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Into the Vault: the HTTP-to-HTTPS Checklist
Last week, we transitioned WPShout (and all our other web properties) onto SSL, a major security step that also has numerous other benefits. This article documents a few important recurring “gotchas”...
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A Guide to Debugging in WordPress with your Reptilian Brain
Since so many things can go wrong in a WordPress environment, it’s important to develop general WordPress bugfixing hunches. Debugging code is a huge part of my job. It can also be quite scary,...
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Above and Beyond: Avoiding PHP Timeout and Memory Limit Errors with Ajax
Unlike some other programming languages, PHP shuts down completely the moment it stops processing a specific request. Different programming languages have very different lifespans. Your computer’s...
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Easier Site Migrations: Avoiding DNS Problems with the hosts File
Over this past month, I’ve needed to migrate quite a few WordPress sites from one host to another. I can say with confidence: it’s still not my favorite process. There’s nothing that should be complex...
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MySQL Basics: Writing Custom SELECT Statements in phpMyAdmin
Here’s probably the oddest analogy I’ll write this month: for many WordPress developers, MySQL is a bit like our spinal column. How, you ask? Well… It’s a very crucial piece of infrastructure—very...
View ArticleCourse: The Complete Guide to Creating WordPress Widgets and Widget Areas
Over the years, we’ve written a lot about WordPress. At one time or another, we’ve covered most of the knowledge that we use as professional WordPress developers. Introducing Courses We believe linking...
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How to Add Existing Taxonomies to WordPress Custom Post Types
This article covers how to add existing taxonomies to a custom post type, and how to make that custom post type show up in those taxonomies’ archive pages. Last week, we debuted Courses, a new way for...
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Practical Uses of pre_get_posts
In WordPress, pre_get_posts is a filter that makes it possible to modify an existing WP_Query, before that query is actually run. pre_get_posts offers some solutions that are more performant than...
View ArticleCourse: Working with WP_Query
1. Understanding the Basics of Object-Oriented Programming The WP_Query API uses a programming style called object-oriented programming, or OOP. Every WP_Query is actually a WP_Query Object, meaning an...
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Demystifying Theme “Frameworks”
I was browsing around yesterday looking for topics to write about in WordPress and I came across someone asking a question that is kind of common: What’s a theme framework? Is _s one? Is Genesis? What...
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Spelunking into the Template Hierarchy
The template hierarchy is one of my favorite features in WordPress. It not only makes child themes possible, but it also makes the whole ecosystem better because more code can be written to sit in...
View ArticleCourse: 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 each tool,...
View ArticleWordPress Coding Patterns: Setting Function Options with $args
Today’s topic is a pattern in WordPress programming called $args. It crops up all the time—so often that simply understanding it will make you a significantly more confident WordPress programmer. Let’s...
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A Simple Route to Writing a React.js App in a WordPress Plugin
We’ll start this article with a demo: (In my mind, the correct answers are “C” for question one, and either “A” or “B” for question two, but it’s really up to you. Also, please feel free to download...
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A Complete Guide to Object-Oriented PHP for WordPress Developers
One of the boogeymen that frighten a lot of newer WordPress developers are “objects” and object-oriented PHP. You kind of get it, you aspire to get it, but you just don’t really understand where any of...
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The Many Uses of PHP Output Buffering in WordPress
This introduction to PHP output buffering and its uses in WordPress contains a few helpful resources: A first code demo that shows how PHP output buffering is helpful for WordPress shortcodes. A...
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A Complete Guide to PHP Data Types: Numbers, Booleans, Strings, & More
We here at WPShout are thinking hard about making a complete paid course that gets anyone interested in WordPress development totally up to speed on PHP. And so far on the site, we’ve covered to the...
View ArticleHow to Create a Custom Taxonomy in WordPress with Pods
Custom taxonomies are a great way to organize information in WordPress. And the Pods plugin makes it easy create them without having to write any PHP code. We’ve got a full article explaining custom...
View ArticleHow to Use FTP to Deactivate a Plugin That’s Breaking Your WordPress Site
WordPress plugins can cause all kinds of errors: 500 internal server errors, PHP parse errors (also called syntax errors), errors that simply whitescreen your entire site, and more. What’s worse, it’s...
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WordPress Template Tags: How They Show Post Content & More
WordPress template tags are a super-important and super-valuable part of WordPress, especially for theme development. They’re also one of the things I remember spending lots of time not quite getting...
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