Adventures in Software Engineering

  • How to Process Payments with the WooCommerce REST API and Stripe

    An interesting thing I found out while working with the WooCommerce REST API is that you can’t process payments. You can create orders, but you can’t actually send credit card details and make a payment. If you are making a WooCommerce mobile app this makes things a bit more complicated. I didn’t find many tutorials…

  • Build a Mobile App With Ionic + WordPress

    Learn how to build a mobile app that integrates Ionic with WordPress. This project includes: Ionic 3.9.2, WP-API v2 integration WP-API post integration with pull to refresh and infinite scroll Simple login and membership functionality WooCommerce REST API v2 with Stripe payments More coming soon… View on Github This project is mostly for fun, and…

  • Aim Big, Miss Big

    In the movie The Patriot, there is a scene where Mel Gibson’s character is teaching a couple young boys how to shoot. He famously says “Aim small, miss small.” If you focus your aim on a small part of your target, you have a better chance of hitting it. A common mistake when making products…

  • When Marketing is a Waste of Time

    Sometimes marketing is a waste of time. I mean marketing in the traditional sense: buying ads, booth space at a conference, or creating content. This usually happens early in the product development stage, before you’ve hit product market fit. You create something, and you are eager to get users or sales, so you launch. It’s…

  • The Process Takes Time

    Art can’t be hurried. It must be allowed to take its course. It must be given its space – and can’t be rushed or checked off a to-do list on the way to something else. – The Perennial Seller There’s a process that takes place when you create, whether it’s writing, developing software, or making…

  • How to Change Your Habits

    All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits – practical, emotional, and intellectual – systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be. – William James If you look at the good and bad things in your…

  • The Best Things I Read in 2017

    I’ve consumed a lot of content this year, including hundreds of articles and podcasts, and several books. I haven’t read as many books as I’d like, which is something I’m trying to improve. However, I realized that there was a lot of really impactful stuff I ran across, and I wanted to share it with…

  • The Bitcoin Bubble

    The past few months have been Bitcoin mania. Bitcoin started the year under $1,000 per coin, and it recently flirted with the $20,000 mark. I first bought some when it was under $5,000, I know several people who picked some up under $1,000. Pretty incredible gains! Too incredible I would say. I’m no expert, but…

  • Backwards Marketing

    Many times we create things without thinking about marketing until we’re done. We launch, then we shift our focus to SEO, content marketing, social media, and ads. Sometimes that works, but only if we’ve painstakingly created a product that everyone loves. What usually happens is we create an MVP, then when it doesn’t immediately succeed,…

  • The WordPress Product Market is Saturated

    I wrote an article for Post Status about a month ago, it was just published to their blog. In it, I discuss how the WordPress product market is a lot different than it used to be. People started making real money building for the platform around 2008, when there was high growth and low competition.…