DEV Community: Nick Young

When to render on node vs Vue?

Nick Young — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 16:47:07 +0000

So, I already know Vue and I just finished up a course on learning node. The part I am having trouble getting a grasp on right now (as I try to put this into practice) is when should I use node for rendering the pages vs using something like Vue to just connect to a node API? Are there any hard guidelines to this? Would love to hear what the community's approach is to this. Thanks!

Tell me your favorite ways to set up a newsletter on WordPress

Nick Young — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 21:28:36 +0000

I am a WordPress developer and a big thing with some of my clients right now is setting up a newletter. I would love to hear everyone's setup (free and/or paid) so I can make some better decisions in this area!

Checking for mobile in your template files

Nick Young — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 19:20:06 +0000

I am currently working on a site that makes heavy use of ACF Flexible COntent fields and it's great. We load a lot of things conditionally though and one of the sections is a hero section with a video background that auto-plays. This is great except for on mobile, which I received a request to have it use a background image instead of the video.

After a quick little search, I came across this function wp_is_mobile() (https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/wp_is_mobile/)

I had never heard of it before, but I figured it will work better than nothing and be quick to implement if it does work. Well, after my initial test it does work! Upon closer inspection the function is filterable too so as a developer we can add our own specific checks as well if we need it.

I thought this was pretty neat and so I wanted to share. What are some WP functions you have come across that aren't so well-known?

What should I use for native app development?

Nick Young — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 04:38:41 +0000

I really would love to start getting more into some mobile app development. Currently, I am a web developer and have experience with using Vue, but it seems that even with something like React Native I would need to have multiple codebases. I just learned about Cordova and so I am looking into that a bit more also.

My main goal would be to have an application that can be run on a browser as well as a mobile application so that it can benefit from things like push notifications.

I would prefer to use existing languages I already know, but I am open to learning new ones if it is just all-around better that way. So don't hesitate to tell me what works best for you even if it isn't a web technology :)

So, what do you use for this kind of development?

Thanks in advance!

Does WordPress need to update some of it's CSS coding standards?

Nick Young — Fri, 20 Dec 2019 09:22:39 +0000

Warning: I am not the greatest writer and this literally just went from my brain to this post. Sorry in advance for the rambling!

So I am working on building a custom theme for my website. I just went through the trouble of setting up a build process so that I can use SASS to build out my CSS components.

After all this, I came across the WordPress CSS Coding Standards which I know about and use most of the time, but to be honest I haven't looked over in a while. I decided to click through to it and refresh my memory a bit and make sure I am not doing anything way off. While I was skimming through this line caught my eye (in reference to CSS selectors):

"Similar to the WordPress PHP Coding Standards for file names, use lowercase and separate words with hyphens when naming selectors. Avoid camelcase and underscores."

Emphasis is mine, but it's what I want to discuss. I have primarily been a back-end developer for a long time building plugins and various custom functionalities behind the scenes that don't usually require a lot of front-end work. Recently, however, I have been diving into a lot more front-end work and have picked up using the BEM naming convention. If you are not familiar with it I suggest you read about it, but long story short is that BEM uses a lot of underscores.

So with that in my mind and seeing the WordPress standard (which I will be ignoring in this case 😄) it got me thinking if they need a bit of an update. After reading through some more of the standards it looks like they don't account for newer methods of writing CSS really at all. For example, "Refrain from using over-qualified selectors" is another item in the list. Well, that's easy if you are writing plain CSS, but what about when I am writing something like this in SASS:

.button {
  padding: 2rem;

  &__red {

    &--small {
      padding: .5rem;
    }

    .borderless {
      border: none;
    }

    .thick-border {
      border: 5px solid #f00;
    }

    background: #f00;
  }
}

When it is compiled it will break a lot of the WP standards, unfortunately, but I don't want to write plain CSS just because of the standards.

Anyway, I am just ranting now - I am sure you get the point. What do you all think? Would love to have an awesome discussion about it and hear if this matters to your workflow or if anyone even cares about the standards at all 😂

What tools do you all use for multiple monitor setup?

Nick Young — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 07:09:19 +0000

I recently got my setup to 5 monitors. So far it's been good and I am getting used to a few little quirks of the new flow, but I am curious if anyone out there has any cool programs or tips for being more productive on a setup like this. I am on Windows 10 if that matters.