How to Contribute to WordPress Core (Video)

Building a bridge

If you've been a part of the WordPress community at all you'll know just how awesome it is: there's developers that spend hundreds or even thousands of hours writing free themes and plugins, there's a free support forum, and awesome Stack Exchange community for customizations, and plenty of advice at affordable WordCamps.

I know that I've been given so many awesome free things in this community that I want to give back. I've built a few plugins, and created a few tutorials, but I really want to give back in a bigger way. I want to give back to every WordPress user. I want to contribute to WordPress core.

A few months ago I made my first contribution and I got my very first credit for WordPress in the recent 3.7 update. I created several videos (all linked below) so you can follow the steps, create your own patch, and become a core contributor yourself. 🙂

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Disable Free Shipping on a per Product Basis in WooCommerce

Lego Fork Lift

Shipping is one of the most complex aspects of e-commerce. You have to worry about shipping provider regulations, large products that have awkward dimensions & box sizes, small products that the shipping calculators incorrectly estimate and you over charge, or you could have a mix match of product sizes and it's hard to come up with a fair flat rate shipping fee.

One of the approaches many store owners take is to mark up their products a little more and then offer free shipping. I think this is brilliant idea, but what happens if you have many small items and one large item that throws off the flat rate fee? If you're using WooCommerce there's a filter you can use to disable free shipping when a specific product is in the cart.

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Stay Classy Siobhan

Clownfish in Anemone

Disclaimer – before anything else is said in this post I think it's important to mention that I have a hard time discussing feminism. My first reaction is to be defensive. I feel like I'm being attacked just for being a guy. It usually takes me a while to process the information and to try to begin to understand what's it like to live in a patriarchal culture. I post this not because I pretend to know what I'm talking about but because I want to express my thoughts and have a candid discussion about this really important issue.

Those of you in the WordPress world probably know the name Siobhan McKeown. She's writing the History of WordPress, she writes for Smashing Magazine, she organized WordCamp Europe, she works with all sorts of documentation projects for WordPress, and she's all around awesome. She recently wrote a post about how several members in the WordPress community went about describing herself and other women.

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gettext – The Most Useful Filter in WordPress

camera filter

So you've found the perfect plugin: it has all of the functionality you need, it's within your budget, and there's surprisingly awesome support. Great – but what if you need to change just one little line of text? What if you want to do something simple like change “Add to Cart” to “Add to Basket”? Or change “Related Products” to “See these related products”?

If you're lucky there's a filter for that particular string but sometimes there isn't. Then what do you do?

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Wysija Extension for Ninja Forms

Wysija logo

I'm very happy to announce that I've just released a Wysija extension for Ninja Forms! If you haven't heard of Wysija before make sure to check them out – they're an awesome newsletter service that you can manage through your own WordPress site. Now, with this extension you can allow users to automatically subscribe to your Wysija lists when they fill out a form on your website.

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WordPress Can Handle High Traffic E-Commerce Demands!

I had a great time at WordCamp Grand Rapids last weekend. In addition to meeting awesome people I think that my presentation went really well and I had some awesome questions at the end. One of the questions I was asked during my presentation at WordCamp Grand Rapids last weekend was whether or not WordPress is even the right choice for an e-commerce solution and can it scale to handle high amounts of traffic? The answer is YES!

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Thoughts on WordCamp Chicago 2013

It's about a month since WordCamp Chicago 2013 and I'm only just getting around to write about it if that tells you how busy I've been at the new job. My first thought is how much difference a year can make. The people were the same, the atmosphere was the same, and the sessions were similar but after throwing my self head first into development this past year made the experience quite different.

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