For those who haven’t been knocking around the WordPress sphere for a long time, there’s a possibility that the name “Chris Coyier” and CSS-Tricks isn’t so well known. Chris is great, generous thoughtful guy, and if you’ve got a front-end interest at all, you really should be following CSS-Tricks. To a degree rare in the world CSS-Tricks is just a consistently useful, modest, and modern place to read about all the parts of WordPress development, CSS very much included (though hardly the only topic).

I was tickled that we here at WPShout got cited in this guide he’s put together for people looking to learn WordPress development in 2020. My friend Jeremy swears by a guide Chris put together over a decade ago, now lost to history in the sands of rapid technology changes.

But I really link Chris’s guide because it strikes me as uniquely fully existing in the year 2020. A lot of content like this (ours sometimes included 😳) misses the latest updates. So it’s good to learn but not the-latest-and-greatest. Anyway, even if you already fancy yourself a WordPress developer I think this guide will maybe teach you a thing or two. Enjoy 🙂

WordPress 5.4, “Adderley,” launched yesterday, March 31, 2020. It’s a very Gutenberg-focused release, with two new default blocks—Buttons and Social Icons—plus a lot of other improvements to the block editor.

There are also some non-Gutenberg changes, including one that made me smile: apply_shortcodes() is now an alias for do_shortcode(). Hey, an effort toward naming consistency! Should apply_actions() be next? (That’s not currently a thing, right?)

Overall, it’s nice to see the WordPress Core team continuing to be all-in on developing Gutenberg, and to see that project slowly get more performant and feature-rich. Gutenberg certainly wasn’t perfect at launch, but it’s nice to have something in Core to invest in, polish, and develop over the months and years. The only alternative—hoping that the proliferation of third-party solutions will nail WordPress content creation for enough people—has significant downsides. The big question to me remains when, if ever, someone (probably not the Core team) will find a smoothly-working way to put Gutenberg on the front-end, which is where normal users want to be working.

Read all about WordPress 5.4 in the linked announcement.

From the insular dream-world of COVID-19 Quarantines sweeping into new countries everyday, this feels a little strange to be talking about WordCamp US. The idea that at some point in the future I’ll eventually go to a place where hundred of people intentionally huddle together, shake hands, etc. But it used to happen once upon a time. And I’m guessing that it will again.

So, when it does, why don’t you make yourself a VIP by speaking? That’s right! WordCamp US’s organizers have thrown open the doors to applications to speak at this coming November’s event—in-person or not. So if you’ve got an important and valuable talk you’d like to give to the audience, you should definitely apply to speak. And because I’m on top of things, I’m letting you know a few weeks before the application window closes. 🤓

WooCommerce 4.0 has shipped. I love WooCommerce, and I can’t think of another free software package in WordPress that has been the backbone of so many actually-profitable online small businesses.

So I say this fondly: WooCommerce is probably the least backwards-compatible major piece of the WordPress ecosystem. Updating it is the kind of nightmare that, as a WordPress developer, you’re more used to reading about in other software projects.

WooCommerce 4.0 straight-out admits that it’s not fully backwards-compatible with WooCommerce 3.x. I’ve heard a bit of “Yes, it broke” discussion on Facebook as well. So don’t just push the button: follow careful updating practices (start with a staging site and go from there) as described in the linked article, and happy updating.

An interesting thing as Gutenberg grows is that it’s aiming to impact both WordPress themes and page builders. And to do this, we may need or want a way for a theme to say it required a specific Gutenberg block to function. I have not thought deeply about it, but I see that Mel Choyce is. So please consider and opine with her about this possibility. Here are two parts of her initial proposal:

Themes can specify blocks.

When creating a theme, you can specify specific blocks from the Block Directory to include with your theme. These could be blocks you’ve written, or other blocks you’ve accounted for in your theme styles.

Activate blocks on theme activation.

When someone activates (not installs) your theme, WordPress can silently download the blocks from the Block Directory.

We love WP&UP, the UK-based charity whose mission is “Supporting and promoting positive mental health within the WordPress community.” We spoke with trustee/founder Dan Maby at WordCamp US 2018, and were beyond impressed not only with his mission but with how he proposes to go about fulfilling it—read about his four health hubs for details.

WP&UP can use your help, and they’ve listed eight ways you can contribute, from donating directly to joining in a global bake sale. Have a look, and check out WP&UP in depth while you’re there.

As someone who has been tracking both the WordPress world and the Laravel world for years, I was intrigued by Ross Wintle highlighting something I didn’t really know much about. (If I’m honest, it’s been about a year since I was dipping into Laravel regularly.)

Anyway, this Tinkerwell tool looks both interesting and fun. For *anyone* who does PHP development. And that Ross highlights some actual uses for WordPress-specific work meant I just had to share it. Give it a look, and make help Ross a bit by buying it with his link. Or just watch the video and write down on a someday-maybe list that you should buy it. (I’ll admit that’s what I did :p)

I’ve loved Torque Mag for a long time as a great source for both technical and editorial content based around WordPress—even if customer satisfaction data and personal experience have me feeling more lukewarm about WP Engine itself.

