Editor’s note: Today we’re delighted to invite back one of WPShout’s dearest friends: Josh Pollock!

The inner workings of PHP aren’t something most WordPress developers need to worry about too much. Especially if you focus on the front end and are a master of flex-box (I’m neither) you probably can safely never understand the subtleties of copies and passing-by-reference in PHP (or any other programming language). But as you make more complex plugins, this stuff starts to get kind of important. Important enough that you should read this great article by our friend Josh Pollock and get at least a little familiar with it.

In line with this week’s interview with REST API educator galore Josh Pollock, here’s a public service announcement that Josh has published a wonderful and completely free (as in beer) e-book introduction to the REST API over on Torque.

Our pal Josh Pollock has a great little post over on Torque about the what, why, and how of using nonces in WordPress. They’re a pretty developer-specific feature — an average user doesn’t and shouldn’t have to understand — but they’re powerful and important to prevent some of the most basic security vulnerabilities.