This past month, I’ve had a confluence of lingering projects and long-ago filed issues all coming to life! I don’t always mention this kind of stuff on my blog, but I do more than just launch awesome WordPress sites for my clients, like this new one for TREC. So here’s some other stuff I’ve been doing.
New tiny plugins
I’m indefinitely pausing publishing new plugins on WordPress.org, but I still want to share useful tools I build for myself. This helps me track my own work better and opens up the possibility of getting feedback and contributions from others. In the past week, I’ve published two new WordPress plugins on Github.
MRW User Last Login
This was inspired by a feature in the WordFence and loosely based on a similar plugin, but I wanted a clean, standalone plugin that was clear and useful. Once installed, this plugin tracks the last login time for each WordPress user (and no other data). It then shows the data in two new sortable columns on the Users admin page of WordPress.
Why make my own? Well, lots of reasons!
- I didn’t want to see lots of upsells for a paid version, something that was on one similar plugin. This is especially true when I’m installing a plugin for all my clients to help with ongoing maintenance.
- I wanted the columns to be sortable, something the inspiration plugin didn’t do.
- I wanted to clearly communicate what it means when there isn’t data for a user: they haven’t logged in since the plugin was installed.
- I have plans to add a feature to automatically remove user permissions for users after a set number of days without logging in. Probably 1-2 years. If you have thoughts, you can leave a comment on the open issue!
Accessibility Add-on for FacetWP
I really like FacetWP a lot, but its front end markup isn’t accessible and the provided JavaScript solution is incomplete and comes with drawbacks of its own. I don’t get the sense that’ll be changing anytime soon, so I published my attempts to rectify this, pulled out of a recent project.
My plugin only targets the simplest features of FacetWP, but those are the only ones I ever use on my site. This is one where I’m optimistic that at least a few other people will try this out and possibly help improve the feature coverage.
Sharing my boilerplates
I’ve benefited tremendously from seeing other people’s WordPress “starter themes”, and so I share my own. I recently updated my starter theme and published my accompanying starter mu-plugins. These are super specific to me and my preferences. They’re not even really intended for anyone else, yet I know other people have benefited from exploring them, taking what they want, and leaving the rest. It’s work I’m doing either way, so why not put it out for the benefit of others!
Other projects
Beyond publishing my own projects, I opened issues that got resolved in two other cool projects!
lite-youtube
The lite-youtube custom element is the basis of my Enhanced Embed Block for YouTube plugin. Months ago, I did some research into how it could optimize it’s loading speed and also prevent broken video thumbnails. This week, the maintainer published fixes to both issues, and I can’t wait to get them into my plugin. I was far from the only person working on those issues, but I know I did play a meaningful role in moving them forward.
simple.css
File this under drive-by contributing. A mention of the simple.css project in a blog post I was reading got me curious. While reviewing the project for my own purposes, I quickly caught two accessibility-related issues that could be fixed. I filed issues with offers to submit the fixes, but the author published fixes immediately!
WordPress Inline Image Alt Text
Update (November 21, 2024): I forgot one! WordPress 6.7 includes the new ability to customize alt text for inline images. I remembered this issue I opened because I needed it for a site I’m working on right! So obviously, it’s a useful feature, and I’m glad I could flag the need and get it fixed quickly.
That’s all. Back to work.