This article reminded me why. It’s a nicely accessible introduction to a customer journey map, with instructions for creating a simple map for your own business. Understanding your customer journeys is one manifestation of what seems like the single fundamental edict of marketing—customer empathy—and a topic that’s very relevant to my own needs, both here on WPShout (hi, by the way! let us know how we can help) and elsewhere.

One of the first and most powerful lessons I learned while teaching myself to code a decade ago was to read/listen/watch widely. I believe it is one of the most powerful choices you can make in learning to code (or in almost any endeavor). Because broader minds (ones which have been exposed to more things) are often *way* better problem-solvers than narrower ones. Because the solution space they can conceive is just so much bigger. But that’s enough “David’s Life Philosophy” for now.

The reason I’m going on about that because it was precisely this same lessons I saw when reading this nice little essay from Justin Tadlock over at the Tavern. I think the specifics of Justin’s story are both useful and interesting too. But it was his close that meant I had to share it with you:

Another benefit of working with other platforms from time to time is that you learn ideas that you can bring back into the WordPress ecosystem. For example, it is interesting to see how the Sage starter theme implements Laravel Blade’s templating engine. These ideas can help shape WordPress’ future.

Some ideas can be pushed into core WordPress. Others can improve team workflows within agencies.

Continuing education benefits the WordPress community as a whole. Don’t limit that education to WordPress-specific ideas. Learn from the outside and bring it back.

The first WordCamp Asia, scheduled in Bangkok from February 21 through February 23, has been canceled due to COVID-19 fears.

It’s an unfortunate start to what will be an amazing WordCamp Asia tradition, but there’ve been a lot of silver linings, including WordFence, Yoast, GoDaddy, and ServMask each chipping in $10,000 to help with airline and hotel change fees.

In general, from my distant vantage point (and drawing mostly on coverage in the always excellent Post Status newsletter), the logistics and decision making around the cancellation seem to speak highly of WordPress as a global community, idiosyncratically organized but quite functional and tight-knit.

Can’t wait to see everybody in 2021!

Our friend Carl Alexander wrote a (possibly) inflammatory but true argument for Delicious Brains this week. It reflects a lot of thoughts I’ve had as I’ve spent the last few years as one of the small minority of people trying to span the roles of  “WordPress” and “modern PHP” developer. In short, he’s said all I’ve thought in a fair, even handed, and useful way. While action is hardly guaranteed, helping to reach a public consensus about the state of WordPress PHP is the first step in evolving toward making it a modern PHP project (if that’s ever desired by enough of the right people, of course).

Here’s maybe the most important (to me) of Carl’s many good points:

Part of the reason for that is WordPress is a legacy application. The WordPress project itself is more than 15 years old, but it’s also a fork of another project called b2/cafelog. This was an open source project that had already existed for a few years before Matt and Mike decided to fork it. So all things considered WordPress is a lot closer to 20 years old.

Working with software that old brings unique challenges. Case in point: Your development practices tilt towards not keeping up with what others may be doing in the industry. This is especially true with WordPress. That’s because the PHP ecosystem wasn’t at all like it is now when the WordPress project started.

I’ve got a client with a custom nav menu link pointing to a third-party service. He wanted that custom link to open in a new tab, and I realized I didn’t know how to do it.

Fortunately, opening a menu link in a new tab is easy, and it’s available in WordPress core—no plugins or custom code required. The linked article gives a perfect visual guide to it.

The solution is interesting for a couple of reasons:

1. It’s another of many examples where something perfectly easy is hidden thanks to the “Screen Options” interface.
2. It’s an example where something useful is available through the backend Menu interface, but not the Customizer menu interface.

Two last thoughts: hardcoding “open this link in a new tab” is not great for UI/UX generally, since you’re making a decision for the user—proliferate tabs—that she should either be able to make herself (if she knows her browser), or that she may not want made. Also, accessibility guidelines stipulate that links you’re going to set to open in a new tab should include an indication that you are doing so, like the icons Wikipedia uses. So just saying, don’t go crazy.

In 2020, Fred and I are prioritizing featuring writing from people other than ourselves on WPShout. If you’ve got an urge to write clear, useful, and interesting technical tutorials for the WPShout audience, this is the perfect opportunity for you. We’re still locking in all the details, but in short it’d likely be at most an article assignment per month, where you’ll write about 1500 words (ideally with some code snippets 🤓) about your favorite things in WordPress adjacent code.

Especially qualified candidates will help us write great tutorials on many different things, but we’re especially looking to get more great content about how to build your own Gutenberg blocks and how to make it into the page-builder of your clients dreams.

A few quick details to clarify here: this is *paid* writing work. And we’ll follow up with qualified candidates within a few weeks. We look forward to hearing from you!