If you’re just starting out as a developer, and you’re learning PHP through WordPress, you might be intimidated by the idea of object-oriented programming (OOP), but the reality is you’ve probably already seen it in use. For example, have you ever retrieved the ID of a current post like this: global $post; $id = $post->ID; That’s object-oriented programing. You might not know the terminology, but what you’ve done in the first line is get the current post as an object of the standard class. In the second line you get the value of that class’s property ID. Another example of […]

When we create websites with WordPress, it’s easy to get distracted by all of the amazing tools, plugins, and themes, and forget that the content is most important. If relevant information is difficult to find on your website, then all of the time you spent creating it will ultimately be overlooked. Naturally, the easier you make it for visitors to navigate to content that is both relevant and useful to them, the more time they’ll stay engaged with your site. Traditionally, WordPress sites have relied on a sidebar with a list of recent posts, categories, tags, and a search widget to keep users engaged. For […]

Like most people in the WordPress ecosystem, I strongly believe that giving back is an important way to “pay forward” everything this community has given me. My first formal contribution was reviewing themes for WordPress.org. I found out about the volunteer theme review team when I was researching how to submit a theme I was working on to be included in the theme listings at WordPress.org/themes. It turned out that the wait time was months long for an initial review. So, I signed up to be a reviewer, expecting that I would help reduce the time it would take for […]

On a recent episode of the WordPress podcast, The DradCast, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg said that “when you think about it, we’re kind of building a web operating system.” This remark mirrored statements he made in last year’s State of the Word address about making WordPress into a foundation for mobile apps. Not only has WordPress itself evolved into a more suitable tool for app development, but there’s also a slew of new plugins and services available that make it even easier to build web and mobile apps. Thanks to these developments, WordPress is a relatively easy and affordable option […]