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You may also want to look at a more boutique CMS that can act as like a halfway step between the Wordpress world and a full top-to-bottom-custom site in Django or Rails. One good example is Craft CMS, which manages all the database stuff for you but lets/requires you to write the whole frontend, using templates + custom PHP plugins for any really weird stuff.
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# ? Apr 6, 2019 02:35 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 06:38 |
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Awesome thanks all. I like WordPress but it’s very easy to get into the trap of plugins and can be a pain in the rear end to do something simple that isn’t bloated imho.
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# ? Apr 6, 2019 12:54 |
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Empress Brosephine posted:Awesome thanks all. I like WordPress but it’s very easy to get into the trap of plugins and can be a pain in the rear end to do something simple that isn’t bloated imho. That would be the point of learning PHP, so you could do the simple things yourself without needing to use a plugin. WordPress in and of itself is a solid, useful platform. It sounds like where you’re at right now is “I can use WordPress,” whereas if you knew PHP and JS you would be more of a WP dev. Anywho, that’s my two cents.
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# ? Apr 6, 2019 14:29 |
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What's your goal here? Learning for the sake of learning? Do you have a personal project or business idea you want to build? Do you want to start freelancing? Looking to get a job? There's a lot of different directions you can go in but your eventual goal should probably inform your next steps. For example if you want to freelance or work at an agency then deep diving on the Wordpress stack would probably be smart. If you want to build your own SaaS startup then you would probably want to start learning a different stack.
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# ? Apr 6, 2019 15:46 |
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Empress Brosephine posted:Awesome thanks all. I like WordPress but it’s very easy to get into the trap of plugins and can be a pain in the rear end to do something simple that isn’t bloated imho. It is, in fact a lot of the sites I get hired to fix things on are a mess and maze of plugins and it takes me hours to find out what's causing it. People know WordPress, but they put in plugins to do simple things that can be done with two lines of JS or putting one line in functions.php. Speaking of WordPress and plugins, I'm fed up with bloated form manager plugins that add tons of JavaScript and useless styles. Most sites just need a simple "Name, Email, Phone Number, Message" with maybe a dropdown for "Reason for Contacting Us" or something. I'd also need something for a date picker (I think there are PHP snippets for that?) and file uploading, and of course reCAPTCHA because web design clients get scared of spam if they don't see the "prove you're not a robot" checkbox, but the tricky part is I'd want it to store form submissions in the WP database. I found this which seems to be a good start for at least having a form and having WordPress's wp_mail function send it, but does anyone have experience writing such a thing that can tell me pitfalls to avoid?
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# ? Apr 6, 2019 16:49 |
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kedo posted:WordPress in and of itself is a solid, useful platform. I don't think I would agree with the "solid" part. It's a house of cards.
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# ? Apr 6, 2019 19:45 |
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Thermopyle posted:I don't think I would agree with the "solid" part. It's a house of cards. I would say the core platform is solid. It's the plugins that are the problem.
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# ? Apr 6, 2019 20:03 |
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I found developing my own WordPress site to be surprisingly pleasant. It has a ton of features for developers that are really well documented. The problem is that it’s also extremely easy to make a bad plugin/theme and they have virtually no quality control.
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# ? Apr 6, 2019 20:18 |
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For personal development, I’m not looking to go professional. I just like chasing the dragon of a extremely fast score on GTMetrix and Google PS.
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# ? Apr 6, 2019 20:25 |
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Roadie posted:You may also want to look at a more boutique CMS that can act as like a halfway step between the Wordpress world and a full top-to-bottom-custom site in Django or Rails. One good example is Craft CMS, which manages all the database stuff for you but lets/requires you to write the whole frontend, using templates + custom PHP plugins for any really weird stuff. If you want to eventually transition to Django more completely, Wagtail is also a pretty fun CMS.
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# ? Apr 7, 2019 02:31 |
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WordPress as a platform is excellent. Well documented, stable and a good balance of native features while staying minimalist. The plug-ins, well, are a mixed bag. There's some good stuff like Woocommerce and such. Then the templates are absolutely all god awful. Do not ever use a WP template.
