WebDevStudios and Five for the Future

Since the inception of Five for the Future (5FTF), WebDevStudios (WDS) has been actively involved. We’ve gone through various iterations of hosting 5FTF. Here’s how we do it today: every last Friday of the month, our team pauses working on client projects and focuses on contributing to WordPress. This takes place in a variety of ways, but here’s what seems to be the most popular:

• Organizing a WordCamp
• Developing a WordCamp talk
• Taking support tickets from the WordPress Support Forum
• Developing or updating a free plugin
• Mentorship
• WordPress community involvement
• Contribution to the overall knowledge base of WordPress

Last Month’s 5FTF Contributions

During the August 5FTF Friday, our team came up with some interesting ways to contribute to WordPress. Here are just a few:

• Lead Engineer Lauren Levin (Pittenger) built block patterns for the WordPress Block Pattern Directory.
• Principal Engineer Joel Schlotterer created some PRs for issues for our own open-source starter theme wd_s.
• Engineering Manager John Heimkes reviewed themes in the WordPress theme repository.
• Frontend Engineer Ashley Stanley contributed to our own open-source plugin WDS Site Documentation.
• Backend Engineer Garrett Baldwin built an open-source plugin designed to add theme documentation to the WordPress admin dashboard. You can access it on GitHub.

Five for the Future Is for Everyone Who Uses WordPress

It is important for individuals and companies within the WordPress ecosystem to participate in Five for the Future. This initiative is crucial in sustaining and advancing the WordPress open-source project, which powers a considerable portion of the internet. Here are a few reasons why getting involved with 5FTF is significant:

1. Sustainability of WordPress: WordPress is maintained and improved by a global community of volunteers. By contributing 5% of your work time, you help ensure the long-term sustainability of the platform. Your contributions can directly impact the development of core features, bug fixes, security enhancements, and overall stability.

2. Community Building: Engaging with 5FTF strengthens the sense of community within the WordPress ecosystem. It fosters collaboration, knowledge sharing, and camaraderie among developers, designers, marketers, and users. It’s an opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals who are passionate about WordPress.

3. Skill Enhancement: Getting involved with open-source projects like WordPress can be a valuable learning experience. You can expand your skill set, gain hands-on experience, and improve your coding, project management, and communication skills. It’s a win-win situation where you both give and receive.

4. Business Benefits: For companies and independent developers in the WordPress space, contributing to 5FTF can be a strategic move. It enhances your company’s reputation, demonstrates your commitment to the WordPress community, and can lead to new business opportunities and partnerships.

Sharing Our 5FTF Success!

Follow the hashtag #5FTF on X (formerly Twitter). That’s where some of our teammates share their Five for the Future contributions. While there was a time when it seemed like our WordPress website agency was the only one sharing 5FTF success, we’re seeing a trend of more and more WordPress companies and independent developers sharing their contributions, too. All the cool kids are giving back to WordPress!

So keep up with our team on social media tomorrow. You can view their posts from August’s 5FTF Friday below. Be sure to follow us at @webdevstudios.

While the rest of the @webdevstudios team has #5FTF today, I was lucky enough to be at #WCUS Contributor Day yesterday, where I started chasing a WP CLI bug and ended up opening this WordPress core ticket and creating a patch.https://t.co/5KWKShALqy

— Sal Ferrarello (@salcode) August 25, 2023

Another beautiful #5FTF day @webdevstudios I’m working on my open-source theme, a great way to beat the heat!

— David Walz (@DavesjoshinWDS) August 25, 2023

#5FTF @webdevstudios and I really want to be at #WCUS, but for now I’ll be doing #WCAsia stuff and working on wd_s and wd_f themes. pic.twitter.com/sol8AWaSXP

— JC Palmes #WCAsia2024 (@jpalmes) August 25, 2023

Happy to be working on the #WordPress #ActivityPub plugin today for #5ftf!

— django (@MediaFormatUX) August 25, 2023

It’s #5ftf Day at @webdevstudios and this time I am contributing by submitting some bug fixes to #Wordpress core pic.twitter.com/3ZnbmCODLk

— Aslam D WordPress (@aslammdoctor) August 25, 2023

The post Tomorrow, Our WordPress Website Agency Is Giving Back via Five for the Future appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Keeping with the Non-Traditional Traditions

I received my degree from a private liberal arts college, but only after a large and intentional vacation from formal education after high school. The college had a non-traditional, experimental program that was typically advertised toward “returning adults,” and this is where I chose to finally continue my formal education. It allowed me to not necessarily have a major, but a “focus” in communications, and specifically, an “interdisciplinary program with courses in multimedia theory and design.” So I was able to dabble a little in graphic design, 3D animation, music theory, and multimedia computer programming. This is where I was introduced to HTML, CSS, and Flash.

