How to Make Horrible Software Comparisons

3 minute read Software comparison articles can be helpful, but most are horrible. They should educate, compare, and recommend. But usually, they’re just filler words that convey no actual meaning. Here are some common mistakes of horrible software comparisons… Universally Picking a Winner It’s ridiculous to pick a universal winner. Eg, if you’re comparing Event Espresso to EventBrite, […]

Read More How to Make Horrible Software Comparisons

PHP's array_shift Performance

< 1 minute read PHP’s array_shift is a relatively slow way to fetch the first item from an array; it’s much better to use reset. For example, array_shift() modifies the original array and can be pretty slow because it needs to completely reindex the array (remove first element then shuffle everything else forward by one “slot”), so unless you […]

Read More PHP's array_shift Performance

Getting Started Contributing Code to WordPress Gutenberg in Laragon

7 minute read This post documents how I setup WordPress Gutenberg for local development on Windows 7, using Laragon instead of Docker, and made my first pull request to the project. Most folks wanting to test and modify WordPress’ Gutenberg use Docker to manage their environment. That’s great because it’s especially consistent. But I’ve been happy using Laragon […]

Read More Getting Started Contributing Code to WordPress Gutenberg in Laragon

URL Validation in WordPress

3 minute read If your WordPress website/theme/plugin allows users to submit URLs, and you’re not sanitizing them properly, you could have a whole host of security problems. On the flipside, if you’re removing too much, you might not be allowing valid URLs either. This issue is pretty complex, and there’s quite a bit of confusion surrounding it, but […]

Read More URL Validation in WordPress

Let's Decentralize Git Again

2 minute read Doesn’t anybody else find it strange nearly all open source code is distributed on a closed-source website, GitHub, owned by Microsoft? That’s a bit like all the world’s charitable organizations being ran by a for-profit mega corporation. As I understand it, Git’s big differentiating feature from Subversion, the big version-control system that preceded it, was […]

Read More Let's Decentralize Git Again

Which Way Do Your Slashes Face in PHP?

4 minute read When writing out filepaths and URLs, should you use forward slashes / or backslashes \? Windows expects one, whereas Unix-style operating systems (Linux and Mac OSs, primarily) expect another. PHP has two built-in solutions, but both have problems, especially if you’re working with WordPress. Backstory At work, I’ve recently had some trouble getting my linux […]

Read More Which Way Do Your Slashes Face in PHP?