Category: Back-End Development




How to Create WordPress Custom Page Templates (& Why)

There are many many ways you can change the look of a specific page on your WordPress site. You can change the content inside the WordPress content editor. You can change the CSS rules that affect the site. Or create a new file in your WordPress theme’s template hierarchy to correspond to the specific page. Or you can use a theme page template designed specifically for that page. The last one is what we’re talking about here. In this tutorial we’ll cover both how to create a WordPress custom page template, and why you might want to do that. We’ll start with the why.


Course: WordPress Theme Development (Core Concepts)

person learning wordpress theme development

Welcome! WordPress themes are one of the most important topics that one must understand to be good at WordPress development. Themes underlie the entire visual half of WordPress sites, but often grow to do even more. Because of the visual importance, they’re a great place to dive in if you’re interested in getting to the “code-side” of WordPress. I myself “cut my teeth” on WordPress themes back in 2007 and 2008. WordPress themes were where I started to come to grips with the power (and limits) of PHP, CSS, and HTML. So this course is great for newbies, and those just looking to confirm their understanding of the whole system.


WordPress Hooks, Actions, and Filters: What They Do and How They Work

hook | wordpress hooks actions and filters

This article introduces one of the most important topics in WordPress development: WordPress hooks, including action hooks and filter hooks. Hooks are at the core not only of how WordPress plugins work, but nearly all code in the WordPress ecosystem: most WordPress themes use hooks heavily, as does “WordPress core” itself. WordPress hooks are absolutely a must-know topic in WordPress development.


Defer Parsing of JavaScript in WordPress

It’s a common complaint when you run your WordPress site through any “page speed score” tool: “defer parsing of JavaScript” and/or “remove render-blocking JavaScript.” Today, building on an article Fred first wrote in 2015, I’m going to discuss a was to solve that. It’s been possible since WordPress 4.1, which introduced of a new filter, script_loader_tag. This filter lets us easily change the HTML markup of enqueued script elements—that is, of JavaScript files that were correctly added into a WordPress site using WordPress’s wp_enqueue_script function.



Using Custom Taxonomies and Custom Fields in WordPress Development

This course covers the key points of two of WordPress’s most powerful APIs for defining custom post data: custom fields (also called post meta), and custom taxonomies. The course introduces each tool, and then—since some problems can be addressed by either tool—covers practical guidelines for when to use custom fields and when to use custom taxonomies.


An Introduction to the WordPress PHP Coding Standards

wordpress coding standards

Coding makes you follow rules – every language has its own syntax to which you have to adhere if you want your code to compile or run. But there is another set of rules, that while isn’t essential for the actual running the code, helps in peripheral parts of coding. These rules are called Coding Standards.