Photo Credit: Andy Fragen, @andyfragen on x.com.
At WordCamp US in Portland, OR, the Core Committers in attendance had a quick meetup at the end of lunch on Thursday to make sure everyone had met in person and to discuss anything anyone wanted related to the act of committing to Core. Jorbin mentioned it might be helpful if we all shared our own committing workflows on our personal blogs to share knowledge along with some tips & tricks. So, I'll play along.
Over the holidays in 2022, I refactored a lot of the code for Secret Santa Hat. After seeing hundreds of new groups being created each day, I realized it was no longer a simple pet project. No longer could I just push development code directly to production. The project needed to mature.
So, I added some QA processes to ensure that anything deployed live is functional. This gave me the opportunity to really deep-dive end-to-end(E2E) tests and put them in place. I've learned a lot, and I see the huge value this can add to my work as a WordPress developer by adding E2E tests to the plugins I build for clients.
Including a packing slip with customer orders accomplishes a few things, but you can print them in many different ways, depending on your processes. In this article, I'll discuss why you might choose to add packing slips to your order fulfillment process and how to do it with WooCommerce. Whether you're shipping hundreds of orders per day or just a few per week, I've got a solution for you.
I've been busy reengaging with work and .org after my typical year-end blackout. My usual process has been to document planned changes prior to the season starting. That has led to disconnect between what I thought would be ready for the Christmas lights display and what actually was.
I'll try something from WordPress.org by adding a look-back model to document and evaluate changes, having lived through the pain points, instead of trying to guess what they are ahead of time. For 2020 - a year that was novel to say the least - things were challenging. That being said, objectively, 2020 was the best and most popular season so far.
Recently, I was faced with an unavoidable situation where I had to alter a third-party plugin's code. The plugin is one I consider a "well-made" plugin, incorporating apply_filters or do_action all over the place. However, the hooks weren't available in a specific spot where I needed them for a project.
Of course, the downside of altering third-party plugin or theme code is maintainability. Every time the plugin or theme releases an update, the custom code must be reintegrated manually once the upgrades are complete. So, tracking when a plugin or theme is updated becomes important.
I've went on and on about "well-built" plugins for WordPress. As much as I'd like plugins to "filter all the things", in reality, they never account for all use cases. One such challenge I had recently involved the WP WooCommerce Mailchimp plugin.