What timeless advice welcomes fresh programmers? Yes, you guessed it. Fundamentals. Learn how to code in pure JavaScript before learning a framework like Vue.js. Whatever your stack may be, the advice remains rock solid. Learn fundamentals first before diving into the exciting, fancy world of web frameworks. There’s just one problem with this advice, especially […]

There comes a time in a WordPress theme’s life where custom PHP is needed. This can be a packaged plugin that’s used across multiple client sites, or a single theme. There are several ways to approach a custom admin button. A common approach is invoking a JavaScript function on click, then using AJAX to send […]

In the last post, we saw how easy it is to conditionally display markup and use inline logic in blade templates. Conditionals are a very useful tool and you will probably use them often. In this post, we will explore how to reduce repetitive code and help adhere to DRY(don’t repeat yourself) principals. What’s one […]

Inline SVGs are a lesser known trick for performant assets. Using them in traditional static sites is problematic due to how verbose they are. Inline SVGs can be anywhere from a few lines of code to a hundred! Not the prettiest solution. That is why it’s much better to use a component based approach. Using […]

Digging into the trenches of responsive design can be surprisingly daunting, especially if you’re new to this kind of thing. The amount of shiny front-end build tools seem overwhelming at first, but they are ultimately here to help you. In this post, we’re looking at a shiny build tool called SASS. It’s actually not that shiny, […]

If you develop custom WordPress themes, there’s no doubt ACF (pro) is in your toolbox. Simply put, it feels like a natural extension for developing custom themes. If you still haven’t picked up this tool, I’d recommend hopping over to their website and see what you’ve been missing. Out of the box, you get powerful […]

As a developer, a fair portion of your time is spent on the command line. Certain command are used religiously, so why not save a keystroke or ten? Let’s take a common unix need: updating your packages. When you update, you use something like this: sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade Wouldn’t it be […]

If you’re into PHP development, chances are, you’ve messed with or heard of Laravel. To keep it simple, Laravel is a fantastic PHP framework for making all kinds of web apps. As of this writing, Laravel has been around for 9 years and is still massively popular. It’s not going away anytime soon! Laravel uses […]

If you’ve been in web development long enough, you’ve probably heard of SASS/SCSS. That’s no surprise, considering it has been around for so long(over 10 years), and it’s included in many popular build systems. Webpack builds such as create-react-app and Vue CLI templates come with easy SASS support. If you’re using your own build system, […]

Cypress is an end-to-end testing framework designed to provide coverage for front-end UIs. Learning how to automate tests has its learning curve, but the benefits grow with your application’s complexity. I was tasked to test a process that involves uploading multiple types of files. In particular, application/pdf and image/* mime-type files. Doing this with Cypress […]