(Note: I did not take any computer science classes, which would have probably pointed me in a different trajectory career-wise. Instead, I was more fascinated with the visual, as opposed to the computational disciplines.)

It can be easy (although probably no easier than any other excuse) to have Imposter Syndrome when your formal education is founded on a multi-disciplinary degree, i.e. Jack of all trades, master of none. However, as some have pointed out…

“Learning isn’t a zero-sum activity.”

– “The Myth of the Myth of the Unicorn Designer” by Thomas Cole

Code Is Poetry

My first few jobs heavily involved HTML, CSS, and Flash, of course, as well as dabbling in many other languages and systems. However, I quickly gravitated toward WordPress when I was tasked to research alternative content management systems (CMS) for a state college. I started to become familiar with all the concepts that made up a good and bad CMS and was able to research where each private and open source solution lie on the feature vs cost spectrum. I became passionate about the idea of open source software, and WordPress was, and still is, at the forefront.

Today, the WordPress tagline “code is poetry” has become a mantra in my everyday work. So much of what we, as Front-End Developers, write relies on syntax, logic, and structure. Also, good code (as there is plenty of bad code and poetry) requires elegance and simplicity. The meaning with code and poetry can be both on the surface and simultaneously abstract.

Enough About ME!

So why am I giving you my entire bio? Because again, I think it is important to providing context to why I’m fascinated and passionate about composing CSS. In the upcoming posts, I’ll cover some key points along the history of CSS to try and demonstrate where I see CSS evolving. Remember, writing code is a multi-disciplinary venture, and one should never stop learning.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series:

• Evolution of CSS – Part II: CSS Class Naming Conventions
• Evolution of CSS – Part III: Overview of Tachyons

The post Evolution of CSS: Becoming a CSS Composer appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Our CEO, Brad Williams, has shared his experience growing our company and working with WordPress in the enterprise space live, and now we’re bringing this to you–no travel expenses required!

On July 18th, we will be hosting a webinar featuring Brad discussing why enterprise companies should use WordPress.

We’ve worked with many enterprise companies who have made the move, and our experiences have taught us, firsthand, about the unique apprehensions and proliferation of myths regarding what WordPress can or cannot do for them. Brad is going to be talking about those myths and sharing about why open source platforms are the future for massive companies like Microsoft, Skype, Campbell’s Soup, and more.

Want to get in on this? We know you do!

Here are the details:

Why Enterprise Companies Should Use WordPress

Date: July 18th, 2016
Time: 1 PM – 2 PM ET

[SIGN UP HERE]

The webinar is totally free; all you have to do is sign up! For those of you who can’t make it day of, we will be providing a recording of the talk as well–just make sure you put your info in beforehand so we can send it out to you afterward.

We hope to see you there (and psst…if there are any questions that are pressing now and that you’d like to see addressed, drop them in the comments)!

The post Upcoming Webinar: Why Enterprise Companies Should Use WordPress appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Pluginize was created to share, sell, and educate on the latest products we’re releasing. After realizing how many plugins and extensions we were building for our incredible clients, we realized that, well…we should probably start sharing!

All of the products will be built, maintained, and supported by us, and will be delivering the same high quality you’ve come to expect of us, both in the projects we create and our contributions to the WordPress community, over the years.

Along with this announcement, we’d like to take a moment to tell you a little bit more about our first release, CPTUI Extended. If you’ve been keeping track of our moves over the last year, you already know that Custom Post Type UI is our most popular plugin. In July of last year, it became our first plugin to hit over one million downloads, and has been continuing to serve non-devs and devs alike in their quest to create their own custom post types with ease. At 300,000+ active installs, its utility cannot be ignored!

If you aren’t familiar with CPTUI, here’s a breakdown on what it does from Michael, one of our superstar devs that has worked with this plugin extensively:

In case you are not familiar with what Custom Post Type UI does, it provides a user interface that someone can use to easily provide settings and labels to be used for registering custom post types and custom taxonomies for their install. The plugin then takes those values and does the actual registration, allowing users to start using them right away. Other features as of the 1.1.0 release include import, export, “get code”, and settings listing functionality. The import and export area helps port the plugin’s settings between installs. The “get code” facilitates moving where the post type and taxonomy registration occurs, while the settings listing acts as a quick view of all your settings with our plugin.

