Tag: essay

How Do You Solve a DB Like Maria?

I was talking to my friend James about upgrading SQL. If you didn’t know, upgrading SQL is a horrifyingly monumental thing, because there’s no way back except restore from a backup. Minor upgrades are generally painless, but the CentOS warning is as follows:

Upgrades to new major releases (the first two digits in the version string) are more involved because there is a substantial risk of data loss.

Data. Loss.

It’s scary when you consider doing it for yourself. It’s horrifying when you consider doing it for a few thousand users.

On top of that is the issue that MySQL is owned by Oracle and they’re not exactly known for being good stewards of OpenSource. Unlike many other Open Source projects, Oracle owns the entire copyright to MySQL. All contributions are done if the developer has signed a “contributor agreement” that assigns ownership to Oracle. This isn’t all that weird, to be fair. When I worked for The Man, that was basically how things worked and it made sense. The work I did for the company belonged to the company.

Where this is weird is that Oracle has said that about a GPL product, even to parts of it the company has not written. Why is that? It’s because all contributors to the code have to sign a “contributor agreement” assigning ownership of the copyright to Oracle, which is not alone in this. Sun before them used contributor agreements to get full source ownership, and many other projects do the same.

Now, James and I looked at the MariaDB vs MySQL compatibility doc and had a laugh.

tl;dr “For all practical purposes, MariaDB is a binary drop in replacement of the same MySQL version,” except for this long list detailing where you’re screwed.

Now when you get down to MySQL 5.5 and MariaDB 10, the issues become very minor and unlikely to cause you migraines, which is a relief, but that list sure is long and daunting.

I’m not yet running MariaDB because it’s an all-or-nothing move. I can’t keep on MySQL, and I have a few old (ancient) bits of non-WordPress code on this server. I always stress that WordPress is not the limiting factors in server upgrades, and it’s still the truth.

I’ve started doing the recon work to make sure MariaDB will work for all situations on my server, for all apps, and I’m currently pretty sure that I’ll be fine, but I do have one way-out-there app to check into. They’re also one of the few people who pay me for hosting, so we may have to have a sit-down anyway to discuss their future.

@Ipstenu Yep!

— Gary (@GaryPendergast) March 24, 2015

The most important question has been answered.

8 April, 2015
Mailbag: Facebook Page Notifications

A family member, after teasing me for not knowing someone was married because the only place they announced was on Facebook (and Shredder? You’re not off the hook either), finally asked:

Why do you still hate facebook?

Because the interface is inconsistent and sucks. Let me explain by showing you about my Page Notifications.

I still use Facebook under duress and happily go weeks without noticing I have alerts waiting. When I do remember to check in, this is usually my first clue I have that there are unread notifications:

If I click on the group, the toolbar at the top of the page gives me a much better idea of what’s going on:

So I logically click and I get this:

I don’t like that I have to click three times just to see my notifications. Yes, I can click on that teeny-tiny number to go to the page properly and wipe them, but what if I don’t want to? Also have you noticed how small the number is? It’s hard to hit if you’re not ‘great’ with your mouse. Guess what I’m not? Great with my mouse. I like larger icons because they’re easier for me to tap. I’m not the only one.

The next problem is the text color. It’s not really all that distinct. It changes to a useful red/orange on other pages, but the subtle grey on blue grey, combined with the size, makes it weird. Compare it to the alerts you get for unread posts in your timestream, or personal notifications:

Clearly their goal is to keep me on that front page (which is obviously why they swap my ‘recent posts’ to ‘top posts’ every chance they get). But even then, once you click on the item, the number goes away but the items are not marked as read. You still have the mark-as-read buttons, which are not very noticeable or distinct. In the case of a page, the number count on the sidebar goes away, but not the one on your toolbar or the notifications page. Welcome aboard the inconsistency train, thy name is Facebook.

Interestingly, this day when I clicked on the “Mark as Read” link, the number dropped from 20 to 1. But there was nothing else to mark as read. All the backgrounds went from pale blue to white, and there was no other indication as to how I might find what was unread.

