Agencies understand the benefits of WordPress. Not only is it flexible and free, but it also accelerates time to market and allows agencies to hand over a “usable” project to their clients. Jason Marlowe, veteran web designer and CTO at Market House, understands the benefits of WordPress. We talked to him about why he uses the CMS, his stance around open source, personalized content experiences on WordPress, and more. Marlowe started out with HTML and CSS and then moved to Drupal. From there he jumped to WordPress and never looked back. In the last 6-7 years he’s been working almost […]

Recently Automattic hosted an online conference on design and exclusion. Instead of calling it a conference on inclusive design, they flipped the idea around to focus on what conscious and unconscious decisions lead to the systematic exclusion of people. Inclusive design is about a lot more than the web and it’s about a lot more than accessibility. But, as web developers, accessibility – making sure that the HTML we generate can be used by everyone properly – is an important topic. So, I wanted to share four attitudes I think leads to us skipping over this important part of our […]

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated to celebrate WordPress’ 15th anniversary! 5/27/18 WordPress celebrates its 15th birthday this weekend. The CMS has come a long way since its release in 2003. Not only does it today power more than 30 percent of the web, but its also supported and maintained by a growing community. WordPress has grown so much – today we want to highlight some of the biggest milestones of the last 15 years. 2003 — WordPress Was Released Fifteen years ago WordPress officially launched when Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little released a blog post with a download link and […]

About three years ago, I wrote a post for Torque titled “Yes, You Really Can Use WordPress To Build Apps.” In 2014, this was an emerging idea, but now it’s done quite often. The WordPress REST API, as well as a shift in how we think about WordPress, has contributed to this change. At LoopConf this year, Ryan McCue, the co-lead developer of the WordPress REST API gave a talk called “Next Generation WordPress.” He said that we’ve gone from the WordPress as a blog, to the WordPress as a CMS, to the WordPress as a platform era. It’s a […]

Thanks to the REST API, WordPress is rapidly evolving into a full-fledged development framework. However, few have actually begun using it to carry out every day tasks – even though this is now entirely possible. Blog in a Box is a relatively new project that enables you to quickly install WordPress onto a Raspberry Pi machine. We’ll cover exactly what these are in a moment, but it means you can integrate WordPress with almost any program on a Linux-based machine. Since WordPress comes with its own API framework, you can quickly turn any data you collect with your program into an app. […]

A couple weeks ago, Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France, as the entire world watched. Now, he is being called upon to make WordCamp Europe easier to attend. In a letter sent to the office of the president, WCEU organizers explained that some attendees were experiencing problems with their visas. “It has come to our attention that our friends from some countries are having problems with their Visas being rejected on the ground that ‘a 40€ entry fee can not justify international travel,’ something that makes this conference accessible to all,” the letter said. The organizers go on to say […]

WordPress theme authors spend a lot of time practicing to make sure their theme demos go smoothly so that they can acquire new users and customers. However, this can lead to frustration when customers install the theme and find out the that it is actually quite challenging to replicate the demo. This has been a pain point for me personally. But I realize I’m not great at website design, where as theme developers are, especially with their own themes. I recently spoke with Primož Cigler, the founder of Proteus Themes and the co-author of the plugin One Click Demo Import (OCDI). The […]

Last year, Matt Mullenweg encouraged developers to “Learn JavaScript deeply.” He said, and I agree that future of WordPress will use JavaScript-driven interfaces powered by the WordPress REST API.  Using JavaScript in conjunction with the REST API makes for a great experience for both the developer and end user, which is why every WordPress developer should have some understanding of JavaScript. For this vision to be a reality, that can’t just apply to WordPress core. Plugins and themes will need to deliver a similar experience. A great JavaScript framework is the fastest and most scalable way to deliver that in […]

WordCamp for Publishers will be held on August 17-19 at The Denver Post in the heart of the Mile-High City.   The niche WordCamp, which is the first of its kind, aims to bring together people who use WordPress to manage publications of all sizes, from small blogs to massive publications like The New York Times. What to expect The three-day conference will feature a combination of talks, workshops, and other sessions for editorial teams, site and plugin developers, and anyone who is involved in managing a WordPress publication looking to expand their knowledge of WordPress publishing. “Our speakers and attendees will come from national […]

Making changes to your site can be risky. You might break a functionality that would deter potential readers or customers. Every developer should take steps to make sure all changes can be tested before going live, and local development tools are an easy way to do that. Using local development tools will save you a lot of headaches down the road. Setting up a local server with the right tools is quite important and should be taken into account. Production Server vs. Local Server If you’ve been into theme or plugin development, then I’m sure you’ll be familiar these two […]