Introduction to the WordPress World

3 minute readThis is an email I sent a friend who’s shopping around for a new career path, and I wanted to describe the “WordPress World” I work in. Hi I really have no idea if the type of work I do would be of interest to you, but I’m happy to try to share about it […]

Meeting with WordPress Professionals

< 1 minute readAt a cafe, I met up with some local folks making their living building sites with WordPress. For me it was especially good getting a bit of a reality check, and hear what was important to them. Besides having a good time socializing (which most of us admitted we rarely do, especially on topics related […]

URL Validation in WordPress

3 minute readIf 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 […]

Adding Support for Foreign Characters to Django

5 minute readThis post explains the changes I needed to make to a Python Django 1.8 website in order to add Unicode (special character) support. The Situation I’ve been helping run a Django 1.8 website, and we’ve been getting tired of errors everytime a user uses accents, foreign language characters, or curly quotes. Errors like DjangoUnicodeDecodeError at […]

Let's Decentralize Git Again

2 minute readDoesn’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 […]

Which Way Do Your Slashes Face in PHP?

4 minute readWhen 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 […]

Penpals Explanation of PHP/cURL/openSSL/TLS/SSL/PayPal Handshake Issues

5 minute readToday I spent a few hours wrapping my head around an issue where some websites weren’t able to connect properly to PayPal.com. I found it pretty tricky to understand because it involved quite a few technologies and programs: PHP: a programming language, and a program to interpret lines of code written in that programming language […]

Troubleshooting iPhone App Communication with Fiddler

2 minute readWhile troubleshooting an iPhone app, it’s sometimes helpful to see exactly what HTTP requests its sending. Enabling Fiddler to View iPhone HTTP Traffic I managed to do that with Fiddler by following these steps: https://www.pluralsight.com/blog/tutorials/using-fiddler-with-an-iphone-ipad I found my laptop’s IP by doing this: Click on the Start menu and type cmd. When you see the […]

Line Ending Troubles with Git, a Virtual Machine, and Windows

4 minute readThis is some technical stuff I learned today using Git, VVV with a Linux virtual machine, and Windows. I recently started getting these annoying messages again whenever I’d commit anything using Git: warning: LF will be replaced by CRLF in payment_methods/Paypal_Standard/help_tabs/payment_methods_overview_paypalstandard.help_tab.php. The file will have its original line endings in your working directory. I had […]

My WordPress and PHP development Setup

4 minute readI primarily work on the WordPress plugin Event Espresso for my living, and thought I’d share my development setup: what tools I use to make software. I do this to share the tools I’ve found handy, but also inviting feedback on how it could be improved. What I Like About My Development Setup I use […]