WordPress

I Really Enjoyed my WordCamp Santa Clarita Experience

I’ve been attending WordCamps now for five years and these events have greatly benefited me as a professional web developer, WordCamp Santa Clarita had no shortage amazing experiences, conversations or sessions.

I spoke about my experience updating Kubrick for Gutenberg
Watched as David Nuon MacGyver’d Gutenberg to create a Buzzfeed style What type of Poky are you? Spoiler Alert: I’m Vanilla.
- In MacGyver fashion his laptop battery died a second before he finished the presentation. I can’t way for WordPress.tv to post the video.
Amy Hall presented on drip and nurture email campaigns, If I ever start freelancing my services I know this will be a key to success.
Matt Kopala provided much needed insight into why servers can run slowly.
Glenn Zucman talk on Software Freedom was fantastic.
- Did you know he has a sub-site dedicated to his hair color?
I was able to pick Mikey Veenstra‘s brain about web security and research
I created an incomplete and unofficial Twitter list of many of the people involved. If you want to be added or removed just let me know.
Caught up with Verious, Marc and Gregg of our Inland Empire WordPress Community where I’ve been absent the last few months.
I chatted with several attendees, speakers and speakers throughout the weekend on topics of all sorts and to many to list but I’ll try,
- Erik Blair on being a digital nomad
- Chris Adrich on Indiweb, Micropub, and owning our social media
- Jessi Gurr on business ownership, project management and leadership
- Sergio Scabuzzo, Renee Johnson, Stan Zawada, and several others about work and life and everything in between.

Most importantly I was able to hang out with the other speakers, volunteers, sponsors, and organizers who made this first Santa Clarita WordCamp a success. Joe Simpson Jr. took on this massive undertaking along with the other organizers and volunteers to make this happen and I am honored to have been a part of it.

Creating a custom attachment loop for images and other files in WordPress

While building an attachment.php template for a project I opted to customize the loop to properly display an image within a figure tag and the caption within figcaption to aid accessibility.

Additionally if the file is not an image it will provide a button that can be styled along with a mime type.

The following code would have to be placed within the loop.

<?php 
if ( wp_attachment_is_image() ) {

	// Set the image's ID to an array so it can be reused later
	$image_id = get_the_ID();
	$caption = wp_get_attachment_caption( $image_id );

	echo '<figure>';

		// Displays the large version of the image if available
		echo wp_get_attachment_image( $image_id, 'large' );

		// if no caption is set or the value is null do nothing and don't display the empty tags
		if (!empty($caption) ) {
			echo '<figcaption>' . $caption . '</figcaption>';
		}

	echo '</figure>';

} else {

	// If the attachment is not an image display a button and mime type.
	$attachment_id = get_the_ID();

	$attachment_url = wp_get_attachment_url( $attachment_id ); 

	echo '<button type="button"><a href="' . $attachment_url . '" target="_blank">' . get_the_title( $attachment_id ) . '</a></button> ';

	echo '<span class="mime-type">' . get_post_mime_type( $attachment_id ) . '</span>';

}
?>

Plugins should not hijack the admin dashboard

I’m a happy Jetpack Premium subscriber and have it installed on this website, however the latest update to 7.1 added a new suggestion and reminder feature in the Plugins dashboard that I believe violates the best practices documentation provided in WordPress.org’s guidelines.

I feel that if a user has Jetpack installed they’re well aware of various features and the developer has made it extremely easy to find that information within the menu system of the admin dashboard. This looks and feels like adware and sets a dangerous precedent for an increasingly spammy user experience for users.

I’ve copied the relevant Plugin guidelines text below last updated August 23, 2018. What do you think? Feel free to comment at the end of this post.

#11. Plugins should not hijack the admin dashboard

Users prefer and expect plugins to feel like part of WordPress. Constant nags and overwhelming the admin dashboard with unnecessary alerts detract from this experience.

Upgrade prompts, notices, alerts, and the like must be limited in scope and used sparingly, be that contextually or only on the plugins setting page. Site wide notices or embedded dashboard widgets must be dismissible or self-dismiss when resolved. Error messages and alerts must include information on how to resolve the situation, and remove themselves when completed.

Advertising within the WordPress dashboard should be avoided, as it is generally ineffective. Users normally only visit settings pages when theyre trying to solve a problem. Making it harder to use a plugin does not generally encourage a good review, and we recommend limiting any ads placed therein. Remember: tracking referrals via those ads is not permitted (see guideline 7) and most third-party systems do not permit back-end advertisements. Abusing the guidelines of an advertising system will result in developers being reported upstream.

Developers are welcome and encouraged to include links to their own sites or social networks, as well as locally (within the plugin) including images to enhance that experience.

Last Updated August 23, 2018