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# ? Apr 7, 2019 15:02 |
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LifeLynx posted:It is, in fact a lot of the sites I get hired to fix things on are a mess and maze of plugins and it takes me hours to find out what's causing it. People know WordPress, but they put in plugins to do simple things that can be done with two lines of JS or putting one line in functions.php. WPmudev makes truly poo poo, bloatware plugins that usually have to phone home for no apparent reason, so I avoid them (and anything they have to say) like the plague. The one major thing that blog post misses is that once the email leaves your server you don’t actually know if it will end up in someone’s inbox. Gravity Forms is my go to form plugin because it’s simple and has been around for ages so it has good support and extensions. Rolling your own and using wp_mail is reasonable, but I’ve found that at some point some (but not all) messages will get lost along the way (spam filters, blacklists, etc), so having form entries saved in the WP database is a good fallback instead of having to tell a client, “whoops, looks like those two months worth of emails that were sent before anyone noticed the error are gone forever!” I’ve run into that issue more times than I can count. Email is black magic that works sometimes, and you shouldn’t rely on it entirely if you’re dealing with an important form.
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# ? Apr 7, 2019 17:59 |
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It looks like Craft CMS is what’s next for me...I just know nothing about self hosting rip. Thanks for the heads up though I’m going to try to figure this out
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# ? Apr 7, 2019 19:10 |
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Empress Brosephine posted:It looks like Craft CMS is what’s next for me...I just know nothing about self hosting rip. Thanks for the heads up though I’m going to try to figure this out Nah. Use contentful and netlify, go all in on the JAMstack. EZ mode.
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# ? Apr 7, 2019 22:03 |
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kedo posted:WPmudev makes truly poo poo, bloatware plugins that usually have to phone home for no apparent reason, so I avoid them (and anything they have to say) like the plague. The one major thing that blog post misses is that once the email leaves your server you don’t actually know if it will end up in someone’s inbox. Gravity Forms costs money, and I don't feel I could convince my main client (who I do a lot of sites for) to shell out $$$ for each site for a contact form when "there are free ones that work". I'd love to roll my own and have a simple way of putting it into the WP database. If you know a good starting point for doing that and making sure the email form is secure (last thing I want to do is open the sites up to SQL injections or whatever), let me know! I'm pretty sure I can figure out JavaScript field validations, but the PHP and database stuff is harder. I agree that emails are black magic though, I get at least three emails a month that are along the lines of "Client's contact form submissions keep going to their Outlook/Gmail's spam folder, can you figure out why?"
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# ? Apr 8, 2019 02:50 |
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Ninja Forms is a good free alternative to Gravity. I havent used it in years since the 3.0 update broke everything tho. I assume it's better now. Gravity really is the gold standard but I wouldnt pay for it if you only need simple forms. I've built some more complex registration and payment systems with Gravity and been really happy with how extensible it is, especially REST api capability. Y'all see the Pipdig scandal? Crazy what a bad actor in the WP community can do. Sad to see people defending them.
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# ? Apr 8, 2019 06:45 |
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LifeLynx posted:I agree that emails are black magic though, I get at least three emails a month that are along the lines of "Client's contact form submissions keep going to their Outlook/Gmail's spam folder, can you figure out why?" Something like https://mandrill.com/ is helpful for this. A trustworthy middleman between your hosting (which could be on all kinds of spam blacklists) and your client's inbox. There are plugins (lol) that will change WordPress to route all email through Mandrill or Mailgun or a similar service. Seconding Ninja forms as a good forms plugin. One of the big benefits of using WordPress to learn web development is that it's so popular that every conceivable problem or question you have has been answered a million times. Some of the answers will be bad but there's no shortage of information. By contrast I've been trying to learn Umbraco recently and you're really kind of on your own for a lot of stuff. The forums are friendly and the documentation that exists is good but it's just a lot tougher because it's not as popular. Actually it's been kind of demoralising and I'm thinking of going back to WordPress and focusing on PHP, even though it's a lot less "cool". I'm trying to make the jump from jack-of-all-trades freelancer to finding an actual position as a dev somewhere, and it's really hard to know what to focus on.
