Using Gutenberg blocks in place of custom metaboxes in WordPress

Custom metaboxes are used extensively in WordPress for layout purposes as well as data structure. However, they don’t necessarily — in fact they rarely — save to the meta key’s array of objects when they’re added to the WordPress REST API and can’t be used by Gutenberg’s built in meta attribute.

How can we use Gutenberg with them? Should we look at how they work now and replicate that functionality exactly? It’s necessary to keep in mind that this data will be edited in the context of the editor where the user has no knowledge — and cannot be expected to need any knowledge — of how the data is stored or managed.

register_meta(), register_rest_field() and the WP REST API

There are two standard ways to add additional data into a post’s object in the WP REST API: register_meta() for post meta which is a string, number or boolean and register_rest_field()for everything else. There’s a bit on the difference between the two in the REST API docs. With Gutenberg, register_meta() is being used more widely and there’s some confusion about it, so let’s look at both in a little more depth.

Iterating over an array of objects which I desperately want to be reactive in Vue.js

[a note to my future self from my current self as of 17 April 2018: are you here again? Is there definitely a unique key on that loop? Are you sure? GO PUT ONE ON NOW. Use the uuid package, it’s easy. Then come back if it still doesn’t work.]

This took me a while yesterday to figure out. There were a couple of issues I had: how to keep the individual items reactive (spoiler: easy once I stopped being lazy) and how to make an array of objects reactive.

“This block has been modified externally” notice of death in Gutenberg

This notice drove me insane, especially because I couldn’t quite figure out what was being compared. It turns out it’s that the save function in registerBlockType() compares its return value to whatever is between the block’s html comment tags in the database.

The Mandelbrot set visualised in golang

[note on 07 April 2018: I wrote this in late September 2017 but never published it. I think it’s not finished but useful up until that point so I’m publishing it now]

This is a deeper dive into the Mandelbrot exercises in Chapter 3 of The Go Programming Language (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series) (that’s an affiliate link because I was going to link to it anyway so why not). Chapter 3 in the book deals with data types and the examples illustrate the various effects of using different types but I’m not going to go into those, instead I’ll work through the details of generating an image of the Mandelbrot set point by point.

New Year’s Resolutions

Writing them down for posterity.

Using Select2 with ajax with CMB2 repeating groups

No idea if the title makes sense. I wanted a Select2 which uses a remote data source queried via ajax with a CMB2 repeating group so made a plugin to understand it better. It’s pretty heavily commented so I don’t forget why I did what I did. There are definitely a few if not many ways to do this, this is not the definitive guide.

Using custom tables with CMB2

This is more straightforward than I expected (yay thank you @jtsternberg). The short of it is to add a filter to cmb2_override_meta_value or cmb2_override_{$a['field_id']}_meta_value to get the data and cmb2_override_meta_save to save it. But what if I have a repeatable group huh? What then?

Bulk deleting users in WordPress multisite

So I have over 10,000 spam users and need to delete them¹. The bulk delete in multisite only does 20 at a time and is somewhat slow so I wanted a better way to delete them all. This could be a massive mistake, if you are reading this because you need the same thing, you absolutely must thoroughly test it to see if it works for you. It’s unforgiving.

Setting up VVV v1 with SSL

Even taking into stupid mistakes, this was fairly straightforward. Here’s how I set up my VVV local sites with SSL so I’m not screwed when I accidentally update Chrome. (It happens.)

WordPress development beginners’ workshop debrief

I helped out with a beginners’ WordPress development workshop with Jenny Wong for TECH(K)NOW Ada Lovelace Day. We had two hours and she talked about WordPress then I did a workshop bit.

A talk on community management and tech support

I gave a talk at WordPress London in May about dealing with people who use your website, tech support and community management.

Can I embed my slides? No I cannot. You can find my slides here. There’s a video of the talk on the WordPress London Facebook page, but you’ll need to request to be a member. I’ll link to it here if it’s uploaded somewhere else.

Gutenberg identifiable but still non-global blocks

I wanted to be able to add meta data to individual blocks, so needed a way of telling the blocks apart. What I’ve ended up doing is straightforward: each block gets a data-id attribute which contains the block’s uuid at time of creation.

Gutenberg wish list

Ok, this is without really looking at it so maybe it has these.

