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Development WordPress

How do you solve a problem like YouTube Embed?

My YouTube Embed WordPress plugin is nearly 11 years old now and was one of the first plugins I wrote (albeit not THE first), paving a way into WordPress development and, for the last 4 years, working in my dream job at Automattic.

But, right now, I have a problem with it.

First of all, it’s important to understand what the plugin is about.

Categories
Development WordPress

New WordPress plugin released: Draft Links

My second plugin release within a week? What is happening?

Draft Links is a fork of one of the features from one of my other plugins – Draft List. Let me explain why.

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WordPress

Death of an icon

My WordPress plugins have been in desperate need of a lick-of-paint when it comes to the images used on them for a while – and by “images”, I mean those used in the WordPress repository.

There are actually 2 you can provide – an avatar and a banner image. I’ll come to the banner in a bit, but I decided that I needed a single source for the avatars, so they all had a matching design.

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WordPress

How to check for a minimum level of PHP within a WordPress plugin

Oh my. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt such hate from users. What horrendous thing did I do? I change one of my plugins so that it now required PHP 7 to work, instead of 5.3.

You know PHP 7… which itself goes out of support in the next few months. PHP 7 also being the recommended minimum level of PHP for running WordPress.

Anyhow, I’ve written a short function which, when added to a plugin, will check for the current level and fail the activation if it doesn’t meet the requirements.

Categories
WordPress

My WordPress plugins and PHP support

I recently updated my Plugins List plugin and the minimum PHP level requirement moved from 5.6 to 7. 

Let me explain my reasoning and what my plans are for PHP support.