Eventually I saw the sidebar:

There it was. I hovered over it, clicked ‘Mark As Read’ and that number went away. I had to refresh the page to make the orange alert go away, because apparently that level of Ajax is hard.

My conclusion is pretty simple. Facebook wants me on the main page of their site, my timeline, all the time, and that’s fine for a user. But in doing so, they’ve made administration of their pages and groups overly complex and inconsistent with the rest of the flow of their site. They want me to add in content, but they’re going to decide how I, and others, consume it, which means my ability to easily input and manage is secondary (or even tertiary) to their consumer design.

The pages and groups are a nice idea, but still ill planned for a ‘MySpace’ replacement. The only reason that even worked was because MySpace blew up on itself.

3 April, 2015
I Hate Your Framework
The plugin itself was one PHP file and three JS files.

The framework was over two megs.

The plugin added in a new setting to select which one of the three javascript files should be called.

The framework ‘made it pretty.’

I’m right up there telling people that the WordPress Settings API is a giant bag of wet hair. It’s confusing, it’s cryptic, it doesn’t always play well with everything, and sometimes it makes you feel like the point is to make us have decisions, not options, for our plugins. But I don’t think plugin frameworks are the answer. At least not the way most people seem to be going about them.

When I say frameworks, I don’t mean the libraries like the AWSSDK for PHP framework that you package up into your plugin and do a proper check for a function, calling yours if the the library isn’t there. No, I mean the plugins that are totally separate plugins but are meant to be called by yours in order to make development easier and more consistent.

That’s what I hate.

I love the idea of these frameworks, actually. I think that a boilerplate plugin, similar to _underscores, where I can put in my plugin name, my information, and press a button to have the basic plugin files generated for me is brilliant! But I think most of the libraries out there are doing it in a way that will annoy and upset most people.

The problem is less the framework and more the people using them as a ‘quick fix’ without properly thinking about what they want to do.

They’re Too Large

In the case of this plugin, one file with three settings could just be done with two functions (maybe three) and instead he’s made a download half the size of WordPress core. The zip is large, it makes things take just a little bit longer for people on slow servers to download and upgrade, and the larger you get, the worse you are for the really small shared hosts. I know a lot of people argue with me about this, but remember than a high number of hosts still default you to allow 7M in PHP upload size. That means when your plugin becomes the 30 meg behemoth with all your dev files, you’ve made things pretty bad for some users. But even when you’ve only made your plugin 2 or 3 megs, why would you do that when you have one file of actual code?

The logic escapes me.

They’ve Got Too Many Files

Not the same thing as too large! There are hundreds of files in a framework, and if you’re using only 4, that means you have 96+ files to review for security. You just increased your workload for not enough value. Which is really a major part of my next issue. The point here is you, the developer, are responsible for every single file in that framework. You are expected to know everything about it, where it installs, what it uses, why it uses it, and when to upgrade. This is a pain. It’s a chore. And it’s your job now.

You Don’t Know How to WordPress

This is also why I don’t like the idea of making Multisite too much easier. The further you take a developer from writing this code, the further they get from understanding how it all comes together and the harder it is for them to debug their own plugins. If you’re developing a plugin you plan to share with other people, even a teeny tiny one, you need to understand what you’re doing. You need to learn about the way the code interacts with the CMS tool, you need to understand why some things are secure and others are not.

You Use the Frameworks Wrong

I said before, I love the idea. And I do. They’re a brilliant idea and, when done right, work perfectly. The problem with them is, a bit, a problem with WordPress, which is we really don’t have a way to handle children plugins. You see, the best thing for a true framework plugin would be to have it be a separate plugin. But without plugin dependency support in core or the directory, it becomes another level of hassle for users.

For example… if you have the plugin as a separate plugin, these are the issues we’ve see for end-users (not developers):
- Not recognizing the framework plugin, and thus deleting it (causing the plugin(s) to break)
- Not recognizing the framework plugin and thinking they’ve been hacked
- Updating the framework plugin separately from the dependent plugins, possibly leading to breakage
- Updating a dependent plugin without updating the framework, possibly leading to breakage
- Different plugins requiring different versions of the framework
And bearing in mind that the framework and plugin developers are different people, that’s another level of coordination/compatibility issues. Frameworks and libraries should be packaged with each plugin (hopefully in a way that doesn’t conflict with other plugins using the framework or libraries). At least until core supports plugin dependencies.

