I contributed to WordPress core from 2013 through 2021. WordPress core is the open-source software that powers 40% of the web. My contributions ranged from software code and designs to project management, documentation, and outreach. Most of this work happened as a volunteer. This post summarizes my involvement in the project. It’s long but hopefully successful in distilling eight years…
Tag: Decisions Not Options
Full Screen Galleries Plugin
I recently released the Full Screen Galleries WordPress Plugin. It automatically creates a full-screen slideshow of post content images and galleries. The slideshow provides an enhanced format for browsing large collections of images. Viewers can focus on a single image at a time, see larger images, and also read captions more deliberately. Navigation is simplified to change the image like…
Small Plugins, Big Impact
As I create and publish more and more plugins (I now have 25 on WordPress.org), my increasing focus is to keep each plugin as simple as possible. My first few WordPress plugins suffered from bloat from the beginning and are still paying the consequences, including poor usability, untenability, and a likely path toward abandonment. With simplicity as the priority, a…
The Customizer is the Future for Themes and Theme Options
There has been a lot of backlash from the WordPress community recently over the theme review team’s decision to require theme options to be implemented in the Customizer. But this decision really is in everyone’s best interest. WordPress 4.2 shipped with the ability to switch themes in the Customizer. When theme-installation is incorporated in a future release, the entire theme…
Floating Social Media Links Re-think
Floating Social Media Links had humble beginnings as my first WordPress plugin. I originally got the idea for the plugin when working on maintenance for http://oregonyouthline.org/. We needed a better solution for our social media links and actions (ie, Facebook like) than a column of super outdated icons (including a MySpace one) on the homepage (the old icons ended up…