When I set out to create a members-only section of my website, it was to do two things:
- provide members with access to high-quality articles for how to approach object-oriented programming in WordPress,
- grants discounts to other products and services that I found useful via friends, acquaintances and other services.
Periodically, I do get questions about the content that I’ve produced thus far. If you’re interested in reading the full, detailed list, you can see them here.
But the gist of what I have so far is here:
- The Business of Programming
- Object-Oriented Programming in WordPress (An Introduction to Basic Principles)
- A WordPress Development Environment
- Using Visual Studio Code
- Unit Testing
- The Independent WordPress Developer
And that’s the content that I have for site members thus far. But that doesn’t answer the question of what’s next (nor does it answer the question as to why I’ve laid things out the way that I have), so I thought I’d take a post to do that.
Content for Site Members
First, the reason that so much content has been laid out like this to start with is that I think there’s a foundation that must be laid for members to have so that we’re all on the same proverbial page before getting into programming.
But it’s not just programming either. It’s understanding:
- what needs to be installed,
- how to use an IDE,
- a foundational understanding of unit testing,
- how to handle to handle WordPress from an independent perspective before getting into the theory.
I know that a lot of this can seem like noise or pointless material if you have a certain level of experience. But there’s a lot of people to whom this is new – and I think that’s a good thing – because it helps set the stage for ushering in a set of ways to considering programming in the context of WordPress using software engineering strategies.
Sure, there’s room for debate the latter part of that sentence, but I’m a fan of server-side programming, I think object-oriented programming is a solid way to approach problem-solving, but before doing that, it’s important to make sure that other things are in place first.
And that’s the purpose of the content thus far.
So What’s Next?
Next, what I’m looking to do is to begin tackling object-oriented programming in WordPress in two ways:
The Widgets API
First, I wanted to take a look at the Widgets API and perhaps even write our widget. The reason being is because there are some object-oriented lessons to be learned from this API and how we can implement it ourselves.
We’ll take a look at inheritance as well as some of the other features provided by the API.
Modern Development
Next, I’m planning to talk about building a plugin from the ground up using:
- Composer
- a bootstrap file
- Abstract classes,
- A Repository,
- Subscribers (for the Event-Driven Design Pattern that WordPress uses),
- And using PHP7 along with PSR coding standards and modern development workflow.
So there’s a good bit coming down the pipe for members in the coming months. I’m excited to go through it and to provide as much content as possible.
Yes, it may move at a slower rate per article than some may like, but it will also be quicker than how fast some of the other articles have been written in the past couple of months.
Here We Go
With that said, I look forward to the next phase of the content, continuing to wrap up The Independent WordPress Developer content simultaneously, and seeking to improve the delivery of what I have thus far.
If you’re not a member and any of this seems interesting to you, then you can register here.