WordPress Resources

Blogs | Books | Caching | Coding Standards | Facebook | GDPR | Gutenberg | Hooks | Hosting | Debugging | Podcasts | Slack | Speed | Themes | Tutorials

Blogs & People

• Pippins Plugins (@pippinsplugins) – WordPress plugins and tutorials.
• Tom McFarlin (@tommcfarlin) – Thoughts on various software development topics and implementing them into WordPress.
• Carrie Dils (@cdils) – Podcaster, developer, teacher. She does it all.
• Chris Lema (@chrislema) – All things WordPress. Great, in-depth plugin reviews.
• Post Status (@poststatus) – WordPress news and membership site.
• Helen 侯-Sandí (@helenhousandi) – WordPress Lead Developer and 4.7 release lead.
• Matt Medeiros (@mattmedeiros) – Tutorials, podcasts, and themes.
• Red8 Interactive (@red8interactive) – Custom WordPress theme agency. Also my place of business.
• Good First Bugs (@GoodFirstBugs) – Tweets out new core tickets tagged as good first bugs. If you want to contribute to core, start here.
• WordCamp Central (@wordcamp) – Everything you need to know about upcoming WordCamps.
• Matt McAlister (@mikemcalister) – Creates awesome themes at ArrayThemes.com and great source of Gutenberg development.

Books

I highly recommend Audible for listening to books on the go. Bump up the speed to 1.5x and fly through them. Check out my tips for reading more too.

• WordPress

  • Getting to Know WordPress – My series of articles on understanding WordPress in handy ebook form.
  • Smashing WordPress
  • Up and Running

• Web Design

  • Don’t Make Me Think – I haven’t read the revised edition, but the first edition was a catalyst for designing and developing sites.
  • The Essential Web Design Handbook – Great walkthrough of what goes into designing a website these days.
  • User Experience Revolution – Great information on how and why to get your company invested in user experience design.

• General Knowledge

  • The 10% Entrepreneur – Great advice for using 10% of your time to develop side projects and useful habits.
  • Tools of the Titans – Tim Ferris has a great podcast for getting into the minds of high achievers. He compiled much of the knowledge gained from those people into this massive tome. Read the full thing or pick and choose those interviews that pique your interest.
  • Content Machine – This book provides actionable tips for creating a great content marketing strategy. Plus it come with access to tons of resources for everything from creating content ideas to style guides and more.

Caching

• Rusell Heimlich’s Cache Presentation from WordCamp Baltimore. Great overview of the different types of caching.

Coding Standards

• Setting Up Coding Standards in Visual Studio Code
• HumanMade Style Guides – PHP, JavaScript, React, and Markup guidelines used by HumanMade.
• 10up Best Practices – Best practices in place at 10up for everything from PHP to JavaScript.
• Using PHP CodeSniffer For MAMP and WordPress – by Tom McFarlin
• WordPress Coding Standards Repo

Courses

• WordPress

  • Team Treehouse – Team Treehouse has tons of courses on all kinds of web technologies. They follow the format of video and in-browser coding. Great interface.

• Development

  • CodeSchool – Great courses on HTML, JS, CSS, PHP, and more.

• Git

  • WP Pusher Git Crash Course

Facebook Groups

• Advanced WordPress
• All About WordPress
• Intermediate WordPress
• WordPress Front End Developers
• WordPress Speed Up

GDPR

• The GDPR – The actual text of the GDPR
• The GDPR: Right of Access Requests – WooCommerce
• The Lowdown on GDPR Compliance for WordPress Users – Kinsta
• WordPress 4.9.6 GDPR Features – WP Tavern
• What GDPR Means For Your WordPress and WooCommerce – codeable
• GDPR Tools for your Nonprofit Website – GiveWP
• How we’re tackling GDPR in WooCommerce core – WooCommerce
• GDPR – A Practical Guide for Developers – Bozho’s Tech BLog
• Privacy.blog – Automattic’s new blog for information about privacy laws

Gutenberg

• Introducing Gutenberg – The official introduction to Gutenberg.
• Gutenberg Documentation – The official documentation for Gutenberg.
• Gutenberg.courses – Developer and User courses from Zac Gordon and Joe Casabona.
• Gutenberg.news – An awesome collection of Gutenberg news, resources, and tutorials.

