This week I'm running a (my first ever) fundraiser for a non-profit where I do a lot of volunteer work, Code for Fort Collins. And I figured it make sense to share it pretty widely. And that may as well… [Keep reading]

While yesterday's story about security was just about common *WordPress* security issues, today I want to share a cool site that helps you more with overall personal security planning. It's got one of those cutesy URLs: SecurityCheckli.st. But other than… [Keep reading]

Akin to Fred's thorough answer on "the best page builder for WordPress", Ryan Sullivan recently published over on WP Site Care a thorough analysis of six of the biggest form plugins for WordPress. He goes in depth, and doesn't leave… [Keep reading]

It's a funny time to be alive. We haven't yet reached that part of the technology singularity where rogue nanorobot clouds disassemble us all into carbon dust (bad), or where we transfer our consciousness into massive sentient spaceships and colonize… [Keep reading]

An important post from Carole Olinger. Carole wrote on Twitter this was a difficult post to write, and I’m not surprised: this covers a number of themes, including Carole’s attempts to improve the diversity of the WordCamp Europe organising team last year.… [Keep reading]

If you're neither worried about PHP internals nor PHP 8, skip this. If you're a fellow nerd, this is pretty cool. First JIT compilers (which stands for "just in time") are just a cool idea. Rather than up-front optimization, you… [Keep reading]

Not many people review WordPress plugins, and that’s not too surprising. This is pretty interesting, if slightly annoyingly written, research on the review to install ration of popular WordPress plugins. The average ratio of active installs to reviews on WordPress.org… [Keep reading]

Next Thursday, I'm giving a talk at SiteLock. If you're a person who has thought about learning how to develop WordPress themes for a while and never really gotten around to it, this is the perfect talk for you. We'll… [Keep reading]

Large, collaboratively-created systems almost always contain pitfalls: misleading bits that don't work the way they should. When someone thinks of these pitfall-prone systems, the English language, with all its/it's inconsistencies, often comes to his/her/his or her/their/there/they're mind. WordPress is another… [Keep reading]

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… [Keep reading]

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… [Keep reading]

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,… [Keep reading]

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,… [Keep reading]

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… [Keep reading]

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… [Keep reading]

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… [Keep reading]

“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… [Keep reading]

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… [Keep reading]

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… [Keep reading]

“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… [Keep reading]

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… [Keep reading]

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,… [Keep reading]

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… [Keep reading]

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… [Keep reading]

Fantastic NPR-style podcast from WPMU DEV. I can highly recommend this podcast, which does something totally different to all the WordPress podcasts you’ve heard before. The show follows co-host’s Micah’s journey as a new user of WordPress through a series… [Keep reading]