Tims musings and pontifications

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An eclectic mix of how-tos, insights and musing from Tim. From security to community and everything in between there is something for everyone.

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Coming from Linux to Mac

Coming from Linux to Mac

General

Tim takes a look at the Mac tools he uses everyday that he thinks his friendly and colleague Keith a Linux sysadmin will find useful with his new MacBook Pro

Lets say bye bye to default themes

WordPress

I’m going to preface this with I actually tend to like the Twenty XX themes that come bundled by default with WordPress. Takashi Irie both folks I admire. I have no doubt it will be a fantastic usable and accessible theme. However I don’t think it should be in core, I don’t think we should […]

Getting PhantomJS working with Codeception in < 5 minutes

WordPress

While getting a friend to look over a Codeception video series I’m preparing to release, he noticed that my tests, automated the starting and stopping of PhantomJS. I pointed him at a cool extension and off he went. Unfortunately Codeception like many projects assumes you are using Composer to manage extensions while promoting a very […]

Defence of Post Formats

WordPress

I’m going to make a confession I actually like Post Formats, not the silly implementation made as part of an ill-conceived and bolted attempt to appeal to get tumblr users to WordPress.com but the post formats of the future the ones where they actually are useful. Post Formats have had a pretty ugly existence since […]

HTTP2 With Nginx & nghttp2

WordPress

So good news the HTTP/2 spec was finalised recently, meaning soon the way we talk to web sites will fundamentally change and yet no one will actually notice. Partially based on SPDY Googles attempt to speed up the web, HTTP/2 will start to make the web a lot faster. The HTTP/2 spec, introduces a few […]

Using Neo4j to give WordPress some relationship advice

WordPress

It would have been a glorious moment for Conan the Barbarian, as he trampled over the orcs, having picked up his might Long Sword +2 and with his bash skill along with his strength modifier he had +6 to the strike. With Rincewind timely casting of the Raise strength  spell it would double to […]

Going Beyond Unit Tests – WordCamp London 2015

WordPress

WordCamp London has been brilliant, but I’m shattered, so have thrown up the slides here For WordCamp London 2015 I talked about testing tools, that go beyond doing unit tests, which not only help in different situations but at least for me are more interesting and dare I say it fun. It’s really interesting giving […]

It’s time to get out of the pub

Events and Talks

On Wednesday WordPress Leeds will be having our first coffee morning called Coffee and Cake  it’s an informal gathering during the day open to anyone. While this is not unique Open Coffee has been around for years across the world it is rare for tech events to happen in the day time. There is […]

The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be

General

The future is a scary thing, its a leap into the unknown and yet for all of us it’s always the next step Since the birth of my daughter I have been pondering the future, it has been at times a quite dark place to visit but slowly I’m seeing a light. She has certainly […]

WordCamp London 2015 – Photos

Events and Talks | WordPress

The food, the people, the atmosphere as well as the amazing talks, volunteers and speakers WordCamp London was a fantastic success. This is the first batch of my pictures from day 1, mostly unedited, I have another batch sitting to be edited, so if you don’t see a picture of yourself don’t worry it may […]

Random Mutterings: Websockets, Mechanising stuff and looking at Stats

WordPress

How did it get to March so quickly? If things have gone to plan, this post was scheduled to go out on Monday/Tuesday and I’m probably already on paternity leave and taking some time of to meet my daughter. Which given the lack of posts it might be hard to notice the difference between taking […]

2015 Predictions for WordPress and Beyond

WordPress

So 2014 has been a pretty awesome year for WordPress, PHP and all the stuff I talk about here on this blog. 2015 is looking to be even more interesting, so here are a few of my predictions for major talking points in 2015. Let’s start with the negative one, which is security. 2014 has […]