It really takes the pain out of having to type out all the necessary code to register post types or taxonomies and helps non-coders to get a start with extending their sites content. It’s the ease of use and aid to which I attribute its success.

While CPTUI helps solve the problem of creating custom post types, displaying the data gleaned from them can be a whole new challenge–which is why we decided to take it one step further and create CPTUI Extended.

We’ve made it simple to add data from your custom post types directly inside your pages and posts by creating a new shortcode builder. This doesn’t just work with post types you create–data from any post type on your site can be displayed using the shortcode builder. For example, you can use the shortcode to display products from popular ecommerce plugins like WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads, making building out your store and advertising your wares super simple.

This is especially great for the non-developers out there (like myself!) who need a little assistance when it comes to setting up their WordPress site the way that they want. This isn’t just for those folks, though; we made sure to build CPTUI Extended in a way that makes it unbelievably easy for developers to create custom templates for individual post types. We’ve even included detailed instructions on how to do it!

Naturally, because we’re us, we didn’t stop there. For those of you running a Multisite Network, we’ve made it simple to create network-wide custom post types and taxonomies. You no longer need to import your post types, one by one, into site after site; all you have to do is create it once and you’re done!

Even CPTUI version 1.3.0 was inspired by the creation of CPTUI Extended: Michael drew from his nearly three years of answering requests on the support forums and used it to create documentation on how to use CPTUI effectively, as well as provide a go-to location to answer all of the questions we frequently receive and  tutorials on how to achieve various modifications and customizations. You can find all of the documentation for both plugins at Pluginize Docs.

Keep an eye on Pluginize for future announcements, updates, and more incredible WebDevStudios products! You can keep track of news by following us @Pluginize and liking Pluginize on Facebook. 

We invite you to check out the new site, try out CPTUI Extended, and tell us what you think!

The post WebDevStudios Products Reach the Next Level with Pluginize.com appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Shopify is an e-commerce software that provides a hassle-free platform for shop owners to run their own online store and get a piece of the internet sales pie. We built them an extremely flexible e-commerce plugin that makes it easy for WordPress.org site owners to download the plugin and use immediately.

The Shopify eCommerce Plugin allows WordPress users to employ the Shopify “Buy Button” to sell existing products in their Shopify store with ease. WordPress users can embed products in their site, including pictures, product descriptions, and price, with just a few clicks! For store owners that have an extensive inventory, there is also a straightforward search function that allows them to track down exactly which product they would like to embed without hassle. Both individual products and product collections can be embedded as well.

When Shopify reached out to us, they knew they wanted to build a custom plugin that makes Shopify even easier to use than before. They had a some criteria in mind when they were searching for the right folks to build this plugin, which is as follows:

1. They wanted experienced developers with a proven track record of building high-quality WordPress products
2. They wanted the right partner for releasing the product to WordPress–folks who are proficient with the process of releasing open source products to the public.
3. They wanted to be sure that the end result was highly extendable and accessible to other developers.

We built the plugin with the features they wanted, the proper way, and included ways so that other developers could extend it; the Shopify eCommerce plugin is extremely flexible and can serve as a base for other developers to build upon. We also created extensive documentation, and rolled it out to both Github and WordPress.org.

The plugin has already gotten some attention; before it was even released on WordPress.org, Shopify made their formal announcement and it showed up on WPTavern.

We’re super excited about this product; as we mentioned at the end of last year, we would be focusing in on products, and this is just the start!

The post WebDevStudios for Shopify: The Shopify eCommerce Plugin appeared first on WebDevStudios.

I am no stranger to contributing to open source. I have contributed in some way or another since early 2007, when I found a love for Linux and the Fedora Project. I was approaching the end of my time in college, and later in the year I joined the Fedora Art Team and teethed my contributing bug by helping create and provide graphics for upcoming releases of the operating system.

I have since evolved and moved on to other open source projects–specifically our beloved WordPress. While I was not active on a weekly basis, where I was creating tickets and patches constantly, I was staying aware of what was going on and current developments. I contributed when I could. One place that I was especially active was the support rooms on IRC.

Over time, I started to get an itch to do more. I wanted to contribute to the code of something. The WordPress core team had decided to improve its inline documentation, especially in the areas of available hooks and filters. Drew Jaynes and others spearheaded this effort and took the initiative of going through the codebase and providing documentation on every available hook. At this point, it dawned on me that this would be an awesome way to contribute back, but I needed a different codebase that needed the same tender loving care. Enter BuddyPress.

The Current

I approached Brad last autumn about having a small block of time provided each week that I would use to contribute during a work day. He came back to me later that day to inform that I had been granted the time as part of my day on Fridays.