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# ? Apr 8, 2019 11:51 |
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Ninja Forms is okay, but ugh, that interface is hideous and slow. I never understood why they had to take the UI out of WordPress's environment. It also sucks that the file upload feature is $49/yr., so if a client suddenly wants a field that allows their visitors to upload a photo or something, now I have to tell the boss at the firm that it's going to cost a good amount per year. It looks like in 2019 I'm not going to find a form plugin that is free and has all the features out of the box. That used to be possible, but all the good form managers got too big and started parting out some important features at yearly fees.
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# ? Apr 8, 2019 13:36 |
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LifeLynx posted:Gravity Forms costs money, and I don't feel I could convince my main client (who I do a lot of sites for) to shell out $$$ for each site for a contact form when "there are free ones that work". I'd love to roll my own and have a simple way of putting it into the WP database. If you know a good starting point for doing that and making sure the email form is secure (last thing I want to do is open the sites up to SQL injections or whatever), let me know! I'm pretty sure I can figure out JavaScript field validations, but the PHP and database stuff is harder. Having the form submit to a custom post type would probably work: https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/11288/form-to-add-posts-to-custom-post-type I've heard good things about Ninja Forms too, but I've had a Gravity Forms developer license forever, so I use it everywhere. In terms of convincing the client – if you do enough sites for them, you might be able to just bundle the cost in with your bill. I don't know how your relationship/billing works with them. fakeedit: Wow, pricing is way higher than it used to be. I think I must be grandfathered in with my old developer license – it's only $99/year for unlimited everything.
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# ? Apr 8, 2019 14:35 |
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I have a HTML / JS project that draws from an API and I'm looking to get it so that I can hide my api key in a .env so I can show it in public for my portfolio, what's the COA for that?
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# ? Apr 8, 2019 19:08 |
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I have a mobile web app and for a long time I've had the understanding that you can't really do fixed bottom bars because iOS Safari does that annoying poo poo where it'll show/hide the status bar depending on where you're scrolling, and it just pops the status bar right on top of your content. Recently our designer discovered that Headspace has it set up so that the status bar and address bar just never disappear, and so now he wants to do the same thing for our app and I can't figure out how they're doing it. I tried copying over their meta tags but that doesn't seem to make a difference, so now I'm wondering if they're doing some kind of weird scroll jack approach or if there's another technique that I'm not aware of. There's a million questions on Stack Overflow about how to make the status bar disappear (which Apple really doesn't want you to do, understandably) but I can't find anything when I search for making it not disappear... anyone know anything about this?
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# ? Apr 8, 2019 20:15 |
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prom candy posted:I have a mobile web app and for a long time I've had the understanding that you can't really do fixed bottom bars because iOS Safari does that annoying poo poo where it'll show/hide the status bar depending on where you're scrolling, and it just pops the status bar right on top of your content. Recently our designer discovered that Headspace has it set up so that the status bar and address bar just never disappear, and so now he wants to do the same thing for our app and I can't figure out how they're doing it. I tried copying over their meta tags but that doesn't seem to make a difference, so now I'm wondering if they're doing some kind of weird scroll jack approach or if there's another technique that I'm not aware of. There's a million questions on Stack Overflow about how to make the status bar disappear (which Apple really doesn't want you to do, understandably) but I can't find anything when I search for making it not disappear... anyone know anything about this? I’m bored in an airport so I’m going to theorycraft that they have a flexbox layout with the bottom bar being fixed size top div that holds content above it being flex: 1 and that scrolls but the page size is always one screen tall no matter what. My guess is that is totally wrong, but it killed 2 minutes of my 3.5 hour layover.
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# ? Apr 8, 2019 20:26 |
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Ah, I think you're pretty much right! Their root html element is position fixed and then everything happens inside there, and then they also have a main-content div that's flex-grow: 1 and it also is set to overflow-y: scroll. Here I was downloading their source maps and inspecting their event listeners, didn't even consider the pure CSS solution. Thanks!
