WordPress is a dinosaur. If you are a PHP programmer and have had the opportunity to work outside of WordPress in the past 10 years, there are likely one or two or a few dozen things that frustrate you when diving back into the project’s 16-year-old codebase. At a time when WordPress is gifting JavaScript programmers with the latest and …
Block-Based Themes and the Problem with Dynamic Data in HTML Templates
The Gutenberg project and its eventual full-site editing feature is coming upon a major issue that will need to be solved. Block-based themes of the future are currently on a path toward a template system that will comprise of plain HTML files. While that will work for the majority of a theme’s output, the trouble is figuring out how the …
Preparing for WordPress 5.4: Changes Theme and Plugin Developers Should Know About
With the release of WordPress 5.4 looming, it is time for plugin and theme developers to begin testing their extensions and making sure there are no issues. There are also new APIs for upcoming features. Yesterday, the core team released the first release candidate for 5.4. The official release is planned for March 31. This post will serve as a …
Post to WordPress by Email: 3 Alternatives While Postie is Suspended
The ability to post to WordPress via email has been around for a long time. However, the surge in mobile technology has made posting by email more relevant than ever before, especially for people on the go. Whether you run a news site or blog with daily updates, an eCommerce store, restaurant, or any kind of business really, composing and …
Upcoming Tailwind CSS 1.2.0 Includes Grid Support and New Utilities
Adam Wathan, creator of the Tailwind CSS, published the early release notes for the upcoming version 1.2.0 update to the framework. The new version will include the much-anticipated support for CSS grids and several other useful features for app and website designers. There are no planned breaking changes with the update. Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework that is …
Lessons Learned by Stepping Outside WordPress Comfort Zone
It was late summer in 2018. I was an aging developer who wasn’t quite sure where I fit into the WordPress world anymore. I had spent over a decade learning the ins and outs of the platform that launched my career and also served as a hobby for other pet projects I wanted to tackle. In part, I was bored. …
Optimizing Code in a World That Doesn’t Want to Optimize
Premature optimization is the root of all evil. It is a common saying among developers. It makes sense. Optimizing prematurely can mean redoing work down the line, and time is the developer’s most finite resource. It can mean spending that precious time optimizing for scenarios that do not yet exist for a product’s users. It can mean writing code that …
First Look at PHP 7.4 for WordPress Developers
PHP 7.4 is slated for release on November 28, 2019. WordPress 5.3 will also include several commits that address deprecated features. It’s unlikely that most WordPress plugin and theme developers will be able to use the new PHP 7.4 features for a while except when working on setups where they have some measure of control over the environment. Given WordPress’ …
How to Improve First Contentful and Meaningful Paint
You’re not optimizing your site to please a stopwatch. You’re optimizing your site for real people. So how can you determine if you’re achieving your goal? You need to include metrics such as First Contentful Paint and First Meaningful Paint in your performance assessment in order to measure how your site is performing from your user’s perspective. Both will tell …
The Non-Developers Guide to Git and GitHub
Git is notoriously difficult for beginners to learn, especially for non-developers. It took me at least 3 (alright more like 20) attempts before I learned how to use Git and that was only because I Googled, “Explain Like I’m 5 Git.” Most of us navigate our computers with visual queues. “Here’s my document. I want […] View original post at …