An adviser to a undisclosed college fraternity used to state “Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it.” I’ve taken this advice many times; sometimes chocking and sometimes swallowing.
I decided last month to start writing about experiences with learning to program with PHP. Most of my work and struggles still remain hidden away from view but the DevLogs have helped me disclose a few more items.
Background
I started to learn PHP a few years ago. Most of the work was focused on WordPress; releasing XenWord after 6 months of tinkering. The amount of code out on different blogs and support sites, as well as the WordPress developer documentation, led me through over 120 different releases of XenWord.
The real challenge has been to learn OOP, MVC design, and ultimately being able to create XenForo addons. In fact, Laracasts has been a tremendous help and my building a simple bathroom pass application in Laravel has helped me struggle through coding at a faster pace.
XenLate
Tonight, I bit off more by building and releasing XenLate – a very simple XenForo addon. Most of the struggle was figuring out the Event Hint. After reading — and re-reading the Addon Field instructions — then I was able to get XenLate code to load properly in the sidebar.
Work began tonight on a DevLog to describe what is behind the simple addon. For now, feel free to download the addon and provide feedback.
Looking forward to reading details about how you built the addon.