WordPress post editor, where you edit post metadata in the form of custom fields. Metaboxes hold everything from fields generated by Advanced Custom Fields, to the fields that control the post’s Yoast SEO settings, to various kinds of metaboxes added by themes and plugins.

And what Metabox Glue does is simple: it immobilizes (or freezes, or “glues”) these metaboxes in place so that nobody can drag them around and reposition them, which by default is possible using the drag-and-drop interface baked into WordPress.

I’ve tested the plugin in both the Classic and Block (Gutenberg) editor, and it works in both. However, in the Block editor it does break the little “expand/collapse” arrows that let you open or close a metabox.

Okay: Why would you ever need this? I have a client that does a special kind of property inspection reporting using dozens of ACF fields within a custom post type. He does this on a tablet, and he was constantly accidentally dragging metaboxes everywhere by holding his thumb on the screen while he did the inspections. Metabox Glue solved this once and for all, saving me hours.

You really have to love WordPress for the vast coverage of its plugin repository, and Metabox Glue is another in literally thousands of examples.

“The occasional convenience [of your phone] comes at the cost of developing a compulsive urge to monitor your messages constantly.”

Cal Newport’s new book Digital Minimalism has been making the rounds recently, and I very much look forward to reading it. A key theme is something Cal talks about a lot, and I’ve mentioned a number of times in this newsletter: our collective inability to focus for sustained periods is a big problem, and whilst it primarily prevents us from doing good creative work, it feeds into anxiety, mental health, and general stress.

For me in particular – and like many millenials, I’m sure – I use my phone way too much. I’m pretty good at “Deep Working”, avoiding Slack, and avoiding emails when I need to get things done; and I do have no social media, email, or notifications on my phone. But – I still use it a lot. Got a minute to spare? I’ll check my messages. And so on: I’ve done the usual tricks but keep coming back to it.

It was thus particularly interesting to read Tim Harford’s FT column, reposted to his blog, about his similar struggle and how he applied a mix of Cal’s new book, and all sorts of citations on behavioural economics, to solve a similar problem.

The article is very well written and worth a read. A couple of points stuck out: a “detox” provides radical change to get started, but must be accompanied with a replacement. Tim went for: exercise, games, and making deeper connections with friends.

It’s what happens next which is interesting: a 30-day detox “sprint” is a fun adventure, but making long-term change is harder. In the end, Tim went for moderation rather than completely abandoning the tools. There’s probably a balance for everyone, and it’s probably not where we are now.

This post first appeared in MasterWP, a weekly newsletter for WordPress professionals.

Over at Thoughtful Code, I recently published an introduction to PHP web scraping based on some hard-won lessons I’ve had over the last few months doing it for keeps. It’s a skill that few people have, and which you might want to use carefully, but it’s super powerful when you need data you can see on a web page, have a reasonable legal right to, and can’t get from a comfortable and friendly programming API.

Here’s how I think about it:

In short, web scraping should always be the last resort. You’re doing a thing that the content-producer is at best a little disappointed with. If they wanted to make that information available to you, and they could, they would have. They may truly not have the technical capacity, or interest. Which is when web scraping is a great fit. Because a slow-moving website is one of the best targets for scraping data from websites using PHP.

Obviously, we all make our own choices. But I love what I’ve been able to use Symfony Panther to do in recent months. Even though it just saves me a few minutes a day. I makes my life better for sure. If that seems like it could be the case for you, please give this web scraping tutorial a look.

Google just introduced a major update to its search algorithm. This one’s called E-A-T, which stands for the things Google really likes now: “Expertise,” “Authoritativeness,” and “Trustworthiness.”

The main things I got out of reading the update notes were, first, just how complex the Google algorithm is now. It’s way past “Make sure you get lots of backlinks” or whatever (although of course those things still matter), and on to literal life advice like “Take action to manage your reputation.”

More concretely, these notes make me want to do a very good job on WPShout’s About page—which is decent but could be better—and to implement author bios on each of our articles. I think David and I do need to be more visible on WPShout, and it sounds like Google cares about that too, so now’s the time.

The children’s author on his writing process and habits.

This is a fantastic interview with the famous children’s author Roald Dahl, in which he talks about his life, his work, and his process. The video is from 1982 but it’s remarkable how similar it is to other master writers and creatives: Dahl will write from the quiet of his shed for four or five hours a day, and he’ll focus totally with no distractions in that time. The shed is both messy and precisely how he liked it: the only time it has been cleaned in the last five years, he said, was when a goat got in.

After Dahl is done with his five hours maximum of writing, there’s plenty of time for other activities and pursuits. This is creative mastery and “Deep Work” exactly how we’d refer to it today: find the thing you’re amazing at, and focus on doing that thing as much as you can. The video is a real treat, and well worth watching.

If you want more similar-ish videos, I really love Kirsten Dirksen’s YouTube channel.

This post first appeared in MasterWP, a weekly newsletter for WordPress professionals.

This was a great little read about server performance matters from Ashley Rich over at Delicious Brains. While I think most WordPress users (and even most WordPress developers) don’t really need to be expert server administrators, at least delving into the topics from time-to-time is super valuable if you’re going to be the most skilled developer you can be, and understand how parts outside of your “core stack” interact.

For those totally new to the concept of WordPress servers, check out our “WordPress LAMP” article. For those who are a little more experienced, head over to Ashley’s article. He does a good job bringing you up to speed on the core concepts involved in using Nginx instead of Apache, and how it’s different caching choices work. It’s a lot to learn, but not more than I’m confident that you can manage.

The highlight for me is just that he thought to, and did, try to combine a Nginx trick with a simple WordPress caching plugin. That had never occurred to me. Here are his conclusions about that:

I have to admit, I’m surprised by the results. I expected Simple Cache + Nginx Try Files to perform much better, but I never expected it to outperform Nginx’s native FastCGI Caching. I can only conclude that there must be additional overhead due to Nginx determining if a cache entry is still valid. Whereas try_files simply checks for the existence of a file.

In reality, the difference between Nginx FastCGI Caching and Simple Cache + Nginx Try Files is negligible and both caching solutions are excellent options (depending on which users Nginx and PHP run under). However, going forward I think I’ll be using Simple Cache + Nginx Try Files because it provides much more flexibility when it comes to purging the cache.