Happy April Fool's!

- Windows 8 == Best OS
- Apple is fairly priced
- PHP > C++
- Java === JavaScript
- facebook > devrant
- Github useless, use .zip
- Comic Sans best terminal font
- Nobody needs a web developer because Wordpress much better
- Linux is for virgins

A client called me today saying their custom website I built for them is down. It just shows a 403 error now. They said they just wanted to update the prices. I asked what changes they made before it crashed. She said, "I couldn't figure out how to change the prices, so I just installed Wordpress, and now it doesn't work!" They completely deleted the entire website using cPanel and replaced it with a partially installed Wordpress.🤦

My college organised some interview with a company, with the whole demn class. We went there, it was quite far away (50km) and the CEO invites us to a meeting room.

Where he bores me for 2 hours talking about their projects in argiculture and NSA like spying systems at tankstations.

They were caputuring license plates at gas stations and with that information gather data about the person, such as salary (by looking at their car), house adres ect. All without people knowing. And than targeting them with specific ads and offers.

The class of sheep were super excited but it pissed me off. Because he told it like it was some awesome advancement in technology that none of us could probably ever do.

He was demeaning us, saying we would do some simple wordpress sites there and other things. We are probably not good enough forc te big stuff.

Asking him some really hard questions about his projects made him so pissed he almost wanted to kick me out.

When it was finally over, there was some test that you have to do if you want to work there. If you were good enough at the test, you could!!!! (YEEY)

Uhm, I said; no thank you I dont want to work here.

Later I talked to my classmate and friend who always thinks he's better then everyone in class even tho he barely understands OOP programming. He was asking me if he should try to get the internship. I told him; dont. They have no value for us and they think they are the greatest company on the planet.

The fucking idiot go so pissed, he stopped talking to me alltogether and blocked me everywere. I AM NOT EVEN JOKING. Just because I gave my FUCKING opinon about a company he likes for no reason.

So this idiot does the test (which was fucking simple btw, I did it too and compared the results and I had 95%) He gets invited for another interview and gets told he will be paid 200 euro's per month 😂. and a free meal everyday!! 😪 hahaha . That doesnt even cover commuting costs!

My "friend" told him that the train costs more every day. You know what the CEO said? "Yeah but you can learn so much here the also brings value and you're just a last year student. But I think you are really brave for asking more"

So in the end, he couldnt take the internship and I was fucking right. Really I hate these kinds of companies thinking they are heaven on earth when they are clearly not.

I am happy I told them no before putting my dignity on thd line.

I worked at a startup. They wanted to "save" money. So they hired a relative of "Fred" named "Bubba". Bubba made a custom website. Like hand built gifs and who knows how hand crafted html. It was fine for a time. Then somebody was wondering why nobody was calling us at the company. No customers. Another relative named "George" (who was actually a business major) looked at the website. It had been hacked and replaced with Jedis fighting Sith Lords. Me and another engineer named "Zeus" said "fuck this shit" and said "we are redoing this shit".

So I logged into godaddy (I know, shitty) and installed Wordpress (kinda shitty). I proceeded to turn wordpress into a half decent page. Wiped out the shit that was there, reused images as it made sense. Created more images. Reduced images to 80% quality to take loading size from 10MB to <1MB. Then I also proceeded to do SEO work and get the website listed properly within about a month. Customers started calling all the time. I had a simple contact form that barely gets any shit on it due to captcha. The was 5 years ago. I left 3 years ago (still help them on weekends) and nobody has done shit with the website. They are still getting calls and it hasn't been hacked.

We don't talk to Bubba. He didn't know what the fuck he was doing. I wonder if he still does websites for his relatives. I honestly had no clue what I was doing, but my take on the approach was easier to maintain and even George and Zeus and the new manager "Ralph" can maintain it, kinda. Went from shitty static website to full on dynamic and interactive. Yeah, I know, "dynamic". But the manager was happy.

