Are you interested in creating a WordPress plugin? This article is all about how I learned to build my first plugin. My hope is that it will inspire you to create your own and provide the necessary resources to learn how. So, why did I decide to create a publicly available plugin? There were a number of reasons: I wanted to improve my skills as a developer, give back to the WordPress community, and challenge myself. But the primary event that kicked off this whole endeavor was when a client came to me asking, “Is there a plugin that will […]

This year, at WordCamp Miami, I shared an Airbnb with a few other WordPress developers. The door to the place we were staying had a keypad door lock. I guess I’m too dependent on my password manager because I promptly forgot the code. As a result, at the afterparty, when I was about ready to leave I found one of the people I was staying with—Chris Christoff a developer for Awesome Motive and Easy Digital Downloads, and a member of the WordPress core security team—to ask him for the code. As it turned out, I interrupted a discussion he was having […]

The WordPress editor is the central work hub for content creation. Once you have your site up and running, you’ll probably spend about 80% of your time there. If you think about it, that’s pretty impressive. One part of your website that lets you take care of 80% of your work? Sounds like a powerful tool. The WordPress editor is something we take for granted. Its look, behavior, the even its formatting options are so intuitive that even newbies will quickly become familiar with it. This familiarity, however, is somewhat artificial. Just like the rest of the platform, you can customize […]

Just a few weeks ago, the WordPress Theme Review Team agreed to allow new themes to require the use of the WordPress REST API plugin. The WordPress REST API plugin has been rumored to be making its way into core for quite some time now. Matt Mullenweg chimed into the REST API slack channel early in July to bring up some existing pre-merge issues: “…pre-merge blockers (contributor confidence, TRT blocking rest-api, adoption, publicity/knowledge, core dev attention, vip review, et al)..” Mullenweg highlighted adoption as a key barrier to the integration of the WP REST API into core. If more people […]

The day is finally here. The WordPress.org plugin directory has officially passed one billion plugin downloads. That’s pretty crazy considering just a little over a year ago, there were only 700 million downloads. A third of all plugin downloads occurred in just this last year! I mean, it’s no wonder, considering WordPress powers almost a quarter of the Internet. But when I see stats like this, I always ask one question: Why? Why did we see this huge growth in WordPress? And why are there so many plugin downloads? Where Did All These Plugin Downloads Come From? Before jumping into […]

With its root as a blogging platform, it is easy to disregard WordPress as a serious business solution. The fact that it is open source and free to use for anyone can also certainly contribute to its image as a product for hobbyists. Clients who don’t know better might doubt its scalability for larger projects, and developers may therefore think they couldn’t land big-name clients by offering WordPress services. However, what people tend to forget or be unaware of is that WordPress by now powers 25% of the Internet. Yes, that is one quarter. Yes, of the entire Internet. So, […]

Ever wanted to build a WordPress theme? I’m not talking about a child theme, or a theme built on a framework. I’m talking about a theme built from scratch. I like to challenge myself every now and then and learn something new. This time around, I decided to build a theme from scratch. And found that it was much easier than I anticipated, thanks to a few free resources (which I’m happy to share with you). So if you’ve ever wanted to build a theme from scratch, this article is for you. I won’t be showing you the step-by-step process, […]

It seems like 2015 is the year the 1980s and 1990s decided to make a comeback. Which is cool. I mean, I grew up in those decades and have fond memories of many of the films released back then. So the reboots and sequels have been a nice walk down nostalgia lane for me. I’ve even talked about some of them here. All of these reboots got me thinking about rebranding. When a business decides it needs a new look and feel, it undergoes a rebranding process. This can be as involved or as low-key as required and might encompass something […]

Two years ago, to herald the commencement of WordCamp San Francisco 2013, we launched Torque! Our goal was clear: “to create a hub for community building and offer a forum for WordPress news.” From that day on, Torque set out to create community engagement and become a valuable resource for WordPressers globally. Today we are proud to celebrate Torque’s second birthday. It’s such an incredible milestone, and we’re eager to recap some of our accomplishments over the past two years! Content Torque’s content has evolved since 2013, but we have remained steadfast in our mission to be an indispensable online […]

Since its inception, responsive design has found good response from the design community, with more and more designers and developers favoring responsive design, owing to the steady rise of mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. Speaking of responsive design, media queries form an integral and essential part of the responsive web design process. While a large number of responsive frameworks do exist—including responsive WordPress themes—nearly all of them rely on media queries to differentiate one screen size and resolution from another. So, what exactly is a media query? Are media queries the ultimate means to achieve responsive design? In […]