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Building Custom REST API Routes Using Object-Oriented PHP

Author

Josh Pollock

Filed Under

Featured

Published

August 2, 2016

2 Comments

The two things I write most about for Torque are object-oriented PHP and the WordPress REST API. In this article, I will bring them together to show you how to build out a collection of custom REST API routes while applying the principles of object-oriented PHP. One of the great things about inheritance in object-oriented PHP is that it lets us share code between classes. There are a lot of ways to avoid repeating ourselves in our code. Inheritance is one of them and should only be used when two or more classes have similar purposes. If you have a […]

Developing A REST API App – Part 6: Exploring The Web With Third-Party APIs

Author

Tom Ewer

Filed Under

Featured

Published

August 1, 2016

1 Comment

We’ve come a long way so far in our six-part REST API series. From pretty much a standing start, we’ve managed to introduce the basic concepts of the technology, and get a small interactive app up and running (with a little help from React). Along the way, we’ve hopefully proven that even non-technical WordPress users can already start getting their feet wet with the programmatic power behind the next generation of the platform. The future of WordPress is not going to be about tiny Thoreau quote apps, however. It’s going to largely centre around how the REST API helps WordPress smoothly integrate […]

The Freedom Of WordPress

Author

Emily Schiola

Filed Under

Community, Featured

Published

July 29, 2016

2 Comments

Last week, Torque asked community members to share their WordPress story for the chance to win a trip to WordCamp US 2016. We were pleasantly overwhelmed by the number of submissions. It was inspiring to read about how WordPress has touched the lives of some many people — from leading them to financial freedom and enabling them to spend more time with their families to empowering users to travel the world. A big theme throughout was accessibility and how people with disabilities found their home in WordPress and the community. We set out to help someone get to WordCamp US and […]

11 Of The Best Premium WordPress Plugins Worth Their Money

Author

Nick Schäferhoff

Filed Under

Beginners, Featured

Published

July 29, 2016

31 Comments

There is no denying that WordPress and the WordPress sphere are thriving. The platform has been the fastest growing CMS for several years straight and in June this year more than 2,000 people gathered for WordCamp Europe 2016 — the largest WordPress convention in history. Another sign pointing to the continuing success of WordPress is the growing number of premium plugins. Although there are more than 40,000 free WordPress plugins in the directory, a lot of people these days opt to pay for their plugin needs. So much so that the number of successful WordPress companies with six-figure revenues and beyond […]

WordPress Product Launch UX Best Practices: Series Introduction

Author

Ahmad Awais

Filed Under

Featured

Published

July 28, 2016

2 Comments

The WordPress community is getting more and more transparent as far as the business aspect is involved. Business folks have started to disclose the financial status of their WordPress businesses. One particular statement that we keep hearing goes something like this: “I created a WordPress product and it generated xx amount during the first month or year of its launch.” We’ve all heard it before . As entrepreneurs, we are all struggling to come up with a product that not only pays for itself but also gets adopted and admired by the masses. Last year, I developed an add-on plugin […]

Square For WooCommerce Is Now Available

Author

Emily Schiola

Filed Under

Featured, News

Published

July 26, 2016

No Comments

WooCommerce today announced a new integration with Square. The new extension opens up a slew of new options for store owners — you can now take purchases online or offline, have inventory updated automatically, sync product changes, and more. “Helping merchants to sell in new and innovative ways is one of our core ideals here at WooCommerce,” said Matty Cohen, product lead for WooCommerce in the press release. “Integrating with Square helps WooCommerce stores build a retail presence in the physical world, while also empowering existing Square merchants to connect an eCommerce storefront to their business.” The integration comes after years of […]

Developing A REST API App – Part 5: Adding Custom Endpoints And Extra Touches

Author

Tom Ewer

Filed Under

Development, Featured

Published

July 25, 2016

1 Comment

In the last part of our series, we stepped through building the basics of our app using Facebook’s React, and put together a simple solution where users could serve up nuggets of timeless wisdom on demand. This time around, we’ll concentrate on two main areas: adding a custom endpoint back in our WordPress site to make life a little easier when we’re delivering large amounts of quotations, and adding some small extra touches on the front end back in React. As a quick reminder of the overall setup, so far we’ve got a local WordPress install running at http://walden.dev/ and […]

9 Common Web Design Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

Author

Nick Schäferhoff

Filed Under

Beginners, E-Books, Featured

Published

July 22, 2016

10 Comments

Running your own website can be disappointing. You invest a lot of time, money and effort — only to be met with mediocre results. Maybe the surge of visitors you were hoping for is a mere trickle. Maybe those who do come to your site leave without taking any action. What to do? In that situation, most people would look at their content, SEO, or marketing strategy. However, another piece of the puzzle that is just as important but often neglected is your site’s web design. Website design mistakes can hurt your efforts. To avoid that situation, in today’s post […]

PHP Fundamentals For WordPress Developers

Author

Josh Pollock

Filed Under

Beginners, Development, Featured

Published

July 21, 2016

1 Comment

Like many WordPress developers, the first time I wrote PHP, I didn’t know anything about PHP or software development in general. As I started to tackle more advanced concepts, however, I struggled because I never learned the fundamentals of PHP that were assumed in the materials I encountered. Regardless of your stage in your process of learning PHP as a WordPress developer it’s important to make sure you know the basics. In this article, I will discuss PHP fundamentals: variables, constants, data types, functions, and scope. This knowledge will equip you to learn PHP and other languages, as most of […]

Developing a REST API App – Part 4: Creating Our React-Powered WordPress Site

Author

Tom Ewer

Filed Under

Featured

Published

July 18, 2016

4 Comments

In the last installment of our REST API App series, we started looking at the front end part of the puzzle and selected React as the solution we’d be running with. The reasons why were simple: it’s speedy, well-documented, and enjoys the support of one of the largest players in the business, Facebook. In order to check that we could get WordPress and React talking to each other, we downloaded the React Starter Kit locally and cobbled together a quick API call to display some arbitrary data from our local WordPress install. Though our test worked, we didn’t exactly go to […]

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