But I still think that’s wrong.

I still think the best framework plugin isn’t a plugin at all, it’s a tool to help you design and build a plugin via your editor of choice. Or maybe a Grunt Script that lets you build it out based on parameters. Time spend making a framework for making the plugin ‘interface’ better would be better spent making the Settings API better.
18 March, 2015
Mailbag: Learning Resources

Ann asked about books:

[..] if you’re open to throwing a few key book recommendations – sites – blogs – whatever resources that you use/have used and particularly liked – I would be grateful. Essentially – I love your blog and am always looking to improve my WP developer skills. I want to get better. I want to be really really good. So I ask the greats if there’s something in particular that they think I should read – out of the huge sea of articles/books/blogs/etc out there. Something that they’ve singled out and thought was really worth paying attention to. And then I read it! [..]

She got an email reply right away, but here’s for everyone else.

The best advice I have is to pick something you like (or that drives you absolutely up the wall) and poke at it.

I got started and good because I really, really, really, wanted to do something that (at the time) WP didn’t do. After banging my head a lot, I started googling and trying to figure out what was there to use. I looked at a lot of code that was ALMOST what I wanted. And I broke my test site. A looooooooot.

The biggest problem is we all learn differently. I learn by doing, so for me the act of writing BAD code helps me understand it better. I hate videos.

But do I have a specific resource for learning? Sometimes I do. The majority of my ‘research’ remains search engines and constantly refining parameters, or trying to remember the name of the one thing with the thing. The problem is that I’m very haptic, I learn by doing things, so for me it’s way easier to take the examples and break them than anything else.

13 March, 2015
What I Learned From The Man

It’s no secret I worked for “The Man” for nearly fourteen years. I’ve learned some pretty amazing technical things from that, but I also learned some tricks about ‘working’ with a big company that have yet to fail me no matter where I worked. They were all lessons my family instilled in me, but having some pretty amazing people like Bonine, Margie, Joe P., Nikki, Rae, and a host of other amazing people all reinforce the morals of the stories, and it made me know that these were the right things.

Always Admit Fault

Scariest moment of my life was the day I accidentally rebooted a trading server at 10am on Thursday. Those were only supposed to happen at 10pm on Thursday nights, well after all trading was done for the day. I did it mid-day which meant there was a high risk that in-flight data could be lost. I was tasked with diagnosing what had happened and, after a lot of review, I came back and said the only logical reason was I had typo’d when I scheduled the time. We since changed to 24/7 clocks and not AM/PM to mitigate, but I was up front about the error being me. Similarly, when a bad change I made to a script broke the internet for all of our UK offices, I said it was me, I fixed it, and I took the hit. This meant later when a change I’d fought against was put in and caused an outage, everyone believed me when I said I’d done it, but it was someone else’s idea. I had credibility and history and (of course) documentation on my side.

Document It Or It Didn’t Happen

I had a boss whom I did not like. I liked the work, but working with him was terrible. He didn’t grove like I did, he was misogynistic and racist. He also had a flagrant disregard for protocol. Love it or hate it, when your company has specific steps to follow to do a thing, you do the steps. He didn’t want to and demanded I make an on-the-fly change. Verbally. I didn’t. This ended in a shouting match which our manager had to step in and settle. But before that event, I was told to make a change I knew was wrong. I demanded it be documented that this was a change in scope and a requirement by him. I then, under duress, made the change. It broke. I backed it out. That marks the last time I ever let it go that far and may explain to many people why I’m so firm about not letting people do ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ actions. If I know something’s wrong, I won’t do it and I won’t help you do it.

Remember You’re Special, And So Are They

I’m a techie. I know all sorts of weird things. Remembering that I know those things and understand the different between minimizing a screen and closing a window is important. Joe reminded me about that once. I never forgot it. I also don’t forget that my place is to make sure problems are solved. So just because I don’t panic doesn’t mean I’m being cavalier, but at the same time I have to make sure the other person knows that.

