David Artiss

I see this getting asked a lot, and I’ve just answered this exact question on Reddit. The thing is, the best plugins are not plugins. Continue reading The best WordPress plugins to improve performance

Once you’ve had your plugin accepted into the WordPress.org directory, there are a few steps that I’d highly recommend any developer doing before moving on. Continue reading Added a plugin to the WordPress directory? Here’s what to do next

If you’ve ever added a plugin to the WordPress.org directory, you’ll find there’s a folder named assets waiting for you in SVN. In this article, I’m going to explore what you can add to this, and the various limitations and formats available to you. Continue reading The definitive guide to the WordPress.org plugin assets folder

A recent update to Google Chrome has got rid of the side panel button and added a new “pinning” feature instead. The side panel button opened up the bookmarks sidebar and, from there, you could switch it to one of the other sidebars. In particular, I use the Reading List feature, so this was how I accessed it. The idea now is that you open whichever sidebar you want and then you can pin it into…

In 2012, the much loved and much missed WordPress developer Alex Mills raised a WordPress Trac ticket… extract() is a terrible function that makes code harder to debug and harder to understand. We should discourage it’s use and remove all of our uses of it. As a result, use of the PHP functions was removed from WordPress and was added to the coding standards (which, in turn, made it into the…

WordPress Playground, if you’ve not tried it already, is a browser based instance of WordPress, operated by WordPress.org. Essentially, you can create a temporary version of WordPress for use in trying things out. And developer, with plugins in the official directory, can now add a button to their plugin page, with a direct link to Playground, allowing an instance installation and demonstration…

Ben Werdmuller, a developer and startup founder, has recently launched ShareOpenly, a method of adding sharing links to your website content but for the modern, open, social web. You know all those “share to Facebook” / “share to Twitter” links you see all over peoples’ websites? They’re all out of date. Social media has evolved over the last year, yet nobody has “share to” links for Mastodon,…

I was on vacation last week so wasn’t around for the release of WordPress 6.5. Look closely at the long list of contributors and you’ll find my name. And, once, once more, my change was related to inclusionary language. Continue reading My contribution to WordPress 6.5

I have a house full of Google Nest products, adding a video doorbell to my collection only last year. And, yet, I would no longer recommend them and will be looking to find alternatives as my existing products need replacing. Why? Well, it’s the usual thing of not being able to trust Google to just stop supporting your pricey bit of kit. Continue reading Please don’t buy any Google Nest products

A few years ago, I wrote about my issues updating my email address with some website. Now, a secondary problem has come to light, and all within a few weeks – despite some website allowing me to change my email, they’re retaining my old one in their system and using that for important emails. Let me explain. Continue reading Why is changing your email address so tricky for some websites? Part 2

Back in 2018, not along after working from home permanently, I realised that the single router that I was using was not enough. It was in my home office, so all worked great there – but even the kitchen was a dead-spot. I’d recently added some external cameras to my house and the rear one was constantly dropping out, particularly. So it was time to look for an alternative. Continue reading A…

One of the reasons why I put my footnotes plugin up for adoption is because the block editor now has basic footnotes built into it. I moved all of my footnotes over to this, disabled my plugin and haven’t looked back since. So, let me explain how you do it. Continue reading Adding Footnotes in the WordPress block editor

I love reading Mika Epstein’s stories about her dealings with plugin developers, but never thought I’d be writing something similar myself. And, like Mika, I’m going to keep this anonymous, albeit you’d probably be able to find the details with a little digging First, let’s rewind. Back in November I some of my plugins up for adoption. Soon after, a developer approached me wanting to take one of…

As we’re now in 2024, it’s time to share the books and films that kept me entertained last year. This is just a list rather than my views on them, but if you follow the links I provide to Goodreads and Letterboxd, you can find my reviews there. Continue reading Untitled

My good friend Barry Collins recently made use of Midjourney to generate GTA images of the PC Pro podcast crew. He’s since been good enough to show me how it was done, as well as creating some for myself too. All I’ll say is, you wouldn’t want to mess with me based on the results! Continue reading Untitled