Software Engineering in WordPress, PHP, and Backend Development
One of the biggest problems with writing and maintaining themes and/or plugins in WordPress is the frustration that comes with having to track down JavaScript errors.
Pippin Williamson has discussed this extensively on his blog, we’ve covered it on WP Daily, and I’ve talked about this once before here.
But since I’ve seen this issue crop up several times since, I wanted to offer some additional thoughts on this particular topic that has stemmed from the recent discussions.
Last week, the Everyone Should Learn To Code video was making the rounds around the web. If you’ve haven’t seen it, I’ve shared it below.
In short, the video opens with a quote by Steve Jobs:
I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think.
In short, it’s an inspiring video that features some of the most popular technologists discussing their thoughts on programming, their foray into the industry, why others should follow suit.
This idea isn’t new, but the popular nature of this video has really gotten me thinking about my particular stance on this issue. In fact, I read a strong rebuttle to the video last week that – whether or not you agree with it – is a well-written piece.
I shared my candid thoughts with my team on our back channel which resulted in a bit of a discussion primarily between John and myself. The more I’ve thought about it, the more of an opinion I’ve developed, and thought I’d share it here.
TL;DR: I’m not completely sold on the fact that everyone should learn to code. First, I think we need to define what it actually means to code.
As previously mentioned, WordCamp Atlanta 2013 will take place on March 15 – 16 at The Loudermilk Center. I’ll be speaking on Saturday, March 16th at 9:00am for the Developer Track.
Specifically, I’ll be speaking on how to Level-Up Your WordPress Development Skills.
Generally speaking, I’ll be looking to speak to both beginner and intermediate WordPress developers, but hopefully providing some useful information for advanced developers, as well.
That said, I thought it may be worth looking at a few of the topics I’m planning to cover during the course of the talk:
Note that this plugin is just a working proof-of-concept. Do not use this in a production environment.
One of the challenges of working with templates within the context of WordPress plugin development is that there’s no easy way to bundle templates with your plugin and register them with WordPress.
Template are usually relegated to theme development. And rightly so, correct?
After all, page templates are used to provide layout and presentation which is precisely what themes are meant to provide.
But if you’re working on a larger, more complex plugin that introduces custom post types, page templates, and other advanced functionality then there may be a use case in which bundling templates with your plugin is necessary.
I’ve hit up against this exact issue in a recent project, so I thought I’d share the basics of how I solved the problem, and then provide an example plugin to make the process of registering page templates with WordPress themes a bit easier.
At my recent WordPress Developer Meetup, the topic of shortcodes came up as a point of discusion. When talking about it, I realized that I’ve never actually talked about them here on the blog, so I thought it might be worth bringing up for discussion.
For those of you who have seen any of my plugins, you see that none of them include shortcodes despite the fact that people have requested functionality offered by them.
For the most part, I dislike WordPress shortcodes. I think they are unintuitive, difficult to use for the average user, and go against much of what the core functionality of WordPress aims to offer.
But the challenge is that there’s not yet a suitable alternative.
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