Author: Greg Rickaby

Lint Code Like A Boss

Greg Rickaby on April 6, 2017April 6, 2017

Do you like saving time (and money)? Are you exhausted by constant interruptions and barriers when trying to ship, because of internal feuds about code syntax? Are you 100% confident that your app will work across different PHP versions and devices? If not, then using code linters on your next project can...

CSS @font-face: 2016 Edition

Greg Rickaby on May 26, 2016

Remember back in 2009/2010, when @font-face was introduced? Developers rejoiced, because they no longer were they forced to use a (small) handful of fonts! There were some caveats though…browser support was just okay. To make @font-face work across Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE, and mobile, you had to enqueue a bunch of different font file...

How We Built Skype in Media on WordPress

Greg Rickaby on April 26, 2016

Last quarter, we were hired by Skype and tasked with building a smaller site, featuring Skype TX. Skype TX is “studio-grade hardware for the broadcast industry, which features peerless integration with Skype.” In other words, Skype Tx is powerful hardware and software for professionals in live broadcast situations. Because of a hard launch date,...

Gulp Configuration: A Beginners Guide

Greg Rickaby on April 12, 2016

Recently, WebDevStudios integrated Gulp into our theme boilerplate, wd_s. Below, I go through the Gulpfile.js, section by section, in hopes that you can benefit from our mistakes experience.

Avoiding Burnout: Sometimes You Gotta Unplug to Recharge

Greg Rickaby on March 30, 2016

Awhile back, I took a two week vacation in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Before the trip, I spent a lot of time daydreaming about (finally) playing with the WP-API and finishing up my JavaScript courses on Treehouse. One of the first things I did after we arrived at my parents place was pull...

The Future of WebDevStudios Starter Theme: wd_s

Greg Rickaby on February 25, 2016

This is Part III of a three part series about wd_s, our starter theme. Part I: History of wd_s Part II: Project Scaffolding with wd_s Part III: Future of wd_s To summarize the previous two blog posts: we discussed the history of wd_s and then Damon went in-depth about how we kick off a new...

History of the WebDevStudios Internal Starter Theme: wd_s

Greg Rickaby on January 19, 2016

This is Part I of a three part series about wd_s, our starter theme. Part I: History of wd_s Part II: Project Scaffolding with wd_s Part III: Future of wd_s One of the most exciting things of my job here at WDS is getting to spearhead our internal starter theme: wd_s....

The Basics of Developing Accessible Websites

Greg Rickaby on March 3, 2015

Imagine not being allowed to buy a gallon of milk because you’re color blind. What a ridiculous scenario right!? But the reality is: Grocery stores don’t discriminate against those with disabilities…but your website (probably) does. The reality is that there are millions and millions of people with disabilities who use the web every...

A Beginner’s Guide to Contributing to WordPress

Greg Rickaby on November 14, 2014

I’ve been working with WordPress since 2006, but never on WordPress. In other words, I’ve never contributed code. Excited and nervous at the same time, I started asking other team members for help. It was suggested that I start with the handbook, however, my head was spinning about three paragraphs in! What...

Don’t Repeat Yourself! How to Create an Author Box Using the Gravatar API

Greg Rickaby on July 31, 2014

Wouldn’t it be great if the box above could be automatically filled by your Gravatar profile? Tons of services auto-populate your info using Gravatar right? Why can’t my profile information (and social media info) just auto populate in WordPress too!? (NOTE: someone smarter than me should definitely work on getting this...