Satellite

Developing WordPress Plugins

2013-08-16T00:00:00-00:00

When you need to extend the functionality of your WordPress site, you build a plugin (or you get us to build one for you!)

Some people will tell you that you could put the functionality into your theme instead. They might even tell you that having too many plugins will slow down your site.

Those people are misinformed. So, let’s stop the cycle of misinformation right here:

You can have hundreds of plugins installed on your WordPress site without negative side effects. The proviso is, they need to be well-coded and play nicely together.

This is where they get the bad reputation for causing slowness from: often they aren’t well coded, people install plugins with overlapping functionality (causing conflicts), and often they have more functionality than is actually needed.

There’s also no difference in performance by having this code in your theme instead of in a plugin. The code from ten troublesome plugins will be just as troublesome if you copy and paste it into your theme instead.
Keeping things separated and modular is a good thing. Seeing as there’s no detrimental affect on performance by having code in plugins, why not embrace the organisational benefits?

If you need to turn specific functionality off temporarily, you can easily do so.

If you’re experiencing a problem and need to troubleshoot what’s causing it, it’s much easier to identify where it’s coming from.

If you need some extra work done to customise it, it’s much simpler for a developer to get familiar with, and then modify, a plugin than a monstrous theme full of a variety of functionalities that may, or may not, be linked.

I’m sure the myth of “plugins are bad!” will continue on, but hopefully, you and I can now explain to others that it is a myth.

Developing WordPress Plugins was originally published by Japh at Satellite on August 16, 2013.

[Updated] Selling Services on Microlancer

2013-07-27T00:00:00-00:00

If you’ve not heard of Microlancer, it’s a relatively new marketplace for digital professionals to sell their services. They’re still in “beta”, as they gradually add more services.

Currently they sell predominantly design services, and they recently announced that they’re soon going to be adding code services!

We plan to be selling some of our services via Microlancer in the near future, specifically WordPress-based services such as plugin development and theme customisation.

Keep an eye out for updates :)

[ Update ] : Code services are now live on Microlancer! You can hit us up for jobs via Japh’s profile.

We currently offer the following services through Microlancer:

WordPress Theme Customization
Custom WordPress Plugin Development
WordPress Plugin Customization
[Coming Soon] Convert Your WordPress Theme Into a Jekyll Theme

[Updated] Selling Services on Microlancer was originally published by Japh at Satellite on July 27, 2013.

New Satellite Website

2013-07-22T00:00:00-00:00

The Satellite website has had a refresh! The previous design was from 2009, so it had its day, and we’ve now moved to a new one.

This new design is also a move from the flat HTML site we had before to a CMS. Nope, not WordPress, but Jekyll. Jekyll is Ruby software that generates a flat HTML site from dynamic files.

Jekyll sites are something we’ll now be offering to clients also, which is pretty exciting!

We’re looking to get some products of our own released this year, so it’s shaping up to be a pretty fun year here at Satellite.

We’d also like to contribute more to open source software, and we’ve managed to do a little of that as part of this redesign. The redesign is actually a theme for Jekyll by Michael Rose, which we’ve customised. In the process, we also fixed an error, which we sent back to Michael and has been integrated into the original theme. It’s nice to give back.

If you’re considering getting some custom WordPress work done, even a complete site, or interested in Jekyll, feel free to get in touch!

New Satellite Website was originally published by Japh at Satellite on July 22, 2013.