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# ? Apr 8, 2019 20:41 |
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ConanThe3rd posted:I have a HTML / JS project that draws from an API and I'm looking to get it so that I can hide my api key in a .env so I can show it in public for my portfolio, what's the COA for that? If you’re running node on the back end dotenv is what you want. Most languages will have a similar package, possibly with that same exact name. If you aren’t running a back end server this isn’t really possible to do effectively, because the client would necessarily have access to the key.
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# ? Apr 8, 2019 20:58 |
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Babby's first React build: I have npm installed. In VSCode, I open a terminal in the folder I want and type create-react-app my-app. Open up index.js and put this in there: code:
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 01:17 |
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You can’t open the html file directly; it needs to be served over http. You can run the command “serve build” (or “npx serve build”) and open it again on localhost.
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 02:06 |
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skull mask mcgee posted:If you aren’t running a back end server this isn’t really possible to do effectively, because the client would necessarily have access to the key. Had a feeling that was the case. I think I'll get all the functionality working on a static HTML and then figure out what to do next in terms of getting a to b.
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 07:01 |
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So I'm building this web page that's being rendered by JVM, which is running locally on my mac. What's the easiest way to check how it looks on a windows machine, short of deploying it on another server?
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 13:29 |
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There's a website called browserstack that's exactly what it's for
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 15:59 |
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uncle blog posted:So I'm building this web page that's being rendered by JVM, which is running locally on my mac. What's the easiest way to check how it looks on a windows machine, short of deploying it on another server? Microsoft provides free virtual machines with lots of browsers: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/ Of course, they also have a link to Browserstack on that page, so check that out first!
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 16:02 |
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Testing on a virtual machine is a better way than others. Is faster, simple, and the bugs will be the same. In the past I have tried to emulate different versions of IE with the same windows image, and the bugs where different. The images that Microsoft provide can last 90 days or something like that, plenty of time and can be refreshed (but I download them again, because I am dumb).
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 16:05 |
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uncle blog posted:So I'm building this web page that's being rendered by JVM, which is running locally on my mac. What's the easiest way to check how it looks on a windows machine, short of deploying it on another server?
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 17:15 |
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Gmaz posted:If you already have a windows machine, use something like https://ngrok.com/ which will allow you to expose your local server running on mac to the public internet. Don't do this. ngrok should not exist
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 17:18 |
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Mind explaining why?
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 17:30 |
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Just imagine the average developer with a poorly configured dev environment being able to expose ports at will to the public internet with no security oversight? Don't get me wrong, a service like ngrok has some perfectly valid use cases, but I guarantee a significant amount of its user base has no consideration for the potential ramifications their desire for a quick workaround has.
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 18:46 |
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The Fool posted:Just imagine the average developer with a poorly configured dev environment being able to expose ports at will to the public internet with no security oversight? This won't pass any form of security audit either, the moment your dummy developer can do things his way, is the moment you're boned.
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 18:51 |
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BrowserStack is a godsend. Once it reached maturity I was incredibly happy to delete the five or six virtual machines on my laptop I kept around solely for IE testing purposes. God that poo poo was terrible.
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 19:10 |
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The Fool posted:Just imagine the average developer with a poorly configured dev environment being able to expose ports at will to the public internet with no security oversight?
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 19:53 |
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Gmaz posted:You expose one port where you serve your local dev server. As long you're doing just that and not opening every port ever I don't see a problem. Yet, it is still a problem. quote:Personally I use it rarely, mostly when developing something with 3rd party webhooks, and it's only open for a small amount of time. And that is mostly ok, the replay feature looks especially nice for that use case. But yet, ngrok doesn't offer any security considerations until their highest tier plan, and I find that problematic.
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 19:58 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 06:38 |
I mean, one thing is that it has some security implications but one completely different is to goThe Fool posted:ngrok should not exist
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# ? Apr 9, 2019 21:42 |