Credit: xkcd

That window resize via a resolution change was the only way to fix a specific problem with a specific app. I used to travel across town to do it for people because trying to walk them through it on the phone was too difficult.

Use Your Calendar

“I’m sorry, I’m really busy.” has a lot more weight when they look at your calendar and see it’s booked. Solid. When I know I need to spend time working on a specific project, I schedule it as booked time and that way everyone can see and understand I’m busy. This is also a respect issue. If someone schedules a meeting, you confirm and click that damned ‘I accept’ button. It’s a contract, or a friendly agreement, in order to tell someone ‘Yes, I will be there.’

Don’t Waste Group Time

Irony. If you think about big companies, you think about wasted meetings where people never get anything done. I’m not talking about that (which is a thing). I’m talking about wasting time with being disrespectful of the meeting. Keep your phone/mic on mute in a conference call so no one hears you pounding on a keyboard. Turn off your video feed if you’re not presenting so you speed up the internet for everyone. Joining in a massive meeting with hundreds of people? Get a conference room for your location to prevent overwhelming the system. If it’s an on-line, text meeting, follow the announced protocol.

What Did You Learn?

I’m not the only open-sourcer who used to work for the Man. Did you learn anything that you still use today?

Those meetings, by the way, are generally a waste of time. I greatly prefer stand-ups. Everyone gets 60-90 seconds to state status. Everything after is taken outside meetings.

11 March, 2015
Markdown Isn’t All Bad
It’s not a secret I hate markdown. It’s annoying to remember various commands, and one of the things I loved about WordPress from the start was that I didn’t have to learn bbCode or anything beyond the HTML I knew. When Jetpack included Markdown, I was a huge opponent. I thought it was useless and pointless and a waste of space.

I now use it in many of my posts.

You see, I don’t write in the visual editor. I used to, but there are ‘glitches’ with it. Like I couldn’t see the embed for Facebook (it showed up blank for some reason), and I had trouble embedding video content that required me to paste in script code. Then when I starting writing code, like I do on this site, I needed to make sure the formatting didn’t get mangled. It all boiled down to giving me two places where I use the Visual editor, and everything else is text.

That’s all well and good until I fell in love with my iPad mini.

You see I also have a major annoyance with the iOS app for WordPress. It’s too easy to post to the wrong site and it’s problematic when you want to upload featured images or make custom excerpts or have any custom post types. That means I use Chrome or Safari on iOS to write blog posts. If I’m offline, I write it up in Notes or Byword and just have it there until I’m ready to import. But I use WordPress in my browser because that’s where it works ‘best.’

Except HTML on an iPad is a pain in my ass.

It really, really, is. The number of clicks you have to do just to make a header, or strong text, is annoying. It’s three clicks to make an <h2> and it’s not even in the same place. It’s one click to get to the numbers, another (one up from where you hit to get to numbers) to go to advanced characters. Then you can press the button. Any chance I have to minimize my clicks means I can type even fast.

And you bet your bippy I’m fast at typing on my iPad.

Markdown’s syntax is intended for one purpose: to be used as a format for writing for the web.

John Gruber’s Markdown syntax primer is the only place that really took the time to make sense of Markdown to me. Everyone else just said ‘It’s what we use’ or ‘It’s faster’ or (worst) ‘It’s better.’

No. No. No. Better is what works for you. HTML, for the most part, works for me. And for me, a small subset of markdown syntax terms work very, very well to speed up my writing:
```
## Title

### Subtitle

&amp;amp;gt; Blockquote
```
There are a few more, like the codeblock (which I don’t use, since I like pretty formatting better) but the ability to use backticks and say <code> is pretty nice.

So do I like Markdown? No. It’s hard to remember ‘new’ syntax. But the ones I can use without having to close tags makes me a little happier and speeds me up a bit. For that, it’s pretty good. I can use it to enhance my HTML, and I wish that MediaWiki let me use HTML and Markdown instead of their woe begotten WikiSyntax. My kingdom for <table> in MediaWiki. Am I right?

Now. If I could just get John Gruber to increase his font size.
9 March, 2015