BRIDGING THE GAP: FROM WORDPRESS BEGINNER TO

WORDPRESS WIZARD

WHO I AM: MATTHEW VACCARO

WHAT I DO:

ALL ENCOMPASSING IDEA-MAKER OF THE WEB AND OTHER THINGS

HOW TO CONTACT ME:

MATTHEWVACCARO.COM

SLIDES POSTED ON: SLIDESHARE.NET/MATTYVAC

STEP 1: MAKE AN AWESOME ENVIRONMENT

FOUNDATION IS IMPORTANT!

•  USE YOUR OWN HOSTING SERVICE INSTEAD OF A SIGN-UP “ONE CLICK” SITE

•  ADMIN YOUR OWN DV SERVER FOR BONUS POINTS (SETUP NGINX FOR SUPER EXTRA POINTS)

•  SETUP LOCAL (MAMP/WAMP), DEVELOPMENT, STAGING, AND PRODUCTION SPACES

•  SETUP GITHUB (OR CAPISTRANO IF YOU ARE REALLY AWESOME)

•  LEARN HOW TO USE phpMyAdmin

  NOT REALLY GOOD - SORTA GOOD - BEST EDIT ON FTP - COPY TO LOCAL AND IMPORT - USE GITHUB!  

STEP 2: BE A SECURE SALLY EASY STEPS TO A SECURE WP INSTALL:

•  RENAME TABLE PREFIXES ON INSTALL (OR AFTER)

•  DISABLE ROOT LOGIN ON SERVER

•  DISABLE GUEST/ANONYMOUS FTP LOGINS ON SERVER

•  REMOVE ‘ADMIN’ DEFAULT USERNAME

•  RESET USER PASSWORDS PERIODICALLY

•  IF YOU ARE USING A CRON/BASH SCRIPT TO PUSH STAGING TO PRODUCTION

SCRAMBLE ALL PASSWORDS DURING THE PUSH AND “SALT” THEM

•  USE A SECURITY PLUGIN IF YOU’RE LAZY (JUST KIDDING THEY ARE USEFUL)

•  SEARCH THE CODEX “HARDENING WORDPRESS” FOR OTHER IDEAS SUCH AS

LOGGING OR BACKING UP

 

STEP 3: DEVELOP LIKE A PRO*

LEARNING PHP (FOR WORDPRESS) AND THE ABILITY DISSECT CODE ON YOUR OWN IS PARAMOUNT.

THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THIS KNOWLEDGE WHEN TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT’S WRONG WITH

YOUR WEBSITE.

INSTEAD OF USING FRONTPAGE, EXPRESSIONS WEB, ADOBE MUSE:

USE DREAMWEAVER, APTANA STUDIO, SUBLIMETEXT, OR EVEN NOTEPAD(++)

MY CURRENTLY USED AND RECOMMENDED INSTALL PACKAGE (MAC):

SUBLIMETEXT, GITHUB, CODEKIT, MAMP (BONUS: USE LESS OR SASS CSS)

…AFTER YOU BECOME AN AWESOME DEVELOPER, USE TRANSIENTS FOR CACHING!

* RELEASE BUGS INTO PRODUCTION, ACCIDENTALLY DELETE CODE, DON’T LISTEN TO QA, “WELL IT WORKS IN DEV”  

DON’T BE A “THERE’S A PLUGIN FOR THAT” PERSON!

STEP 3.5: BECOME FRIENDS WITH THE FUNCTIONS

AS PART OF BEING A WORDPRESS DEVELOPMENT WIZARD LEARNING THE WORDPRESS

FUNCTIONS CAN SPEED UP DEVELOPMENT AND ALLOW YOUR IDEAS TO FLOURISH.

THERE IS A FUNCTION FOR ALMOST EVERYTHING!

•  BOOKMARK THE WORDPRESS CODEX (CODEX.WORDPRESS.ORG)

•  FUNCTIONS WILL HELP YOU PULL DATA, DISPLAY THINGS, AND MAKE YOUR INSTALL

AWESOME!

•  BONUS: WHEN A SPECIFIC FUNCTION ISN’T AVAILABLE, USE PHP/MYSQL AND PRE-

EXISTING FUNCTIONS TO GRAB THE DATA YOU NEED  

EXAMPLE:  

//---Top navigation list pages function top_nav_list_pages( $page_id_array, $transient_name ){

if( ($transient_pages = get_transient( $transient_name ) ) === false ) { $args = array( 'include' => $page_id_array, 'sort_column' => 'menu_order' ); $transient_pages = get_pages( $args ); set_transient( $transient_name, $transient_pages, 30*60 ); } foreach ( $transient_pages as $pagg ) { $title = $pagg->post_title; $url = get_permalink( $pagg->ID ); echo '<li><a href="'.$url.'">'.$title.'</a></li>'; }

}

//---Return the exact URL function exact_url(){

return $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; }

STEP 4: DESIGN WIZARDRY

THEMES MAKE THINGS LOOK NICE, MAKE THINGS ACCESSIBLE, AND MAKE THINGS AWESOME!

PRE-MADE THEMES ARE COOL, BUT MAY NOT INCLUDE ALL OF THE NEEDED MODULES AND

FUNCTIONS YOU WANT…BUT DON’T GO ADDING A MILLION PLUGINS…

•  DESIGN YOUR OWN THEMES FROM A BLANK THEME (SUCH AS “BLANKSLATE”)

•  CHILD THEMES WILL HELP WITH THIS IF YOU WANT TO PIGGY-BACK OFF OF A PURCHASED THEME

•  USE WIREFRAMES TO MAP DATA AND THEN DESIGN AN AMAZING THEME IN PHOTOSHOP!

•  [GOING BACK TO OUR DEVELOPMENT TALK A LITTLE BIT] TRY TO AVOID CROP AND CUT CODE

CREATORS

•  …OR DON’T DO ANY OF THAT AND MAKE YOUR SITE BY USING PURE CSS STRAIGHT ON THE WEB!  

STEP 5: BE A BETTER YOU (BE A WIZARD)

KEEP UP WITH THE TIMES AND THE INDUSTRY, RESEARCH, READ, TRY, AND DO!

•  RESPONSIVE DESIGN, MOBILE FIRST, ETC.

FOLLOW PEOPLE ON THE INTERTUBES!

WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER, BY USING PRE-EXISTING TOOLS TO DO COMPLEX OR TIME-CONSUMING WORK. SUCH AS A JAVA

UNSCRAMBLER FOR GARBLED CODE (http://jsbeautifier.org/) OR BROWSER PLUGINS FOR CHROME (OR OTHER BROWSERS)

WHICH ALLOW YOU TO SELECT ITEMS ON THE PAGE TO GET INFORMATION ON THEM (WHATFONT?, EYEDROPPED, RESISR,

FIREBUG, ETC).

DON’T GET BOGGED DOWN IN PLANNING AND “THINKING”, 9 TIMES OUT OF 10 “DOING” IS GOING TO PRODUCE THE BEST

RESULTS (JUST NOT ON THE PRODUCTION SERVER).

 

  BE HAPPY!  

EL FIN (THE END)