My ramblings on programming, product development, and more, collected in chronological order.
There have been a ton of great features added to WordPress over the last few years, but undoubtedly my favorite is the Customizer API. Leveraging the Customizer is my go-to for any settings that a client may need to change or update.
Creating organized and easily maintainable front-end related JavaScript files is something that took me a long time to figure out. It's also something that I've noticed a lot of other people struggling with.
I'll start off by saying that 2014 has been the best year of my life in so many ways. When I sat down to think back on all that has happened, there are three dates this year that really stick out to me.
The WordPress Transients API is a super useful way to temporarily store cached data. It was introduced in WordPress 2.8 (all the way back in 2009, so it's pretty much an antique or something now), but I've only recently become more aware of it and started using it heavily in production.
Lately, I've been doing a lot of theme development with plans to place themes on the WordPress.org repo, ThemeForest and other marketplaces. With that comes a lot of use of the Theme-Check plugin.
Dropdown menus provide a nice hierarchical view of your menu structure, allowing you to help narrow the visitors focus and find exactly what they're looking for and reducing navigation clutter.