For quite a while now, I’ve been experiencing some neck and back problems. Both of these are fairly common with people like me who spend the majority of their time behind a computer. I’ve started going to a physiotherapist. Next to the exercises that I was given, here are a few of the other habits […]
Category archives: Blog
Extreme Makeover: The Homepage Edition
As I indicated in a previous post, I gave a workshop at WordCamp Johannesburg about CSS trends. The focus of the workshop was not on me introducing the trends but on the audience trying these features out for themselves. I created a homepage on a temporary site using the Twenty Twenty default theme that’s coming […]
CSS trends to add to your stack
At WordCamp Johannesburg 2019, I gave a workshop about CSS trends. This post is a recap of some of the features we talked about. Below my slides, I’ll give a short introduction to each of these features with some examples and resources to explore. https://speakerdeck.com/jobthomas/extreme-makeover-the-homepage-edition Features explained: AnimationsVariable fontsVariablesGrid & SubgridMedia-queries 4Attribute selectorsUnits and calculations […]
Communicating your workweek to team members
I’m currently in London for a meetup with my fellow happiness leads at Automattic. During our get-together, I led a session on prepping our workweeks. In it, I wanted to tackle two challenges all of us face. Challenges The first challenge is to work efficiently in addressing our todos. We have a lot of recurring […]
Pop-up songs
From 14 until I was about 24 or 25, I played in bands. All throughout high school, music dominated my spare time. When the band life started taking too much time in university, we slowed down a lot. I appreciated the space it opened, but I did also miss it. So Philip and I started […]
Why I Believe in Women in Ministry: Part 1 (Gupta)
Nationalism vs. Christianity
Belgium’s elections are fast-approaching. Dries Van Langenhove is heading the list for the Flemish nationalist party, Vlaams Belang (“Flemish Interest”), as an independent candidate in one of the provinces. That in itself is scary. Last year, Van Langenhove and his organisation Schild & Vrienden – “Shield & Friends”, a reference to a slogan of Flanders’ […]
WordPress Core Contributor
Once a year we gather with our whole company. At last year’s Grand Meetup, I took a class on core contributions to WordPress, taught by the amazing Gary and Mel (and assisted by Kelly). I’m not gonna lie, having not worked with WordPress.org system for tracking issues and submitting patches before, it was pretty overwhelming, […]
Climbing the Gutenberg: The new WordPress block-editor
At WordCamp Cape Town 2018, I gave a workshop focused on getting WordPress users comfortable with the new editor that’s coming to WordPress 5.0 at the end of the month. We went through some of the basic features and some of the new options available through Gutenberg. Gutenwho? Johann Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, the […]
New colours and Sass
For little over two years now I had the same styling on my site. I still really live the Hive theme, so I kept that one around. However, I was keen to try a new colour palette and some new Sass challenges. Colour palette I’m not someone to go invent colour palettes from scratch, so […]
Respond like a man (to witnessing harassment)
Two years ago at Schiphol Airport. My colleague Kathy* and I are split up at the security checks during a transit. When I see Kathy coming through her side, she’s in shock. One of the security agents has just verbally harassed here. In a situation where she’s already vulnerable, some horrible guy had made several […]
Open source conference planning
For the 4th year in a row, I’m one of the organisers for WordCamp Cape Town. We’ve got a pretty awesome team, and one of the things I really appreciate is that we try out a lot of new approaches. Open planning One of those approaches I’m particularly proud of is that we don’t just […]
Ethical Consumption in South Africa: Clothing
About two years ago I wrote an article on ethical consumption of chocolate and coffee. Those are some of the easiest products to source ethically. I remember – while still being in Belgium – that for clothing it’s a different story. I went up to my friend Niels, who was working for an organisation combatting […]
Translating WordPress, and why it matters
Today, I spoke at CMS Africa in Kigali, Rwanda. This was my fourth consecutive attendance. CMS Africa is my favourite conference each year because it brings together a lot of things I like and love; it’s in Africa, it focuses on open source, and it transcends the boundaries of individual CMSs. This year, I chose […]
WordPress troubleshooting plugins
I’ve been working in WordPress customer support for over three years now. Very often the problems we encounter are similar. While developers might be able to do troubleshooting without any help, I wanted to make a list of the plugins I regularly use for different types of issues. None of these should mess up your […]
My 2017 in movies and series
I’ve watched fewer movies and series in 2017 than the previous year, but I still watched plenty. Here’s a shortlist of my recommendations. Absolute highlights Early in 2017, I attended a theology day organised by The Warehouse, and we watched and discussed Son of Man, a South African adaptation of the Gospel. Set in a […]
WooCommerce 3.3 and my 50th commit 🎉
WooCommerce 3.3 launched yesterday. Since June 2015, I’ve been listed as a contributor for every major and minor release. I’m not going to lie; it’s a pretty sweet feeling to know that something you wrote a few lines of, is being used on over 2 million webshops. GitHub is (not that) scary When I joined […]
My 2017 in books
In 2017, I watched a lot less series and movies than the year(s) before, and by consequence, I started reading a lot more again. Next to reading a lot online for both work and pleasure, I finished 29 books and read just below 10,000 pages. What were the highlights and why did I read those […]
Steve Biko Quote
In my view the truth lies in my ability to incorporate my vertical relationship with God into the horizontal relationships with my fellow men; in my ability to pursue my ultimate purpose on earth which is to do good. – Steve Biko
A Designer’s (mini) Guide to Basic Developing
My colleague and friend Gareth wrote a pretty cool intro on software to use for frontend (WordPress) design. Even if you’re not a designer but someone who just gets involved with tweaking other people’s designs, this is a good read.