Becoming an healthy, active member of the WordPress community
WordCamp Orlando (photo from WordCamp Central)
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Mohammad (Mo) Jangda
Code Wrangler with Automattic (WordPress.com VIP)
batmoo@gmail.com
WordPress.org: batmoo
Twitter: @mjangda
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http://build.codepoet.com
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If you use WordPress, you’re part of a family.
A very, very big one.
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56,000,000 sites
17% of the web
Millions of users
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Of the three most important people in WordPress,
the most important one is…
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The very fabric of the WordPress community relies on community participation
Families only function if everyone pitches in. Otherwise…
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WordPress is FreeAsInSpeech (not FreeAsInBeer)
The Great Uncle Ben once said, “With great power…”
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DON’T DO THIS
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Lots of ways to be a healthy, active member of the community.
Doesn’t matter if you’re a developer, blogger, business, superhero, designer, site owner, photographer, enterprise, artist, freelancer, writer, …
The most important thing is that you do something.
And you do it with the interests of the community in mind.
And don’t do stupid things like cause infighting.
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How to give back?
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Use WordPress
Even though it’s not the NBT (“Next Big Thing”).
Not just core, but everything else (plugins, themes, tools, APIs etc.)
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Give feedback, criticism, or even just a “thanks”.
This was a fun read but I had a hard time getting into it. The narration was a bit inconsistent, the dialog and characters seemed a bit forced. And I had a hard time getting over the fact that what seems obviously like a children’s book has so much blood.
Also, “I seen this movie before”. It’s called Star Wars ;)
The video of presentation at WordCamp Toronto 2011 on “Managing your Editorial Workflow” where I talk mostly about Edit Flow.
Looks like the video was cut off, which is probably a good thing since it wasn’t really my best performance (being my first WordCamp presentation and all). I also flail my arms alot.
Here’s my presentation slides from WordCamp NYC 2012. Click on the slide below to go full-screen and arrow keys to navigate.
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Debugging
The end goal of debugging is to find the causes to cute (and not-so-cute) bugs so we can squish them.
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Who am I?
Mohammad (Mo) Jangda
Toronto, ON
Code Wrangler, WordPress.com VIP at Automattic
Ice Cream fan
batmoo (.org)
@mjangda
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When you debug, you work similar to a doctor or an investigator.
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On a really high-level
Determine the problem
Gather information
Analyze the symptoms
Rule out improbable causes
Make educated or exact guesses about the root cause(s)
…and then fix the problem
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Knowledge of the domain is important
If you don’t have a good understanding of WordPress (or javascript, or servers, or etc.), your ability to analyze the demonstrated symptoms is limited.
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A good understanding of the problem is important
The more information we have the better suited we are to fix the problem.
If we don’t have enough information, we should gather more.
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Collecting the right information
“I did, I saw, I expected.”
Reproduction steps, screenshots, environment data
Common patterns between the symptoms
Collect more than you need, then filter out the garbage.
It’s important to check all your bases and avoid letting assumptions trap you (“oh, it can’t be because of this, because of that…”)
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5 Whys
Asking “Why?” is one of your most powerful tools!
The Problem: The YouTube video in my post isn’t showing up.
Why? It’s not being rendered on the page.
Why? The shortcode callback isn’t outputting anything.
add_filter( 'the_content', 'my_content_with_thumbnail' );
function my_content_with_thumbnail( $content ) {
if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) {
return get_the_post_thumbnail() . $content;
}
// THIS IS OUR PROBLEM! A MISSING RETURN!
}
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Problem: Comments disappearing!
Comments for a post (in fact, many posts) are “disappearing” when submitted.
Questions to ask:
* Did they actually disappear?
* Are they in the database?
* Are they flagged as spam?
* Are they being fetched correctly?
* Are they being fetched at all?
* Are they attached to the correct post?
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Not all problems are obvious or visible
For example: cron event fails… but only sometimes.
How do we investigate these? Get Creative :)
(Remote logging; hacks, hacks, hacks)
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Debugging is an art
Many right ways to do it. Many wrong (but the only) ways to do it.
It’s like a drug. I’m still fascinated by it, even almost 30 years to the day later I still read about languages, new ways to solve old problems, all kinds of developments in software and hardware as though it is the first time that I hear about these things. It is a fascinating world, the world of software.
I was in search of a JavaScript countdown timer (mainly because I’m too lazy to build it out myself — and because I’m sure millions before me have done the same), but Google wasn’t doing me much good. Most scripts would modify the DOM, directly but not make it easy to programmatically intercept the remaining time.
/**
* A sweet js countdown timer with a custom callback that gives you a JSON object!
* Heavily modified code originally found on http://www.ricocheting.com/code/javascript/html-generator/countdown-timer
*
* @param string|Date String representation of when to countdown to. Date objects probably work too
* @param callback Function triggered when the interval has passed
* @param int Number of milliseconds for the timeout. Defaults to 1000 (1 second)
*
* @return object Returns a JSON object with properties: days, hours, minutes, seconds
*/
timer = function(endDate, callback, interval) {
endDate = new Date(endDate);
interval = interval || 1000;
var currentDate = new Date()
, millisecondDiff = endDate.getTime() - currentDate.getTime() // get difference in milliseconds
, timeRemaining = {
days: 0
, hours: 0
, minutes: 0
, seconds: 0
}
;
if(millisecondDiff > 0) {
millisecondDiff = Math.floor( millisecondDiff/1000 ); // kill the "milliseconds" so just secs
timeRemaining.days = Math.floor( millisecondDiff/86400 ); // days
millisecondDiff = millisecondDiff % 86400;
timeRemaining.hours = Math.floor( millisecondDiff/3600 ); // hours
millisecondDiff = millisecondDiff % 3600;
timeRemaining.minutes = Math.floor( millisecondDiff/60 ); // minutes
millisecondDiff = millisecondDiff % 60;
timeRemaining.seconds = Math.floor(millisecondDiff); // seconds
setTimeout(function() {
timer(endDate, callback);
}, interval);
}
callback(timeRemaining);
}
It’s easy to use! You specify an end date (as a string, though Date object’s should work as well) and pass in a callback that gets triggered at a set interval. The callback receives a JSON object with properties for days, hours, minutes and seconds. You can pass in a custom interval if you want the callback triggered at a different period. Examples below.
timer('2011-12-31', function(timeRemaining) {
console.log('Timer 1:', timeRemaining);
});
// This will run every minute, instead of every second
timer('2012-12-31', function(timeRemaining) {
console.log('Timer 2:', timeRemaining);
}, 60000);
