Blog | Timi Wahalahti

Services and apps I use weekly

I find people sharing their toolbelt of different services and apps interesting, as those appeal to the mindset that is always looking for shinier alternatives and ways to trim any overhead off from days.

Haven’t shared my toolbelt earlier, so decided to do so. My philosophy for services and apps is that the simpler it is, the better. Many do try to solve too many things and pack features that are only loosely related, ending up being nightmarish for users.

I’ve been using the majority of the items listed for years now – it’s up to you to decide whether it tells something about them or me. In any case, hope you find some new services or apps to give a try!

On mentoring a flagship WordCamp

This post turned out to be a long one. Fill your WCEU2022 Flaske bottle or favourite cup with your preferred refreshment and sit back.

To whom didn’t already know, I mentored the WordCamp Europe 2022 in Porto, Portugal which ended just a few days ago. WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by volunteer organisers that are fellow WordPress users from our community. WordCamp Europe is something that we call a flagship event; a big conference spanning 2-3 days that gather attendees who represent a broad geographical area. Currently, our community has three flagship events: Europe, US and Asia.

Stop Resilio Sync from draining your macOS battery

At work, when developing WordPress sites we share the same database and media files between all developers as well as with staging. This means, that every time someone uploads a new image to the WordPress media library, the image needs to be transferred to other developers as well.

Fighting against work boreout

In the Finnish coding related Slack community, Koodiklinikka, was a good discussion about work boreout.

That discussion got me thinking, and I almost said that I’ve never suffered such a thing. In fact, it has happened once. So I thought, why not share few tips on how I battled it then and how I battle it today.

WordPress and climate emergency

Climate emergency is here. There’s no doubt about that.

We are not here for me to tell everyone what climate emergency means or what it causes to everyone’s daily life in the coming years. We are here because I realised something uncomfortable.

WordPress community does not talk about climate emergency ~~at all~~ enough. *

How to disable user status updates in BuddyPress

I’m extending the client’s website to have social elements like public profile pages, profile activity, some custom-created content and such. Because I do like to build things myself, my first thought was to build all of this by myself from start. Not so great idea after thinking it thoroughly through.

I did look up some different options and landed to use BuddyPress as a core to provide all the usual profile things and such. It seems to work very well together with Restrict Content Pro which is a huge advantage. But oh well, I think you are not after the story about the site and plugins used.

BuddyPress has a lot of actions and filters to modify it, so it was a little surprise that there is no filter to disable status update functionality in user activity streams. That little text area where user can write their updates like it was a Facebook or something… The updates are then visible on users or in the selected group’s activity stream.

On switching jobs.

I feel like this year has again started with many posts about how people are switching jobs. Don’t get me wrong – I’m sure it has been the right move and I’m really happy for them. Nevertheless, it has caused a little bugging feeling inside me.

When people share about their new jobs, they are justifiably always excited. The little bugging feeling is, that I think those posts do need a counterbalance. In the form of posts telling how great people’s current job still is. Otherwise, it’s easy to fall into thinking that you should find a new job just because “everyone is changing jobs, should also I?”.

Using the same database for development and staging environments with WordPress Network

Here at Dude, we use the same database for the site’s all development and staging environments. With this neat arrangement, we always have the latest content shared between our developers, which is crucial as the team might be working on the same project at the same time. No need for database migrations or moving dump files. Backend developer can just tell to frontend developer that the new page is there and needs styling.

ACF field for network post relations

Earlier today I needed to get posts across the entire WordPress Network installation into ACF post object field. To my surprise, this isn’t possible with ACF itself and few plugin implementations found from Github were abandoned or didn’t fit fully to my needs.

So what developer does in this kind of situation? Writes a plugin that adds a new field type.

Three years on Contributing to WordPress project

During the last six months, I’ve been thinking more and more how grateful I am for being able to contribute to the WordPress project. It has taught me so much on so many levels. Helping event organizers allows me to go (virtually) around the world and learn from different cultures. I get to work with amazing and super talented persons. New friendships and connections have been established. I’ve been trusted to take care of complex things and resolve those on my own.

It always gives a long-lasting good feeling, when you see someone you helped to make a blast out of their event or success in their contribution. But the utmost valuable thing has been endless warmth and respect for each other. Even if we wouldn’t always agree, everyone’s opinion is heard and taken into consideration. We work together towards the same goal.

Without my involvement in the project and without the discussion with thoughtful individuals, I wouldn’t be the person I’m today. WordPress project has given me the feeling of being part of something bigger and far more important than I’ve felt ever before, although I have been involved in too many soups to this age.