Sometimes you just do what you gotta do in addition to doing all the electrical and software engineering for a company.

The WP Gutenberg editor is really amazing. Clients can now fuck up their websites with much less effort. So yeah, IT IS FASTER.

[wordpress trigger warning]

Had an idiotic colleague who re-implemented the insert image function as a shortcode. A “senior php developer”. No, I’m not kidding.

Him: “But this way we can set a class”
Me: “As you can with the standard mode”
Him “No you can’t”
Me: *shows*
Him (smiling): “well why don’t you remove my stuff then?”

For the first time I tried to use WordPress. I spent almost 30mins. Now I decided I should not use that again in my life. Fuck WordPress.

I run an informational website for medical students. We just got hacked. Fuck you and fuck you WordPress.

FINALLY fixed a stupid website issue. Absolutely nothing to do with my job, but it's also no-one else's job - the website was apparently contracted out years ago and everyone just let it go when they saw this thing.

...also 'finally' refers to the fact that it's been bugging me since I interviewed several months ago. I spent longer finding the thing I was looking for than I did fixing it

I hate my freelancer life.
1. No weekends
2. No particular time to close
3. Work for 12 to 14 hours without sleep sometimes
4. Keep explaining the dumb clients about how development is not wordpress.

Its all fucked up. I have no life.

My average Lines of code this month is around 700 LOC/day. Whereas the average that showed on internet is 100 LOC/day.

I have choosen a hellish life.

relative: can you help me with my website?
me: ok, what do you need?
them: okay, i have this wordpress homepage that someone made for me and actually, when you go to my image gallery, i only want a simple "back" button that leads to the main page. but i cannot add it via wordpress functionality.
me: okay, i'll make you this button in under 10 minutes, given it doesn't require any fancy design. but i have no experience with messing with wordpress so far... let me check what their templates look like
(after 1 hour): wtf is this mess 😭

...since they only had their production website, i didn't dare to change anything and told them they best hire that dev again 🙈

"Biggest challenge you overcame as a dev?"
Overcame? I wish! I'm in the midde of fixing the worst legacy code clusterfuck I have ever seen...
Yes, it's even wayyyy worse than WorstPress...

There are days where my coworkers hear profuse laughter coming out of my lone bureau, some of them might already be thinking that I've gone mad. Maybe I have... bwahahahaha

Why on gods green earth, would anybody look at a file with 20k lines, which clearly was made by something called WEBPACK and decide it's the right place to implement their changes for the next few years?!?

WordPress.

Ok soooo boss asks me: "When is the website going to be ready?"
me: today i'll be through
----------------------------------------
4 hours later:
Site 90% done
- messed up theme
- try reinstalling theme
- 2 try
- 3rd try
- 4th try
- 5th try: success , time 6:00pm
-----------------------------------------
SENDING DAILY REPORT:
Site is 90% complete and waiting for content from client
- projects
- logo
- images

Had to do some website migrations from Drupal 7, which has EOL coming up this year, to Wordpress. I gave an estimate to customers that it will take around 25-50 hours to do this (per site). Simply because I had no idea. Took me 6-8 hours per site. The sites are so low traffic that I didn't even bother refactoring earlier code that much. Maybe tweak a few content types to make future maintenance easier.

Still gonna bill them for the minimum I gave them as an estimate. I still consider that number to be way lower than what some agencies would've billed any of 'em. I've seen the contracts some people have signed, paying for 120 hours of work, for a very simple content based site, where I could've done it in maybe 20 hours. So much air in those contracts, that I spend 10 minutes laughing at them.

long time listener, first time caller. I love designers. seriously. I love getting a nice juicy Figma file and not knowing how the heck I'm going to do half the wild stuff in it, but it's beautiful, so I'll figure it out. Go ahead, send it to the client. But designers who learn how to use something like Elementor or one of those crappy kitchen-sink themes, call themselves developers, and win work with clients I share with them. I'm the one fixing everything when that crap breaks. I would never in a million years present myself as a designer, even though I know I know a damn sight more about design than they do about dev. I get it, everyone needs to make a buck, but every time this happens it makes me sick to my stomach. We're on the same team. I always, ALWAYS, go to the mat for good design. Why don't more designers have an equal amount of respect for us? Design phase always goes over deadlines and we always have to pick up the slack to make the hard launch date. Well, now I'm just rambling.