Not long after this, Matt Mullenweg championed the idea of “5 for the Future,” where companies allow their employees paid time during their week to contribute to open source projects. The idea was to use 5%, or two hours in a 40-hour work week, of the employee’s time to give back. WebDevStudios followed suit and implemented their own “5 for the Future” policy for its employees. This rolled nicely in with what I was already doing. Marriage made in heaven!

Process

My contributions began when I simply made BuddyPress Trac tickets for the various BuddyPress components and added the created patch files to those tickets for review and commit by the current BuddyPress core developers. This worked out well while I was getting my bearings and becoming comfortable with the process and formatting we wanted for the documentation blocks.

Not long after that though, they approached me about granting commit access to the core repository. They felt that the process would be streamlined and more swiftly taken care of that way. I was granted BuddyPress core committer status with a focus on code documentation. It felt pretty awesome.

In terms of workflow, I started out working from a SVN copy of the codebase, which is what I still use when making the actual commits. I wanted the ease and fluidity of Git’s branching model as I knew it would help make the process even smoother as I worked through the filters and hooks. From there, I grabbed a Git copy of the code and do all of my actual work in Git branches for each component, before committing via SVN.

I do all of the work in PHPStorm and make good use of its features as an IDE, including code quality coverage and PHPDoc block issue reporting. Before anything was committed, I gave the changes a second review for QA and make sure there were not any nitpicky inconsistencies.

The future

I am proud to say that by the time this is posted, the journey to document the BuddyPress hooks will have been deemed complete. I have no plans to stop using my “5 for the Future” time on BuddyPress. After having scrolled my way through most of the nooks and crannies of BuddyPress’ codebase, I know there are many areas that still need documentation improvement and that is where I plan to focus next. Feel free to reach out if you would like to contribute as well; I’d love to help you accomplish that.

The post There and Back Again: A BuddyPress Tale appeared first on WebDevStudios.

On Wednesday, November 27th, we rolled out version 1.0.0 which contains several big-bang features that are sure to make your WordPress development experience that much easier. Several WordPress community members, and a few WDS members (Brian Messenlehner, Michael Beckwith, Corey Collins, and myself) had a hand in this release.

Here is a list from the 1.0.0 changelog:

• Added select_timezone type, a standalone time zone select dropdown. The time zone select can be used with standalone text_datetime_timestamp if desired. Props @dessibelle
• Added text_url type, a basic url field. Props @dessibelle
• Added text_email type, a basic email field. Props @dessibelle
• Added ability to display metabox fields in frontend. Default is true, but can be overriden using the cmb_allow_frontend filter. If set to true, an entire metabox form can be output with a new function:

  cmb_metabox_form( $meta_box, $object_id, $echo );

  Props @dessibelle, @messenlehner & @jtsternberg

• Added hook cmb_after_table after all metabox output. Props @wpsmith
• file_list now works like a repeatable field. Add as many files as you want. Props @coreymcollins
• text, text_small, text_medium, text_url, text_email, & text_money fields now all have the option to be repeatable. Props @jtsternberg
• Custom metaboxes can now be added for user meta. Add them on the user add/edit screen, or in a custom user profile edit page on the front-end. Props @tw2113, @jtsternberg

We hope you’re as excited for the possibilities with 1.0.0 as we are and we are already working on updates for version 1.0.1! If you would like to see a new feature or improvement feel free to contribute and submit patches on github. Also, the wiki page needs to be updated so if documentation is your thing, please feel free to jump in and update some docs!

Get Custom Metaboxes and Fields for WordPress is a WordPress on Github!

The post Custom Metaboxes and Fields 1.0.0 Released! appeared first on WebDevStudios.

This release does patch critical security vulnerabilities exposed in older versions and is a recommended upgrade.

Drupal is a powerful open source content management system and an excellent choice for E-Commerce Stores, Corporate and Intranet Websites, and Community Web Portals.

Once Drupal 5.11 and 6.5 have been installed in our testing environment, we will begin to push out updates to clients running on the Drupal framework.

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So what is Identi.ca?

Identi.ca is an Open Network Service. Our main goal is to provide a fair and transparent service that preserves users’ autonomy. In particular, all the software used for Identi.ca is Free Software, and all the data is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, making it Open Data.

By creating an open Application Programming Interface (API) around the Twitter API, any application created that integrates with the Twitter API will now work seamlessly with the Indenti.ca API. This move helps solidify a standard with Twitter as the market leader.

At WebDevStudios, we are highly experienced at integrating custom software applications with any open API, such as the Identi.ca and Twitter API.

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