Brian Coords

I try to write every day, but more often than not, I fail.

In fact, I’ve tried to start a daily writing habit plenty of times in my life, but I’ve only recently stuck to it pretty regularly. And now I consider it a success if I write something at least four times week. When I was an English teacher, I was pretty much a hypocrite- making the students fill out a journal every day while the only letters I ever put to the page were a red A  – F.

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I love podcasts. I also love staying up to day and learning more about WordPress. Unfortunately, podcasters seem to create new podcasts and then abandon them faster than Because of this, many of the lists online now are a little out-of-date. I quickly talk about some of the best WordPress podcasts that are coming out now with relevant, informative content today- in the summer of 2017.

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Recently I had the great responsibility to work on the redesign/relaunch of leading Arabic educational resource, TalkInArabic.com. The website is a huge content library, accessible via paid memberships and restricted content. What makes the service so unique is their focus on real-world dialects over academic language.

“We really appreciated Brian’s professionalism and dedication to the job. We’re very happy with the work provided and final outcome of the project.

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The WordPress content editor has been, for a long time, the biggest achilles heel in regards to new WordPress users. I’m a huge fan of ambitiously designed articles, like the infamous NYTimes Greenland piece, which is now two years old. To achieve that effect in WordPress now is no easy feat, but the current focus of development aims to change that.

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In the book Sick in the Head, a young Jerry Seinfeld is interviewed by an even younger Judd Apatow about the state of stand-up comedy in the 80s. They discuss the difference between comedians who view stand-up as the ultimate goal and comedians who use comedy as a tool to get fame, notoriety, or to get on a sitcom:

“Jerry: Well, they use it as a vehicle, which is fine.

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I will be speaking at WordCamp OC 2017 on the topic of WordPress for Nonprofits. June 10 & 11 in Irvine.

When I originally applied to speak, I remember filling out a few boxes, summarizing my potential speech in three lines or less. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what I wrote. I’m sure it was some vague idea about best practices, plugin recommendations, and a humorous rendition of my own personal experience.

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New website designed and developed for my friends at Velstand Commercial.

Eric and Erik at Velstand run a great commercial property investment company. They also had a real need for a modern and sophisticated website match the high quality of their investment portfolio.

The site is built on WordPress and takes advantage of a custom theme.

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As someone who makes digital content for a living (websites, blogs, etc), it is easy to believe that consuming digital content is just as important as creating it. But is it?

For the record, I’m not a big “productivity” guy who feels the need to optimize every aspect of his life. Instead, I weigh every task against my desire to spend time with my wife or play legos with my daughters.

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I wrote a post for the Toptal.com blog. The article covers the WordPress REST API, as well as provides an introduction to REST APIs in general. I offer an example use case that you can follow along, and discuss some future potential of the project. Consider it a birds-eye overview, meant for people like myself who are not API gurus, but WordPress developers interested in expanding their repertoire of development tricks.

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I’m a big fan of the WordPress REST API. I’ve been writing about it here on my site as well as other places. I’ve been using it in production, including in the iOS/Android app NMO Resources which syncs to a WordPress-based website. It’s become a fun new way to interact with data, especially outside of the scope of the website itself.

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