Category: Development

  • How to add PHPCS checking to Visual Studio Code

    How to add PHPCS checking to Visual Studio Code

    If you’re rocking VS Code and would like to automate PHPCS checking from within the editor, look no further.

    Not installed PHPCS yet? Check out my guide first. Once that’s done, thankfully, the process to do this is quite simple…

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  • Installing PHPCS on MacOS

    Installing PHPCS on MacOS

    If you’re developing for WordPress then, in my opinion, use of PHPCS to help validate your code is critical.

    However, anyone can develop without necessarily being a whizz with the command line (and I include myself in that bracket). So, having just gone through a PHPCS install with a freshly-baked MacBook, I thought I’d share the process. If only for me the next time I do it.

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  • Enemy of the (business) people

    Enemy of the (business) people

    Positions such as yours take [away] even the slightest incentive for plugin creators to create great plugins for free

    This was feedback given to me in the WordPress.org forums after I left poor feedback for a plugin. I’ll write about the specifics of this separately, but essentially a plugin was doing some particularly nasty advertising practices which, I believe, are against the guidelines. It’s also been reported to the Plugin Review team so I’ll leave it up to them to be the final arbiter.

    But, yes, the developer didn’t take the review well.

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  • WordPress function to check if a minimum set of requirements are met

    WordPress function to check if a minimum set of requirements are met

    Combining a couple of older functions, adding in some further automation and generally bringing them to a higher code quality, I’ve now created a new WordPress function for checking minimum requirements for a plugin.

    The idea is, you add this to your plugin and, when run, it ensures that certain checks are passed. If not, a message is displayed and the plugin is deactivated.

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  • How to use blocks to add footnotes in WordPress 6.3

    How to use blocks to add footnotes in WordPress 6.3

    A few years ago I adopted a footnotes plugin, which I forked as Footnotes Made Easy. My plugin makes use of double brackets to indicate text that you wish to appear in a footnote. Settings allows you to change how it appears, including the symbols used.

    I’ve not done a huge amount with it and now, with WordPress 6.3 released, there’s much less a reason to even use it. You see, WordPress 6.3 added an easy-to-use footnotes block. It doesn’t have many options, and my plugin does add a lot more features, but for most people it’s more than sufficient.

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