jameslau.com

  • Disabling WordPress Theme and Plugin Editor Options

    As far back as I can remember with the use of WordPress, every admin user has the capability to make changes to the theme or plugins through the Theme File Editor and Plugin File Editor. This is a dangerous access point if a client decides to venture into this section. Historically, and through experience, it…

  • Wrangling With WordPress Database Prefixes

    About a week ago, I was tasked to migrate a Disaster Accountability Project’s website from Bluehost to Namecheap. Migrations are usually seamless if the provider(s) allow some symbiotic connection between the two. Case in point: when I worked with Educate Radiate Elevate, they moved their server from a UK-based system to A2 Hosting.

  • WordPress WordCamp Rochester Experience

    It started with a rainy Friday afternoon in Massachusetts, literally. It was the same storm surge that hammered New York City that same weekend, causing massive floods in the city. It took me nearly an hour to drive out of Massachusetts due to the slow traffic. But once I hit the open roads of Upstate…

  • Nonprofit Website Story And Setups

    Let me just put it out there, volunteering your time for someone or an organization is a good thing. Yes, sometimes the work may come with no incentives (money). This might be a dealbreaker, but as I have highlighted in a previous article, volunteering as a web developer is no different than building code and…

  • Trending Tech: HTMX

    I first heard of this technology from Siegfried, deploy! podcast, episode #41. Didn’t think too much about it until another recent article came up in my feed today from Infoworld. This got me thinking about the uniqueness of HTML attributes again. In the past attributes have been used for a variety of things for the…

  • Attending WordCamp Rochester, New York 2023!

    As you may already know, I have been a huge fan of WordPress since college. I’ve used the platform since 2008 and have fond memories over the past decade-plus, working on my own WordPress client work or tinkering with projects at an agency.

  • Understanding What Point Release Means Within A Development Cycle

    The first time I’ve ever heard of this terminology was during a WordPress Meetup event. Developers were discussing the upcoming changes with WordPress 6.3, five days before the initial release. New tools, new user interfaces, and security enhancements that may or may not make it into the production release. I, however, was Googling “point release.”…

  • The Constant Gardener

    The last known statistic about WordPress is that it runs 44% of the web. That’s a lot of websites out there! Even with the growth of SAAS platforms like Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, etc. WordPress takes the cake. One major proponent to this is that it has a large open source community who keeps the core…

  • Comparing Simple Theme Builder Options With CMS Platforms

    Let’s start by comparing the biggest divisions in website development. The advent of this division started as early back as I can remember around 2008 which was my first experience with anything related to software as a service (SAAS). At the time, open-source platforms such as WordPress and Drupal dominated the field of website development.…

  • What and Why, Git LFS?

    For a very long time now, I have been dabbling with various platforms for blogging and came to the conclusion recently that I should just stick with WordPress due to my comfort level in use and the understandings of its inner workings. But there’s been a scratch in my brain ever since I had a…