10 minutes to read — 2100 words
One of my main programming projects is development of a complex site powered by WordPress, but I’ve never put together a description of my workflow. I build the site on my Windows box using XAMPP and Gulp to manage everything. It’s surprisingly difficult to find a good explainer1 on how to set this up, so this post will explain how I get my WordPress development environment up and running.
6 minutes to read — 1069 words
7 minutes to read — 1308 words
Adding a list of related posts to web pages is a great way to help users find new content and keep visitors engaged on your website. I was recently adding this feature to a website built on WordPress. There are several WordPress plugins that implement related posts functionality, but I wanted precise control over the function and styling of the related posts. I also didn’t want the overhead and hassle of installing a new plugin, so I implemented the related posts feature myself.
5 minutes to read — 880 words
Expanding public transit in the United States is crucial, and integrating technology into existing public transit systems is important, too. Over the past couple of years, many of America’s public transit systems have been implementing digital wallets—namely Apple’s and Google’s—by permitting riders to use virtual transit passes rather than physical plastic or paper ones. That seems like a great idea: it cuts down on waste, you don’t have to worry about losing or forgetting a physical card, and they should be easy to manage right in the wallet app. Unfortunately, the implementations so far are terrible, and I’m switching back to plastic.
7 minutes to read — 1287 words
In my various posts about developing static websites, I’ve pointed out that some critical functions can be tricky to implement. One example is pagination—splitting a long list of posts across several numbered pages. This is a nerdy deep-dive into how pagination works for two popular static site frameworks: Gatsby and Hugo.
7 minutes to read — 1375 words
4 minutes to read — 714 words
Not that long ago, most people would laugh if you told them you did any serious software or web development on Windows. All the serious coders used Macs, except for the handful who ran Linux. I was in the latter camp; as someone who’s never liked Apple products, I installed Debian on a clunky Compaq laptop in 2003 and was immediately hooked by the idea of running an open source operating system. I don’t really run Linux much any more, though, because in the past few years, Windows has become a functional, even good, development platform.
7 minutes to read — 1331 words
5 minutes to read — 1032 words
4 minutes to read — 716 words