Author: Chris Reynolds

The Lonely Presser Guide to WordCamps

Have you ever used one of those Lonely Planet guidebooks? Yeah, me neither. But I’m told they’re pretty fantastic for getting the skinny about a particular place you might want to go. Like, really detailed, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy-level detail, so that you...

The Fundamentals of Writing Clean Code

Writing “clean” code is something we talk about a lot in software development. Developing for the web is no different in the pursuit of code that is “clean” than any other type of programming. It’s also something that you could write a book...

Using Vagrant and IIS for WordPress Development

…And lo! It came to pass that I needed to set up a local environment built on IIS. Many things (like communicating with a MS SQL server) can be emulated or replicated on a *nix environment, in which case the Vagrant workflow I’ve...

Using Git Flow and Forget to Branch? Stash it.

Here at WebDevStudios, we use a variation of the Git workflow known as Git Flow. One of the benefits of using Git is quick and easy branching and merging without conflicts. Git Flow makes extensive use of branches to ensure that work...

How to Set Up HTTPS on WordPress Multisite Without Headaches

Editor’s note: This blog post was updated on June 27, 2018. Every couple months or so, Google seems to like to shake things up a bit and add some new criteria by which they rank sites. One of the most recent of...

Removing PHP4 Compatibility in WordPress Custom Widgets

There I was. Working on adding PHP docblocks to widgets.php in /wp-includes, like you do, when I came across this: So I set about trying to figure out the appropriate @since parameter to use. Do I base the @since on when the...

Using Transients with WordPress to Cache All the Things!

Update 12/8/2014: I’m not going to tell you not to cache all the things. You should absolutely cache all the things. However Otto wrote up a convincing argument about why you shouldn’t cache all the things using transients in the comments. So,...

Hacking WordPress Search for Fun and Profit!

I spoke at WordCamp SLC last month on the topic of WordPress search. Why did I speak on the topic of WordPress search? you might ask. I mean, everybody knows WordPress search is dumb and doesn’t work very well, you might add....

You Broke It! Better Error Handling So Your Errors Don’t Suck!

There you are. Face illuminated by the blue glow of the monitor. You’ve just finished passing the third of three sets of WP_Query arguments to a function that’s supposed to run a loop with the passed args. Except…arg is what you’re feeling right now because your loop…isn’t...