Thoughts From a Professional Lesbian
Imagine a world where you couldn’t read these posts because your ISP didn’t like one I made about how to download video from your DVR?
Imagine an internet where a site like LezWatch TV was blocked because someone was homophobic?
That’s what could happen.
Americans, please contact your representatives now. Non Americans? Social media please and thank you.
One of the ways that FacetWP works is that it adds <!--fwp-loop--> to the source of your outputted page when it detects you used a search query and it can’t find it’s usual classes. This is so that it’s various features like refreshes and so on. It’s a good thing.
At least it is until you’re trying to use a WP_Query based search to find titles “like” something, and you find your JSON output prefixed…
Most of the time when you see <!--fwp-loop--> in the source code, you don’t care. It doesn’t impact anything and it helps Facet work. This is especially important when you have a ‘weird’ theme or plugins that mess with output.
The issue is that this is how Facet decides if you need that output:
$is_main_query = ( $query->is_archive || $query->is_search || ( $query->is_main_query() && ! $query->is_singular ) );
Most of the time, that makes perfect sense. It just happens that I’m calling search in a place where that output is a bad idea. Like this:
{“id”:6294,”name”:”Alex”,”shows”:”Witches of East End”,”url”:”https:\/\/tv.lezpress.dev\/character\/alex\/”,”died”:”alive”}
Whoops.
After bashing my head in for a while, I grep’d the code for Facet, found where it was being set, and then read the help document on facetwp_is_main_query which told me that I could filter the function.
In this case, I needed to set the value to false to get it to stop outputting, so I used this:
add_filter( 'facetwp_is_main_query', function( $is_main_query, $query ) { return false; }, 10, 2 );
Be careful where you put that by the way. If you put it on all pages, you’ll break your Facets. I put it in the function that generates the JSON output which limits it heavily, just as I want it to.
When I got ready to go to WordCamp Europe this year, I realized I needed a new adapter. I had one, and it worked, but it also was highly imperfect as it required me to charge everything through my laptop. You know that drill, right?
Like a lot of road warriors, I travel with about four USB plugs and it’s a mess. It’s always looking for good plugs in a hotel room, and hoping I can charge everything. I used to have a cheap USB hub, but it shorted out. Cheap. I knew what I needed, and it was a charging ‘station.’ But I wanted one that would work ‘universally.’
I don’t actually remember how I found this. It may have actually been an ad that popped up when I was searching for chargers. I’d been thinking about getting a multi-outlet travel power strip with a couple USB ports. My constant worry with those is the 3-prong US outlet isn’t actually universal here. I’ve been in a lot of nice hotels that don’t have them. Worse, converting from 3-prong to European outlets has, in summer at least, caused a power short.
Seriously, I blew out the power on my floor in Spain once. Sorry.
And then I ran into OneAdaptr. At first I was skeptical of the idea. While I had a universal adapter, the sort you can plugin anything into and get anything back out of, this was slightly different.
If you’ve got a Mac laptop, you’re familiar with the odd way you can change your power adapter to use the 2-prong or grab an extension and use a 3-prong. Backpacking off that concept, the Twist+ adapter lets you plugin your laptop right into the base, while leaving you four USB outlets.
This is the TWIST+ World Charging Station. And I’m a super fan.
First, yes, I use it entirely as intended, plugging my laptop and all my devices in. But I actually use it more as a USB hub. Shoving it into my purse, I was able to whip it out at a dinner with friends and plug all our devices in to charge. One of them had a 3-in-1 USB charging cable, and we ended up with 6 devices all plugged in and charging.
This works well with my ‘style’ as I tend to plugin laptops to charge while I shower and clean up at the end of the day. By the time I’m done, the laptop is charged and goes away, and the hub gets plugged in at my nightstand to charge a Watch, a phone, and an iPad. It could even do another phone without breaking a sweat. And in the absolute worst case? I could plug in my laptop and get two more ports.
If you just want a USB hub, they (will soon) have a World Charging Station which looks about perfect for a lot of things.
On July 12, 2017, we fight for the internet. Again.
I know. Didn’t we just do this? Well we did, and we have to do it again.
Net neutrality is the principle that Internet providers don’t get to control what we see and do online. Think of it like if your phone company got to decide what numbers you could call and when. Back in 2015, we managed to get fairly strong net neutrality laws from the FCC (the US Federal Communication Commission) which stopped Internet providers from blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization—”fast lanes” for sites that pay, and slow lanes for everyone else.
Yes it is! On your TV, you can only watch the stations you pay for. Now imagine the Internet that way. The problem though is that we don’t just use the Internet to watch movies. We use it to work, to develop code like WordPress, and to communicate world wide with like minded people to do all of that.
Comcast and Verizon want to end net neutrality so they can control what we see and do online. It’s that simple. They want it to look like TV so they can say that we can’t work with our fellow developers in Serbia or Iran. They want to monitor all our communication with those people as well (which in the case of WordPress isn’t really a hinderance but still…).
Change your websites so people see the damage being done. Inconvenience the hell out of them. Make everyone notice and get them aware. Even if they watch Fox News.
The Fight for the Future has started the Battle for Net Neutrality just like they did in 2014 with The Great Internet Slowdown and like they do today with Blackout Congress.
Add the Battle For The Net Widget to your website.
If you’re running WordPress, I made a Fight for the Future Alerts Plugin, which lets you decide which alerts you want to show. It currently only supports the upcoming Battle for the Net and the Blackout Congress, but I plan to add other on-going events as they occur.
You can also use the Cat Signal which dynamically loads the right alert for you at the right time. The reason this is different is that not everyone wants to run an extra javascript all the time on their websites. Page speed is important after all. Plus they may not want to show every single alert.
I'm not super fond of that. I expected it to magically transform.
## I don't like the meta-box experience
Okay. This is the advanced user stuff. But I use meta boxes. I spend a lot of time making my meta boxes fix the screen space. I added content to the publish box. And I'm not the only one out there who customizes the heck of the sidebar and the below the post area and … Yeah. I'm seriously concerned about that. Right now, all I see on the sidebar is a 'drop cap' toggle, which I probably won't use.
I'm watching the Advanced Drawer discussion very closely with that in mind, since I have a post type with, literally, a dozen meta boxes. And no, not all will fit on the sidebar.
## As a whole…
Gutenberg is really neat. It has some serious quirks, but that's why it's in beta testing at the moment. So please. Test it.
As Chris Lema said, the people working on this plugin need our feedback. If you're a hardcore WordPress user, be that a developer or an advanced user, please download the latest plugin and leave your comments over here. To that end, comments here are closed.