!RANT
Web Devs - I need your opinions.

To make a long story short, when my fiancé and I first moved in together I changed cities. One day at the grocery store we ran in to one of his old buddies, whom I had never met. His buddy works as a counselor at a non profit organization for mental illness. His friend asked me some questions to get to know me and found out I was a web developer. He instantly got exited and told us they needed a new website for their non profit, and asked me what I charged. Being shy, put on the spot, newer to the industry (uncomfortable talking $ due to inexperience) and seeing the guy was paralyzed I felt I HAD to say yes. I also said I would consider donating the site to them, as I knew my other web dev friends had done that for other non profits.

They were easy to work with and the build went smooth. We chose Wordpress so that they could go in and update the site on their own. I was under the assumption that I would create the site for them, but that they would take care of changes on their own, that I wouldn't be "supporting it". I even trained the friend 2-3xs on how to use Wordpress and make changes, but they ALWAYS have changes every month, including slides and content creation. Being a noob at the time, I KNOW it's my fault for not being more clear on the I'll build it but not make changes thing, and I've tried to kind of get them to see that I'm too busy, politely.

We'll, 3+ years later I've now found success in a different career path that takes up ALL of my free time after my 9-5 corporate web dev position, and am no longer interested nor able to do freelance work, including supporting existing sites. Since we don't have a contract in place, and they've never given me a cent, i was thinking of giving them a notice at the end of this month saying as of 2018 I will no longer be able to take care of their website, and that they'll have to find someone else by that time? I feel bad because it's a non profit and they don't have a lot of money. I'm afraid they won't find someone else nor be able to afford it. The situation is a little more sticky since this is my fiancés friend and I don't want them to feel like I'm leaving them high and dry, cuz I know they're very thankful for the site. I just wish they understood that I never promised to do changes for them every month. Even if they offered me money, I just don't have the time. I'm 100% fine if they want to keep the site and my code, although they really could use a redesign anyways cuz my code back then was terrible. What are your thoughts on this? Is 5 months fair? Am I doing the right thing?

A legacy custom made WordPress Theme.

Old developer made main styling sheet with 8000+ lines of code with no component separation.

Some wordpress plugin can't do a certain job in background, instead I was forced to keep the window open for nearly two hours, until my laptop froze and it had not reach 50% !!

An image says better than thousand words 👇🏻

Friend: What do you know about Wordpress?

Me: Why???

Friend: My assistant made changes to my organization’s website and now it’s messed up. The page formatting is off.

Me: Wordpress has a version history for some things. Maybe go back to an earlier point in time?

Friend: I think she changed something that the vendor told us not to touch.

Me: Like a custom plugin that your website vendor made?

Friend: Maybe…

Me: Why is your assistant even touching things like that?

Friend: I really don’t want to contact the vendor because I don’t think they’re very good with website development. And I have no idea what this would cost.

Me: You might have to bite the bullet on the cost. And maybe fire that assistant for a butthole move like that. At least you have messaging to explain the wonky css is due to technical difficulties. RIP to your website.

I think today makes a new record for the number of times I have muttered "What in the actual FUCK is going on with this stupid WordPress plugin/theme/database/etc.?!"

I know. I know. I chose this life. It's my own fault. Don't bother with the anti-WordPress beatdowns in the comments. I've heard every. last. one. and I'm too old and too close to retirement to want to start over again with something else.

Wordpress: add content beneath the loop on category/archive pages. WHY IS THIS NOT JUST A PART OF ALL THEMES AT THIS POINT???

