WordPress and eCommerce go hand in hand, and many turn to the WordPress platform to build an online shop. We have already covered how to do this in our WooCommerce beginner’s tutorial. Today we want to show you a different way: Shopify. Shopify is a standalone platform that allows users to open up a hosted online shop in mere minutes. At first it might seem paradoxical to mix the two platforms, however, last year Shopify announced the publication of their WordPress plugin and three free WordPress themes. Clearly, this is a move to break into the larger WordPress community and […]

I’ve covered using the WordPress REST API with AngularJS in the past for Torque because I like it and have used it quite a bit. However, I have been using Laravel a lot lately, and the Laravel ecosystem has embraced VueJS as the front-end framework. That encouraged me to try it out and I’ve been impressed by its simplicity. My first real experience using VueJS was for the Caldera Forms front-end entry viewer. I had been experimenting with new ways of handling UI and I found VueJS to be the fastest to learn and loved the results. In this article, I’m going […]

WordPressers, get ready. We’re back this year for Torque’s 2017 Plugin Madness, where 64 WordPress plugins will compete against each other for total plugin domination! Based on feedback we heard last year, this year we are doing things a bit differently. We want you to nominate your favorite WordPress plugins for the chance to compete in this year’s plugin madness. Now through February 28, go to torquemag.io/pluginmadness to nominate your favorite WordPress plugins. In March-Madness style, we’ve identified four regions — marketing, maintenance, optimization, and editorial. Plugins must meet the follow criteria to be considered: Must be listed in the official […]

The REST API had an amazing year in 2016. Not only was it used by notable websites including the Guggenheim, New York Times, and Wired, content endpoints were merged with core in 4.7. In March, developers from all over will gather in Boston to discuss and learn about the API in the second annual Day of REST. The conference, created by Human Made, consists of one day of talks with two days of workshops before and after. The REST API was created to make the Internet more open, and channeling that spirit, organizers are offering a diversity scholarship for the conference. […]

While WordPress is lauded for the tight-knit community, not much is said about the industry itself. Small and enterprise companies alike are building incredible digital experiences on WordPress. In December, we shared our survey results on the state of the WordPress industry, looking at the struggles WordPress professionals face and the strategies that help drive their businesses forward. The results revealed key insights into the state of the industry as it stands and where professionals are going in the coming year. If you would like to dig deeper into the results of this survey as well as where the industry is headed, don’t […]

A common design pattern for WordPress plugins is to have one “main class” that implements the singleton pattern. This pattern is called the “God Class” and it loads all of the other classes the plugin needs as well as instances of those classes in properties of that class. I’ve utilized this anti-pattern, because it accomplishes a job and often is the best option for codebases that support PHP 5.2. But it’s not nearly as efficient as dependency injection to achieve a similar outcome. The advantage of an implementation of the “God Class” anti-pattern is that you only need one singleton. […]

Many elements make a successful website: Design, content, SEO, mobile-friendliness — to name just a few. Yet, something that has become more and more important over time is website speed. Consumers are impatient. If a website takes too long to load, they move on to something else. How long before they get itchy feet? Two seconds, that’s it. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that visitors are mostly using mobile devices that often have a slower data connection than desktop and laptop computers. As a consequence, WordPress users are hard pressed to make their sites as fast as possible. […]

When it comes to WordPress plugins, some big names get all the glory (we’re looking at you, Yoast SEO), while others languish in semi-obscurity. Considering there are thousands of plugins available for the platform, you could be missing out on some amazing tools by limiting yourself to the most popular options. The key to identifying a great WordPress plugin goes beyond looking at how many times it has been installed. You need to take into consideration reviews and update history, and ask yourself, Can this tool help me improve my site? In this article, we round up ten outstanding plugins (in no […]

I’ve written a lot about the WordPress REST API for Torque, but one thing I have not covered is unit testing custom APIs. That is exactly what this article is. I used a PHP program run the code and compare the results to an expected value. If you want to learn more, I would recommend reading Pippin Williamson’s series on WordPress unit testing. It’s quite excellent and covers how to setup your local environment for testing and how to write tests. For example here is a very simple test: <?php function answer(){ return 42; } class Test_42 extends WP_UnitTestCase { […]

14 years after its initial release, WordPress continues to get better and better with age. With 2017 now here, we have new trends to look forward to. Although you may have already started noticing some of these (for example, video headers in the Twenty Seventeen theme), some are going to make their mark in the months to come. Our crystal ball has been working overtime to see what’s in store! In this post, we’ll uncover a number of trends to look out for in 2017. Let’s begin with a long-standing topic that’s now coming sharply into focus. 1. The Rise in the Number of Mobile-First Websites […]