How to Create WordPress Custom Page Templates (& Why)
There are many many ways you can change the look of a specific page on your WordPress site. You can change the content inside the WordPress content editor. You can…
Course: WordPress Theme Development (Core Concepts)
Welcome! WordPress themes are one of the most important topics that one must understand to be good at WordPress development. Themes underlie the entire visual half of WordPress sites, but…
WordPress Hooks, Actions, and Filters: What They Do and How They Work
This article introduces one of the most important topics in WordPress development: WordPress hooks, including action hooks and filter hooks. Hooks are at the core not only of how WordPress…
Defer Parsing of JavaScript in WordPress
It’s a common complaint when you run your WordPress site through any “page speed score” tool: “defer parsing of JavaScript” and/or “remove render-blocking JavaScript.” Today, building on an article Fred…
How to Debug WordPress Beyond the Basics
Debugging WordPress starts with WP_DEBUG, but can go far beyond that. In this article, we will:
Using Custom Taxonomies and Custom Fields in WordPress Development
This course covers the key points of two of WordPress’s most powerful APIs for defining custom post data: custom fields (also called post meta), and custom taxonomies. The course introduces…
An Introduction to the WordPress PHP Coding Standards
Coding makes you follow rules – every language has its own syntax to which you have to adhere if you want your code to compile or run. But there is…
How to Create an Excerpt From a Post Without an Excerpt and Limit It by Character Count
WordPress posts have two types of texts associated with them: the post’s content, and its excerpt. The content is the main part of the post, and the excerpt is either…
Making Plugins and Themes Translation-Ready
Internationalization makes WordPress accessible in other languages, and it’s a must-have for work intended for wide distribution.
Turn on Debugging in WordPress: WP_DEBUG
One could (and perhaps I should) write a whole course on “how to debug in WordPress.” This (unfortunately) isn’t that post, but rather a quick summary of the best first…