Hooks

• Guides

  • Writing Extensible Plugins with Actions and Filters [Tutorial] – Pippin Williamson

• Actions

  • Custom Actions [Tutorial] – Tom McFarlin
  • Codex Action Reference

• Filters

  • Custom Filters [Tutorial] – Tom McFarlin
  • Codex Filter Reference

Hosting

• SpinupWP – For the devs that want to control their server, but don’t want to deal with maintaining the server. This is what I’m currently hosted on. Great and cost-effective for spinning up multiple WordPress sites using Digital Ocean droplets.
• WP Engine – Great support. Great WordPress hosting. As good as having your own highly skilled WordPress developer running your site.
• WordPress.org vs WordPress.com – Great breakdown of the differences between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.
• Shared Webhosting Comparison – A very detailed breakdown on everything from performance to honoring refund policies on some of the top shared hosting services. Put together by Mark Berka at berkaweb.com

Debugging

• MacGDP
• Atom Debugger Package
• Debugging WordPress [Tutorial] – Tom McFarlin

Podcasts

• WordPress

  • Apply Filters -Brad Touesnard and Pippin Williamson talk all about WordPress development.
  • DradCast – Get ready for the Dradcast! Your favorite nerds, Brad Williams and Dre Armeda, bringing you high octane conversations with new guests every week. Covering the latest news, insight on recent events, and interviews with tech titans.
  • Mastermind.fm – Join James Laws from WP Ninjas and Jean Galea from WP Mayor as they discuss the trials and tribulations on building a WordPress business.
  • Matt Report – WordPress podcast for business owners and marketing specialists with Matt Medeiros
  • Post Status Draft – News & Information for WordPress Professionals. This podcast includes Post Status analysis, interviews, conversations, and editorial for the WordPress and web community.
  • The WordPress Chick Podcast – Kim Doyal, “The WordPress Chick” shares her journey in the world of blogging, life and entrepreneurship on the internet.
  • WordPress Weekly – This is WordPress Weekly hosted by Jeff Chandler and Marcus Couch. Your weekly source of news and discussions related to WordPress as well as any projects under the Automattic umbrella.

• Web

  • A Responsive Web Design Podcast – A podcast from Karen McGrane and Ethan Marcotte, who interview the people who make responsive designs happen.

Security

• An Introduction to Hardening WordPress – Good article on securing WordPress.
• WordPress Security – 19+ Steps to Lock Down Your Site – Very detailed guide to enhancing your WordPress security.

Slack Channels

• Make WordPress – Want to contribute to core? Join this. Not for support.
• St. Louis WordPress – Free to join. Small but growing.
• Post Status – Very active. Lots of top WordPress pros. Requires a yearly membership.

Speed

• Battling Google PageSpeed Insights – My slides and other resources from my WordCamp St. Louis 2017 talk on increasing site speed using freely available tools.
• How to Speed up WordPress – Good article on why a speedy site is important and how to improve your site’s speed.
• A Beginner’s Guide to Website Speed Optimization – Kinsta put together an in-depth guide to get started with speed optimization. Great for beginners but there is useful info for advanced users too.
• How To Speed Up Your WordPress Site – And Increase Organic Traffic By 39.1% – An extremely detailed look at how WordPress optimization can get you more users. As well as actionable tips to recreate the success of the article’s author.

Themes

• Themes.Pizza – The home of the free and premium themes I build on the side.
• Array Themes – Love their thought process on themes. Don’t make the theme do everything under the sun, but instead work really well for it’s purpose.

Tips

• $_SESSION in WordPress – Pippin’s Plugins guide and WP Session Manager plugin.
• Loading templates in plugins – Pippin’s Plugins
• Add inline plugin update notices – Wisdom

Tutorials

• WP Sessions – Tons of great content on all kinds different WordPress related topics.
• Site Beginner – A simple beginner’s guide to getting started with a WordPress site from picking a domain to launching.