Software Engineering in WordPress, PHP, and Backend Development

Tag: Envato (Page 4 of 17)

A listing and summary of all posts that I’ve contributed to the Envato WPTuts+ blog.

How to Work with WordPress Metadata

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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Getting Started with Learning WordPress

Learning WordPress is one of those things that many of us are doing almost every single day. However, once we reach a certain point, I think we stop thinking of it as “learning WordPress” and we start thinking of it as “how to do [any given task] with WordPress.”

When it comes to helping other people with WordPress, it’s easy to forget what it’s like to be at the beginning stages and getting acquainted with all of the nuances required to get things set up on our computer and how it relates to releasing projects on the web.

To that end, I just wrapped up a series for Envato geared specifically towards beginners who want to get started with WordPress but aren’t sure where to start.

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Debug WordPress Projects

I’m of the opinion that being able to debug code is one of the must-have skills of any professional developer so it stands to reason that I think if you’re working with WordPress in a professional capacity, you should be able to debug WordPress projects.

It doesn’t matter if you’re working on the server-side or the client-side; if you’re writing code, then you need to be able to:

  • set breakpoints,
  • watch variables,
  • step into functions,
  • step out of functions,
  • step over functions,
  • change values,
  • …and so on.

Though debuggers are common place in practically every programming environment, I recently wrote a short tutorial and filmed a short video for Envato that walks users through how to debug WordPress projects.

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Deregistering WordPress Stylesheets

Deregistering WordPress stylesheets is one of those things that we don’t always have to consider.

If you’re starting a project from scratch, then it’s usually safe to say that you’re starting a project at ground zero and have control over most of the assets that are to be enqueued in the project.

On the other hand, if you’re coming into a project at a later date or you’re working on a plugin that has to work in conjunction with another plugin that might use a shared stylesheet then you may need to deregister an existing asset to make sure everything works well together.

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Building Quality into WordPress Projects: A Practical Example

Building quality into WordPress projects is a topic that sounds a little subjective or maybe even a bit esoteric.

To be honest, I think it certainly helps to have a level of experience in general software development as well as with the way WordPress does things, but it’s something that anyone can learn.

I’d go as far as to say that many people who care about building quality into WordPress projects are people who are consistently learning new ways to go about doing so.

Anyway, in a recent article for Envato, I cover exactly this.

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