Contributing to Twenty Seventeen
3Sami Keijonen shares his experience as a first time contributor to the WordPress default theme building process. He primarily worked within the realm of SVG icons for the Twenty Seventeen theme.
Category: Development
Complete coverage should not be a requirement for core inclusion of WordPress REST API endpoints
The WordPress REST API is at a bit of a crossroads. There is a proposal on the table by the core team of four contributors — Ryan McCue, Rachel Baker, Daniel Bachhuber, and Joe Hoyle — to ship endpoints to WordPress core iteratively. There is a pushback on this proposal by WordPress Project Lead and co-founder Matt Mullenweg.
Takeaways from interviewing 13 great WordPress developers
After interviewing thirteen WordPress developers for a book on getting up and running with WordPress development, I have some key takeaways that I’d like to share with you.
What is Code?
“What is code?” Paul Ford answers the question, with a 38,000 word masterpiece in Bloomberg. This is the first article I’d tell an aspiring programmer to read, and the one that anyone working in technology should have in their permanent collection.
The trojan emoji
Andrew Nacin, lead developer of WordPress, just finished a talk at Loopconf, where he talked about a series of related WordPress security fixes that spanned two years, with the final fix included into WordPress core under the guise of emoji support.
How to create better, more accessible WordPress themes
Accessibility is an important part of modern web development. It is our responsibility as creators of WordPress themes to make them accessible to all users, on any device. In this article, I’ll offer some simple tips to create better, more accessible WordPress themes.
The WordPress REST API
The WordPress REST API is a huge initiative and feature plugin being developed for the core WordPress project. But it can be a bit confusing if you don’t know much about it yet. Let’s discuss what this project is, why it’s important, and how to get involved.
The ABCs of the web
We like to say it’s easy to build a website, and to build it on top of WordPress. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But for just about anyone, it can be intimidating when you’re just digging in. You’ve got to learn your ABCs before you can tell a great story. On the web — especially as it gets more complicated — there’s a lot to learn to build and maintain a modern website.
A new look and a new domain
The new Post Status design is an alpha, but I wanted to show readers as soon as I could. Also, the site has a new domain and utilizes HTTPS everywhere. A lot has gone into it so far, and there is much left to do.
An introduction to setting up SSH keys for server management
Utilizing SSH keys in conjunction with the servers you connect to is a great and highly recommended security practice. SSH stands for “Secure Shell” and enabling SSH for a server creates a secure channel between you (via the command line) and your server. SSH keys help the server validate and authenticate who you are. SSH […]
Tips for local WordPress development with Varying Vagrant Vagrants (VVV)
I’ve used local development environments for as long as I can remember. They’ve always been a fluid part of being a developer. The biggest pain point was keeping everything upgraded at all times and switching from one stack to another. In case you didn’t notice, I said ”was”. This is because in the Spring of […]
Automating i18n in WordPress themes
According to the Polygots Make blog, WordPress is used all over the world and in many different languages. To put that in perspective, more than a third of existing WordPress installations are non-English and in his keynote at WordCamp Seattle, core developer Andrew Nacin mentioned that only 5-10% of the world speaks English. At AudioTheme, […]
Better local development with Airplane Mode
Websites are complicated these days. Even when we work locally, we typically still need to make a bunch of calls to external, online applications, on any given page load. If you’re ever without an internet connection, but still attempt to work (novel concept, right?), then you have experienced this frustration. Andrew Norcross recently created a […]
PhpStorm IDE gets official WordPress support in version 8
PhpStorm is a full-featured IDE that has somewhat of a cult following amongst the WordPress developers I follow. Made by JetBrains, it’s notable for being lighter weight than most IDEs, web development specific (though not just PHP as the name implies), and very customizable. Today, they’ve announced official support for managing WordPress projects. According to the […]
How to properly change and reference various WordPress directories
Using WordPress, it’s a poor assumption to assume the wp-content, plugins, and uploads folders are always in the same place, or even always called by those names. The configuration you see above is a sample WordPress root directory. This isn’t uncommon. Many people who manage their installs with version control such as Git probably recognize […]
How to customize the WordPress theme customizer defaults
The theme customizer feature was introduced in WordPress 3.4, released June 2012. Since then, it’s been a great tool that’s allowed theme developers to move away from complex options managers to a simpler, more logical interface where many settings can even be live previewed. Over the last couple of years, there have been a few […]
Create a WordPress VIP simulated dev environment, quickly
If you want to create a development environment to mimic the WordPress VIP hosting platform, the VIP team has you covered. VIP Quickstart is a new tool, available on Github, that helps you set up everything easily. According to the announcement post, here are the technical bits: VIP Quickstart is a mix of Vagrant, Puppet, […]