Category: Development

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,...

Debugging with Xdebug, VVV, and Sublime Text

ARE YOU READY TO TAKE YOUR DEBUGGING TO THE NEXT LEVEL?! ARE wp_die AND print_var JUST NOT CUTTING IT!? XDEBUG IS THE ANSWER! Xdebug is a PHP extension that provides advanced debugging capabilities such as breakpoints, watch expressions, and more in-depth error reporting.

Customizing MediaElement.js for WordPress

MediaElement.js is a JavaScript library that gives you video and audio play capabilities based on the HTML5 specifications. It includes a Flash wrapper for browsers that don’t support certain codecs or that don’t support the HTML5 <audio> and <video> tags. MediaElement.js has...

WordPress – Up and Running with Grunt, Sass, Bourbon and Neat

So what is Neat? Well Neat is a semantic, lightweight, and powerful grid built on top of Bourbon and Sass. It’s ideal for most grid situations and is a great front-end CSS framework for Responsive Website Design. There are lots of frameworks...

How to QA WordPress Websites Like a Pro!

You’ve pushed your final bit of code and crossed the final item off of your to-do list. Now it’s just time to sit back, relax and wait for all of the praise on a job well done to come rolling in, right? Wrong....

Using APIs to Integrate with WordPress

Editor’s note: This blog post was updated on June 27, 2018. Instagram has deprecated much of this API. This widget still works, if you’re showing your own content. Even then, that functionality will be gone in 2020. It’s recommended you look into using...

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...

Unit Testing Your Plugins

So you have an amazing plugin, and it’s starting to get bigger and the bug reports are piling up (or better you are are starting a new plugin and you wanna do it right). Unfortunately getting PHPUnit to properly function with WordPress...

Don’t Repeat Yourself! How to Create an Author Box Using the Gravatar API

Wouldn’t it be great if the box above could be automatically filled by your Gravatar profile? Tons of services auto-populate your info using Gravatar right? Why can’t my profile information (and social media info) just auto populate in WordPress too!? (NOTE: someone smarter...