Mastery is a fascinating topic. Anyone taking pride in what they do are constantly striving to improve. To improve their skill set just a little more — to get a little better, faster, or more precise. Yet, mastery of any discipline comes down to one thing: practice. Whether you play the violin or are just trying to get really good at FlappyBird, you will need to put in the time it takes to get there. Mastering WordPress is no different. Increasing your skill set to an exceptional level is hard work. However, there are good reasons to do so: WordPress has […]
All About That Database: How To Use phpMyAdmin For WordPress
If you’ve ever installed WordPress, you know that every WordPress website consists of two parts: The core files and a MySQL database. Of the two, the database is the much more important component. Should your core files go kaput or be corrupted, you can easily replace them and wouldn’t lose too much. However, if your database vanishes and you don’t have a backup — best find a good therapist now. Therefore, it is important to know how to properly take care of this crucial part of your website. One of the most common tools used for doing so is phpMyAdmin […]
Using a class autoloader to improve WordPress development
Over the last few articles I’ve been looking at the benefits of using class autoloaders and namespaces in PHP. Despite the clear benefits of using these features, WordPress developers tend to shy away from them. One of the big reasons for this is because of WordPress’ continued support of PHP 5.2, which reached its end of life years ago. Class autoloaders have been available in various forms since before PHP 5.3. However, the more up-to-date class autoloader — as is generally used in PHP development — require namespaces, a feature added in PHP 5.3. In this article, I will show […]
7 laws of WordPress maintenance
You’ve built a brand new WordPress website, and it seems like the hard work’s over and you can just sit back. Well, not quite. Now is the time for the one thing most WordPress users don’t do: maintenance. Don’t fret. Keeping your website maintained is a pretty simple task. It requires only 15-30 minutes a month. Below, I’ve detailed the 7 most important parts of keeping your site maintained. Follow each of these and you’ll keep your site secure, protected, and performing at optimal levels. 1. Keep it up to date From time to time, updates will be released for your […]
Supreme Court tackles online threats: What does this mean for bloggers?
On the first Monday of December, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in Elonis vs. United States, in which the Court took up the issue of what intent should be required for a person to be convicted under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c) which makes “communication containing any threat to kidnap…or…injure [another person]” a federal crime punishable by a fine and up to 5 years of imprisonment. Anyone who has spent any time on the Internet knows that threats and harassment are a common, if ugly, occurrence (see, for example, gamergate). What you might not know is […]

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