WORDPRESSS DEVELOPERS:

What’s your #1 tip for getting started in this role? Useful training site or video? What’s best to focus on first? Hooks? I need all the juicy deets! 🙌🏻

How to Fix Sidebar Below Content Error in WordPress?

Fixing The Sidebar Below The Content Error in WordPress
Undo recent changes to your WordPress theme.
Rule out WordPress plugins.
Find the HTML breaking the layout.
Find the CSS moving the sidebar below the content.
Clear WordPress cache.

Are you content with your job or always searching for greener pastures?

I'm split inbetween. Current pay is very decent and working conditions are flexible. However, the work itself is not always that great. I find it to be comedically true how "hard workers" don't get promoted or bonuses, they get more work. There has recently been a heavy influx of what I'd like to classify as "shit tickets" since a guy who was the main "shit ticket doer" left the company after being burnt out.

I work with a small-ish digital agency as a BE dev, so I'm mostly dealing with small to medium scale projects built with WordPress/WooCommerce, with often custom API/ERP integrations on top. I'm not a big fan of the stack as a developer but as a contractor I can understand the business reasons why it is used. Part of me wants to find something else, part of me thinks I'm looking for a perfect company that doesn't exist and I should lower my expectations -- I might find better work for sure, but with the same pay and conditions? It seems unlikely at the moment. The company was recently acquired, so I'm hopeful for the future.

So I’ve spent the last 20 minutes waiting for an Amazon S3 and Cloudfront Pro and another Amazon Web Services WordPress plugin to delete from a server via FileZilla. How’s your day going so far?

In the previous company I've worked, we've had about one customer every 1-2 months that had his WorstPress website hacked.
It's a horrible CMS and there is no argument that could convince me otherwise, not even bribery.

Luckily enough for WP, it's not the worst CMS I've encountered... that award goes by far to "The CMS Of Doom™" (name changed to not dox the incompetent company that created it). Fucking bastards.

Guess what most loved CMS now has 43% market share for websites?

If Wordpress gives you a blank screen of death. Do not check with your frontend developer what’s wrong. Your frontend developer does not have a clue since this is probably backend related

stupid dumb wordpress, who POSTS a user registration, returns data to the SAME site with a dumb "successful" message alert, and THEN redirects to whatever page you want?!?! looks like shit, feels like shit in terms of UX

JUST REDIRECT ME TO THE PAGE I WANT FROM THE SERVER THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF PHP

I swear its as slow as balls too

I started using WordPress in the 1990's - building all kinds of sites that looked OK until all the plugins and new themes came along. As the years have gone by I've become bored with all the tedious little errors and bugs. To the point that I abandoned my print website 10 years ago.
Just tried to edit it today and FUCK NO get me out of here. It's like painting a Rembrandt with a fucking elastic band.

been working on this docker thing for 2 weeks. 3 containers each running a different aervice (mariadb, nginx, wordpress) using debian as the base image (not the app image itself). Got all the configs down, all the dockerfiles down, the docker-compose yml down. Run docker-compose up, everything goes up all nice without errors.

Try to access the wordpress website. Only reachable from localhost, no atyling is served, all redirections fail… because it can’t find the local domain it is supposed to bind to. Tried editing the hosts file, didn’t worked. 3 days of googling, havent been able to find a fix. I don’t know what am I supposed to hate anymore. Is it nginx ? is it wordpress ? is it just the host machine’s dns/hosts config ? is it docker ? myself ?

I swear theres nobody in this world who wakes up one morning and happily cracks their knuckles to go write some dockerfiles.

Hitting every. single. fucking. dead end on my unstoppable march to introduce a nice feature.

I'm trying to embed interactive svg maps in a Wordpress page in such a way that the areas can be edited intuitively using Inkscape and all the page does is inline the xml markup, but also there's a JPG background embedded in the picture which Wordpress finds too big for markup (unsurprisingly) but which is a pain in the ass to reference externally.