Category: Blog

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to create new podcasts and then abandon them faster than Because of this, many of the lists online now are a little out-of-date.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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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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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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Recently, I had the privilege to co-author a blog post for The Guthy-Jackson Charitable Foundation. The subject of our profile piece was Lisa McDaniel, a mother who lost her son to a rare auto-immune disease. She now spends her time educating and advocating in his honor. Read the full article.

Honoring a Son by Educating Thousands

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This article is a follow up to this previous post, which explored a method for adding CMB2 meta to the WP REST API. As CMB2 author Jason Sternberg mentioned in a comment on that post, WP REST API support was in the process of being built in at that time.

Now that time has come.

Just in time for the announcement that content endpoints are making it into WordPress 4.7, CMB2 published an update on github and on the plugin announcing full support for the WP REST API.

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