Software Engineering in WordPress, PHP, and Backend Development
Yesterday, we released Easier Excerpts 1.1.0 into the WordPress plugin repository.
In short, this update includes a lot of updates to the code of the plugin without a lot of user-facing functionality. But it does lay the foundation for future updates to this plugin along with how we’re going to be building plugins that we’ll be releasing moving forward.
I’m going to have a significantly longer post (or series of posts) that go more into detail about setting up WP-CLI, proper unit testing of WordPress plugins, and so on.
But for those who are already working on setting all of this up and are hitting a couple of problems with trying to set up a temporary database using some of the provided WP-CLI shell scripts, I wanted to share the solution that I used to resolve this.
One of the most important things you can do to improve your WordPress skills is to learn all about WordPress hooks. If you’ve spent any time looking through code, trying to write a plugin, or referencing the Codex then you likely know:
Hooks are provided by WordPress to allow your plugin to ‘hook into’ the rest of WordPress; that is, to call functions in your plugin at specific times, and thereby set your plugin in motion.
Yes, I think it’s important to understand the event-driven design pattern. And it’s one thing to have a comprehensive list of everything that’s available regardless of if it’s an action or a filter but it’s another thing to actually see it action.
Given that we all have different learning styles, sometimes I think having a reference is only one way to go about learning how to leverage the system. Another way would be to use a plugin like Hookr.
We do a good job of evangelizing the different tools, environments, and ways to tackle problems in our space (that is, within WordPress development), but I often wonder how well we do for actually documenting our practices, procedures, and so on for others.
Sure, some companies open source their practices, and that’s great, but does every company? And should they?
Sometimes, I think people believe that if a company bases itself on open source, then they should have everything out in the open:
I don’t agree, but I do think there’s something to be said for documenting your practices within your team as this benefits both you, your teammates, and people you may end up bringing on to a project or on to your team for future work.
One of the nicest APIs that the application offers is the WordPress Metadata API. It’s through this API that we’re able to take ideas such as posts, users, comments, terms, and more and store richer information that just the standard set of information.
Sure, there’s a lot to consider when taking advantages of these additional columns or fields as it relates to these concepts. But if you’re a beginner or someone who’s just starting to get deeper into the WordPress API, then I can’t recommend learning these APIs enough.
In two recent series for Envato, I cover these concepts in-depth.
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