This article explains “server-side vs. client side” in WordPress development. This distinction, and how the server side and client side interact, is at the core of not only WordPress development, but of any real understanding of how the web works.

Last week, we transitioned WPShout (and all our other web properties) onto SSL, a major security step that also has numerous other benefits. This article documents a few important recurring “gotchas” in transitioning WordPress sites onto SSL.

Last week we wrote about an amazing new project to secure the internet: Let’s Encrypt, which offers trusted, secure SSL certificates to everyone for completely free.

David spoke at a PHP conference on the essentials of WordPress this past weekend, and met a lot of cool people. One of them was Gary Hocking, developer advocate for the popular PHP integrated development environment (IDE) PHPStorm. It’s under active development and PHPStorm 11 has an Early Access Program — so if you want to get on the bleeding edge of a great PHP development environment, check it out!

By default, you can’t look directly at PHP processing, only at its effects.

Halloween’s coming up, and it seems like a good time to remember all the moments of abject terror WordPress has brought into my life. Programming in WordPress is fun for the most part, but, especially as you’re learning, you’ll sometimes hit errors that are both incomprehensible and devastatingly severe. If you really need the site you’re working on to function properly, that can be an edge-of-your-seat experience.

Fred and I were just talking the other day about how initially-confusing the way you do Ajax requests in WordPress was to us. Both of us, completely independently, encountered a plugin we were trying to understand, knew was using Ajax, and couldn’t for the life of us tell how. It’s just not obvious when you’re new to all the concepts involved.