Scott Bolinger

Adventures in Software Engineering

  • Javascript, APIs, and the Future of WordPress

    Automattic just announced Calypso, which is a radical new interface for WordPress.com. It replaces the old WordPress.com admin experience with a faster, more modern approach. It uses a Javascript framework called React, which was developed by Facebook. The main advantage of React is that it’s supposed to allow development of web and mobile apps using…

  • Dealing with Custom Taxonomies in the WP-API

    Update: this article focuses on the WP-API v1. Click here for an article on filtering with the WP-API v2 in WordPress 4.7+. I have recently started working on a mobile app for a WordPress site that relies heavily on custom taxonomies. The app needs to pull in posts from WordPress through the WP-API, and allow…

  • 4 Ways to Make Your Ionic App Feel Native

    Recent developments in the hybrid world are blurring the lines between hybrid and native. You can now use native transitions and native scrolling, along with a fast framework like Ionic. In many cases, it’s impossible to tell any difference between hybrid and native, since many fully native apps use WebViews. The exciting thing is that…

  • Working with Custom Post Types in WP-API v2

    If you worked with the first version of the WP-API, you know that getting custom post types was really easy. To get all posts, I could send a GET request to http://scottbolinger.com/wp-json/posts. To get a specific type, I could send my request to http://scottbolinger.com/wp-json/posts?type=event. There have been some pretty big changes in version 2, which…

  • Basic Authentication with the WP-API (v2) and AngularJS

    Check out an updated post on WordPress login using Typescript and Angular 2 with a free plugin here. Working on the WP-App Project, we need to use authentication to do certain things in the app. Deleting/approving comments, or listing users for example. Basic Authentication is handy for testing code, but it should only be used…

  • My 5 Favorite Business Blogs

    Reading good blog posts is one of my favorite ways to learn about business. There’s a lot of noise out there, lots of blogs are not worth reading. When your time is limited, it’s important you get to the good stuff quickly. Here are the blogs I get solid, actionable business advice from consistently.

  • The Most Important Thing a Founder Does

    Most companies start when someone has an idea, and they start making something: a product, a consultancy, a SaaS app, or whatever. In the early days, the founder is really involved in making the product. If you are a technical founder, you write a lot of code, build your website, setup email marketing and other…

  • The Minimum Viable Product

    “Real artists ship.” –Steve Jobs “If you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long.” –Matt Mullenweg You’ve probably heard of an MVP, it stands for Minimum Viable Product. The term was popularized by Eric Ries, It means that you should ship when you reach minimum viability, not a moment before…

  • Things you’ll never hear product developers say

    On Overnight Success “The first time I tried to build a product it was a staggering success, guess I just got lucky.” “If you build it, they will come is totally true.” On SaaS “It’s so easy to make money with SaaS, you just set it and forget it.” On Agencies Moving to Products “Adding…

  • The WordPress Theme Business, Then and Now

    I’ve been selling products for 5 years now, starting with premium WordPress themes. I now have a plugin business and a SaaS product. I’ve learned a lot, this post is basically everything that worked and didn’t work for my theme business, and where I see the theme market today. A brief history of premium themes…