A problem that I run into fairly regularly when transferring older sites to my local environment is that, when importing the MySQL dump, I get an error like: ERROR 1292 – Incorrect date value: ‘0000-00-00’ It seems that, prior to version 5.7, MySQL used to allow invalid dates like 0000-00-00. However, this behavior changed in…
Category: Web Development
A Fallback for Ray
As I mentioned in a previous article, I really like using Ray for debugging as I develop WordPress projects. However, one thing that can be easy to do is to forget to remove all of your calls to ray() and upload to a production site where the Ray plugin is not installed. Then… ack! An…
Using an SVG Icon for a WordPress Custom Post Type
When creating a Custom Post Type in WordPress there is a convenient way to select a custom icon when registering the post type. WordPress comes with a set of built-in icons called Dashicons that have easy names that can be used for your menu_icon property: Having these icons at hand is great. Unfortunately, I often…
It’s (Not) a Shame About Ray
Allow me to admit a failing of mine. I always seem to have a problem getting Xdebug to work reliably. I actually felt like I had a pretty good handle on it using MAMP and PHPStorm. It mostly “just worked.” But after I added too many sites into MAMP, MAMP itself began to become unresponsive…
Creating a Rewrite Rule in WordPress
Recently I had to create an endpoint for users to view a dynamically-generated PDF on a site. I wanted to have a nice-looking URL for users. I found it difficult to wrap my head around the process of adding a rewrite rule in WordPress but I finally figured it out. WordPress offers a function, add_rewrite_rule,…
Passing PHP Variables to JavaScript in WordPress
One thing that I found difficult to understand when starting out with WordPress development was how to use PHP variables in my JavaScript. I’m not sure why I found it so confusing. There are a lot of good examples out there but I thought I would break down how use PHP variables in your JavaScript…
Transferring a WordPress Site from One Server to Another
One thing that I have to do fairly frequently is to move a WordPress site from one server to another. Examples of this can be moving a site from staging to production or production to my local environment. There are a lot of ways to do this but I thought I would document my process….
WordPress Plugin for the BotMan Web Widget
I recently was working on a chatbot for a website and wound up using a great PHP library for the task, BotMan. With BotMan, you can follow the really well-done documentation to set up a BotMan endpoint. This is where any client would call to send requests and where logic would be placed to respond…
Creating Unique IDs for ACF Repeaters
I love Advanced Custom Fields and find it to be an essential tool for developing with WordPress. I ran into a challenge recently using Repeaters where I needed to be able to target particular rows for JavaScript. I wanted to be able to depend on each row having a unique identifier that would not change….
Using Tinkerwell with Local by Flywheel
I have been using a wonderful web development tool, Tinkerwell, in my workflow to test and refine queries and code while I build out websites. For those not familiar with Tinkerwell, it is an application that allows you to run and test PHP code and immediately see the results. It is like Tinker for Laravel…