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I’ve written several times about the importance of coding standards in both development in general, as well as it relates to WordPress. In short, I think that coding standards are often overlooked but can help contribute so much to improving the quality of the code that we write for ourselves, for the overall economy, and for future contributors.

I’ve recently completed an eight part series for WPTuts+ that provides an in-depth look at the WordPress PHP Coding Standards. Throughout the series, I look at each aspect of the coding standards, tease out the significance of why they are the way that they are, and how to make sure that you’re properly applying them in your work.

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Comments on are closed on this post so we can keep the discussion on the original articles.

When it comes to software development, design patterns are commonplace; however, we don’t often seen them in WordPress development. As such, I thought it would worth covering an introduction to design patterns in WordPress.

Over the course of the month, I’m running a four-part series on Envato that covers Design Patterns in WordPress.

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In my most recent article on WPTuts+, I discuss what it’s like working with a distributed team and WordPress.

The point of the article was to give a short summary as to how it’s possible and what’s required to do good work.

The primary reason that I wanted to write this article was two fold:

1. I’ve spent the better half of my self-employment working wit 8BIT in a distributed environment
2. I’ve recently completed a plugin with two other WordPress developers who I’ve never met face-to-face

I wanted to share that it’s completely possible, but there are some key things that are necessary to make sure that good work actually gets done.

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One of the most common problems that plagues professional theme, plugin, and application developers in WordPress is when libraries such as jQuery are improperly dequeued, deregistered, or simply moved to load else where in the page.

Not only can this drastically impact the site on which the code is running, it can adversely affect the performance of every other well-coded plugin or theme that a user may eventually use.

So in my latest article on WPTuts+, I attempt to provide a beginner’s to for how to enqueue jQuery in WordPress.

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When it comes to cross site scripting in WordPress, I think that there’s a lot of education that’s to be had.

I’m by no means an expert in this field, but I think that there’s either a lack of awareness or we take for granted what WordPress does for us.

Generally speaking, WordPress does an excellent job of providing sanitization and validation functions (assuming that we use them correctly), but that doesn’t mean there aren’t potential exploits.

In my latest series on Envato, I give a two part introduction to cross-site scripting in WordPress and practical tips for how we can test our themes and our plugins.

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In the first quarter of this year, I’ve been working on two client projects both of which have called specifically for incorporating advanced date management into various aspects of WordPress.

Because of various formats, user error, and so on can make working with dates a bit difficult, I’ve always been partial to working with date pickers to make date selection and management a bit easier.

And since WordPress includes both jQuery and jQuery UI, I tend to use the features that are included rather than introducing yet-another-library.

In my latest series on WPTuts+, I walk through the process of how to incorporating the jQuery datepicker in WordPress.

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When it comes to writing, releasing, and maintaining WordPress plugins is figuring out how to actually support your work once it’s released.

After all, the majority of work on software is maintaining the codebase and responding from all of the feedback given by users or customers.

In my latest article on Envato, I talk specifically about strategies for supporting WordPress Plugins – I lay out some of the problems that currently exist, and also invite readers to share their experience, concerns, and suggestions with what’s available today.

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For those of who you have been reading this blog for a while (thanks, by the way), you know that I work to maintain the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate and the WordPress Widget Boilerplate along with a growing community of developers.

Despite the fact that I’ve promoted them here on the blog, called for others to get involved, and so on, I’ve never actually given a proper tutorial on how to use them to get started in your projects.

So in my lastest series on Envato, I’m making a case for why the matter and how to use them.

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