Reset
Sometimes in life it’s important to perform a “reset” and just take a minute to examine where you are and where you want to go. I’m about to embark on a month-long retreat to bolster my mental health and consider… continue reading
Heartbroken
These remarks reflect my personal position alone. They do not reflect the position of AspirePress or anyone else. Today, I am heartbroken. I feel many different emotions. Anger. Fear. Sadness. But most of all, its a feeling of profound loss… continue reading
Examples of open source community in action
With as much as has been written about turmoil in the WordPress community, I wanted to take a minute to highlight a contributor in the open source space that truly embodies the open source ethos and a community-driven spirit. Many… continue reading
Who owns WordPress, really?
There is a lot of upheaval in the WordPress community right now. There is talk of forks, and community repositories for packages, and lots of different ways that the community can establish independence from the status quo. But who really… continue reading
Productivity tools I use to stay on track
As a busy business owner and software consultant who has numerous projects on tap at any given time, I’m always working hard to stay on task and focus on what needs doing, at the time it needs to be done.… continue reading
Is there a place for manual testing in software development?
Anyone who has read my work knows that I’m a huge fan of automated testing. I’ve preached automated testing ever since Chris Hartjes (Grumpy Programmer) wrote about it years ago. He converted me, and I have been a dutiful, loyal… continue reading
Makefiles make life easier
Web developers have long sought ways to make their projects easier to run, maintain and work with. From console apps like Composer and Artisan to custom implementations using things like Symfony Console, there’s a myriad of development tools aimed at… continue reading
Mental health in tech
I’m not ashamed to admit the fact that I struggle with my mental health. Mental health issues are common among technology professionals. Perhaps this is even more common than in the general population, though I do not have any statistics… continue reading
The joy in the dirty jobs
Everybody loves to make software that is glamorous, beautiful, and amazing. But very few people like doing the grunt work that it takes to get there. Work like devops, deployment, CI/CD pipeline management, project management, and more is required for… continue reading
Twenty lessons from twenty years of PHP (Part 1)
I started writing PHP in 2003 when I needed to build an online game. While I had intended to use Excel formulas for the game, one of the players didn’t have Excel; this prompted me to learn PHP. Over the… continue reading