1. identifiable non-global blocks (so not these: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/2081) because I want to maybe use postmeta with a block? I don’t know, I have this vague idea that I’m too lazy to articulate atm. ok this wasn’t bad, I’ve done this.
2. the ability to limit blocks shown
3. the ability to make templates which need to be filled in so the author has to stick to the blocks in the editor and can’t add or remove or whatever

These are mine. You might have different ones.  ☺️

edit (same day, a few hours later): Look at this for numbers 2 and 3 in the list! Whooo!

Gutenberg test, a simple FAQ block

This is my first attempt at a Gutenberg block. I’m building this looking at / copying nylen’s Gutenberg examples plugin. Mine is named “Gutenbergerli” because this will be wonderful for a few hours then it’ll go stale, just like Luxemburgerli which are some of the best things ever for a time, at least.

scraping http POST requests with golang

One of the #enumerateallthethings projects in Go. PostScrape lets you scrape targeted html nodes in enumerateable http POST requests. It uses goquery for the targeting. Currently it’s command line only. Works but not finished at all, needs tests and other things. (Part of a larger project where I just needed the data.)

Improving Gravatar (the service)

The problem:

Gravatar hashes are somewhat easy to crack. Websites are super easy to scrape. Sites with Gravatar urls in the img-src or profile link make it trivial to generate lists of hashes to crack. Other data available on sites and in Gravatar profiles can be used to generate targeted wordlists which make cracking a large proportion of the hashes much quicker, in seconds rather than days.

Windstream compatible modem for a non-bonded connection

When my Windstream modem was repeatedly power cycling when trying to connect, tech support said this was the modem letting me know it was damaged and needed to be replaced. They offered to rent me a modem for $10/month but oh my god no, why would I do that? This one lasted me over 10 years.

A Slack bot that gets the last three posts from a WordPress site

This Glitch project grabs the latest three posts for WordPress sites which are using either the WP REST API or the WP.com version via Jetpack. It uses MongoDB for persistence. It’s not super exciting or well written but a fairly effective way to mindlessly try sites on Slack and see if they have the WP API somewhere when you’re a bit bored. (Try Glitch. It’s fun.)

Calculate object.clipTo rectangle path when cropping in Fabric.js

Playing with Fabric.js was fun although one bit I had trouble with was calculating the object.clipTo rectangle path.

Glitch image cropper with Fabric.js

“How hard can it be to make an image cropper?” 🙃 It took me longer than I think it should have but was a great deal of fun. Here is the working version (“working” being relative, mind you) and you can remix it in Glitch here. If you haven’t used Glitch, try it out. It’s like Codepen for Node.

Google DFP “Line item not found” for native style

I’m making a post of this because TWICE I’ve spent a couple of hours wondering if Google DFP is just taking a long time to update.

ADD THE AD UNIT TO THE TARGETING IN CREATIVES -> NATIVE STYLES -> STYLE. Otherwise it will never show up.

Keeping your email address safe on Gravatar enabled sites (or if you don’t know if it is or not)

Do you consider your email address to be private information but use it to register and comment on WordPress powered sites? Many WordPress sites use Gravatar to provide the avatars on comments and user lists and this can be an issue if you do.

How Gravatar works

This is an overview of how sites get data from Gravatar and what’s available from the Gravatar ‘API’ (quotes theirs).

Gravatar and privacy

Privacy concerns regarding Gravatar are not new. But what exactly are they and how can you avoid your data leaking? And what is Gravatar?

WP contact form remnants

What do contact forms leave in a site’s database when they’re deleted? How easy is it to manage the data they store? What personal data do they grab?

Ajax in WordPress not working for logged in users without wp_ajax_nopriv action

I had a rather interesting problem the other day. My ajax request was not working if I didn’t use the wp_ajax_nopriv_ action on a page where the user was clearly logged in. Why? Why was this happening?

Getting the placeid, latitude and longitude for the Google Maps Javascript API

Need the place id or anything from the Places Search results for whatever you’re doing with the Google Maps API?

How does WordPress know if a pending post hasn’t been published yet?

If WordPress has a newly created pending post, when you publish it the timestamp on the post is set at the time of publishing. If you publish a post, then set the post status to pending, the timestamp does not update when you re-publish it. How does it know? And why does it matter?