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Find the Words to Match Your Code Poetry

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A few weeks ago, 200+ WordPress enthusiasts geeked out at WordCamp Vancouver and then attended the first ever BuddyCamp. For me, the highlight of the weekend was listening to John James Jacoby’s (AKA JJJ) presentation about proper documentation. His talk reminded me, that last year at WordCamp Toronto, Chip Bennett also gave a great presentation discussing documentation, and over in Montreal, Joey Kudish discussed the merits of becoming a better developer by writing better code. Weird how you need to hear the same thing three times to finally actually “hear it”. Well after WordCamp Vancouver, I finally started and I’m now documenting my themes properly.

I don’t know about you, but back in 2004 when I started working with WordPress, I didn’t pay much attention to standards, documentation, or the proper way to do things. But now, it seems as though the entire WordPress community is now working towards adopting the same standards. [Read more…] about Find the Words to Match Your Code Poetry

The Ten Commandments of WordPress Development

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About a year ago I made an inventory of all the WordPress websites I created together with my colleagues over the past few years. I found out that we used a lot of different approaches. It lacked standardization. What we needed was a uniform approach to development and, of course, a philosophy. At first I was a little flabbergasted, I really did not know where to start. Of course we all knew about the Codex, the forums and tutorial websites, but we did not have any contact with the WordPress community at all. [Read more…] about The Ten Commandments of WordPress Development

Building a Multilingual Website? These are the Questions to Ask.

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Throughout the years I have created several multilingual websites using WordPress, and I have tried different methods to achieve my goals. As you might know, WordPress does not offer a simple solution for creating multilingual websites. Yet since you can create virtually everything using WordPress, just a little effort is needed to achieve your goals. There are several ways to create a multilingual website. [Read more…] about Building a Multilingual Website? These are the Questions to Ask.

WordPress Themes: One Size Never Fits All

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When introducing WordPress to my students, there’s a lot of confusion about themes. I’ve also come across this on the WordPress support forums. Beginners just don’t know which theme to start with or which one will be best for their project.

With so many themes to choose from, it’s easy to understand. Knowing which theme is perfect for you depends on your level of expertise, your project and budget. This might seem a bit strange, but deciding on which theme to use is very similar to choosing where to go on holiday.

[Read more…] about WordPress Themes: One Size Never Fits All

Closing the Cookie Jar

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On June 5 2012, the new Dutch Telecommunications Act came in force. This act is a direct result of a recent EU ‘Cookie’ Directive regarding websites storing information on your computer. For the most part the directive is about the use of cookies, but other examples are “HTML5 local storage” and “local shared objects“. This EU Directive (officially known as the EU Directive 2002/58 on Privacy and Electronic Communications, otherwise known as the E-Privacy Directive) states in Article 5(3) the following:

Member States shall ensure that the storing of information, or the gaining of access to information already stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned has given his or her consent, having been provided with clear and comprehensive information… about the purposes of the processing.

There are already a lot of sites discussing and explaining the European directive like Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and All About Cookies. You can find tons of information on them like the difference between session- and persistent cookies. Apart from the distinction between session and persistent cookies, cookies can also be separated into functional and non-functional cookies. Functional cookies are cookies that are required for the basic operation of your application – most of the time these are also session cookies. Non-functional cookies however are not required for your application to work properly, they are additional and most of the time they only provide an added value for the applications owner. It’s on these last kind of cookies the directive applies. The EU Member States all have their own legislations derived from the EU Directive, they all are slightly divergent amongst themselves.

[Read more…] about Closing the Cookie Jar