A Brief Guide on Modern WordPress Development

WordPress is now decades old! All website enthusiasts are spoiled by the overconsumption of the documentation and tutorials involved. Due to this, a heap of knowledge has been covered and we are spoiled by the expertise.

One of the most widely used platforms, WordPress has its own good reason. Still, the legacy is held by the codes in the backend and it is a problem for third-party developers. Some developers look for an excuse to cut corners in WordPress PHP code. However, this is a more long-run approach but also comes with a bunch of trivial changes.

In this article, we will learn about Modern WordPress Development- providing inspiration for everyone who seeks good practices to follow and establish their own way of working for WordPress sites.

Git Plays the Prime Role in Workflow

Git is believed to play a prime role in the WordPress workflow. Wondering why? It makes collaboration a tad bit more manageable and also allows numerous people to work on the same project. Code Review is used for high coding standards for Modern WordPress Development.

WordPress Starter Theme

Every WordPress theme development workflow has a prerequisite to having a basic theme structure- this is a repeatable task and can be automated easily. All the starter themes are created out of the box elements and necessary components.

WordPress Development Workflow

Gulp

WordPress Development workflow is built upon Gulp- it is a toolkit that helps in the automation of painful and time-consuming tasks for the development. Gulp is able to handle the following tasks in an efficient manner-

• Sass to CSS conversion
• Merging Media Queries
• LIVE Reload Browser with Browsersync
• CSS Minification
• CSS Sourcemaps
• JS Concatenation
• JS Minification/ Uglification
• Separate vendor
• Custom JS Files Handling
• Minification or Optimization of Images
• Watching for Changes in files to Recompile

How does Gulp help?

Gulp workflow helps in the easy running of several commands in a console:

• NPM Installation is required for installing the tools required for the development workflow
• NPM Run Dev also enables in starting development processes
• NPM Run Build helps in building the optimizing package that enables running in the production environment.

Sass

Sass is considered a CSS preprocessor of the choice, making CSS writing easier and quicker. As we put the Sass in the right place, CSS becomes comparatively smaller, easier to maintain, and therefore, less complicated. Sass helps in performing the following development workflow:

• Use of Variables
• Code Modularization using partials
• Extending CSS to cover specific selectors
• Using math operators
• Nesting CSS selectors

Bootstrap 4

Bootstrap 4 had its first version launched in 2017- it was a game-changer in the CSS framework. This version is based entirely on Sass variables and mixins that allow for fast and easy creation of Bootstrap framework variations. Bootstrap 4 helps in completing the following tasks in the workflow development:

• Sass variables and mixins
• Extensive Pre-built components
• Powerful plugins built on jQuery
• Responsive grid system enabling Mobile-first approach

Working with the source code in Bootstrap 4 allows the developer to load components needed and not more. Depending upon needs, they can be utilized and the components from the CSS files can be used.

WordPress Development Theme

All the WordPress Development theme makes use of the best code for WordPress development. The PHP coding standards are used as per the Codex tutorial. Moreover, it shines a light on the following:

• Helps in extracting more specific logic to standalone plugins rather than putting everything into the functions.php
• Helps keep the functions.php file clean and highly organized.
• Use WordPress AJAX for the best user experience
• Themes always are 100% translation ready
• Extensive use of Action and Filter Hooks
• Using correctly template tags as well as overall template hierarchy

What are the Tools Required for Modern WordPress Development?

WordPress offers a robust foundation for building custom web applications for software developers. In case, one wants to build custom themes and plugins for WordPress development workflow. You need to have a more sturdy toolset than merely the WordPress dashboard and an FTP client. Having the tools makes you efficient in work, collaborate with other developers, recover from errors, and avoid costly mistakes.

Here are some of the tools-

Bootstrap 4

Tracks changes to the files that collaboratively make the WordPress website, allowing you to save versions of the respective files. Deploying the version tool helps in undoing the changes made to the WordPress site for restoring the site back to the required version. Whether you do not like the current version or the changes made in the CSS or PHP file, or you do not remember what changes were made to the website four to six months ago. With the version tool, you can have the complete history of the changes and also access the records of the changes made to them.
Tracks changes to the files that collaboratively make the WordPress website, allowing you to save versions of the respective files. Deploying the version tool helps in undoing the changes made to the WordPress site for restoring the site back to the required version. Whether you do not like the current version or the changes made in the CSS or PHP file, or you do not remember what changes were made to the website four to six months ago. With the version tool, you can have the complete history of the changes and also access the records of the changes made to them.

Text Editor

Any text editor can be used with WordPress for editing the source files of the WordPress website. There are a lot of free ones too in the market. Download them or you can have them bundled with the computer- for instance, TextEdit for Mac OS X. However, for the developers doing more than just editing a few lines of code, then you need a more robust and commercial text editor. Use the text editor that is specifically made for software development for quick and easy editing. These editors have developer-friendly features including coding standards, code completion, style checkers, and integrated debuggers. These attributes help in saving time during the software development and thus improve the quality of the WordPress code.

Local Development Environment

It is always advised to avoid developing directly on the Production Server. In fact, it is best that you create a choice of local development environment that easily runs on personal accounts on your computer. This prevents any site visitors from seeing the developmental work in progress. Also, you can protect your website from any bugs that make their way to your production site and end up bringing more severe consequences.

In case you want to catch as many bugs as possible when you test your website locally. It is essential that the developmental environment matches the production as much as possible. Also known as Dev-Prod Parity, it helps you save headaches of time for deploying the application to production. It can be done easily with Vagrant which runs inside a virtualized environment known as Virtual Box.

Database Access

There are times when a website needs custom development and you need access to the WordPress database for your website. If you are digging into standard WordPress tables for working with data. Or, you may add custom tables and fields for working within a plugin. You will need a SQL client to connect quickly, easily, and securely to both the local databases present in your local development environment and the production database.

Use WP- CLI

WordPress command-line interface or WP-CLI is a powerful tool for administering any and every WordPress installation. Having access to this tool means having the ability to run virtually any WordPress API functions.

For instance, you may wish to add, remove, and edit users and their passwords with WP-CLI. If you have inherited the website and the website owner has locked themselves out, then this WordPress Command-line Interface is useful.

The initial development becomes an easy task with WP- CLI that also can be accomplished with the following commands-

• Searching and replacing the database
• Downloading themes, cores, and plugins
• Adding the admin user

Benefits of Modern WordPress Development Workflow

Modern WordPress Development has significant quality of code in WordPress. In general, the quality code under its workflow:

Here are some of the tools-

Readable

The codes are easy to understand- what it does and why.

Modular

The smaller blocks of code have a clear purpose for easy understanding, development, and testing.

Reusable

Reusing the already developed modules to solve similar problems significantly helps in speeding up the developmental process and workflow.

Maintainable

Helps in modifying the old functionality as well as introducing new features becomes easier.
The ultimate results are lower cost of development and ownership that highlights more of the benefits that we didn’t cover here.

Conclusion

The most common argument against all the tools and techniques mentioned above is the WordPress way of doing the things that still function well- and this way is supposed to be better compared to all the new and shiny things.

Since WordPress developers are aware of the latest developments, they use WordPress functions and the latest tools now more than ever. All these are also used in the newer parts of the core due to their core advantages. The one thing that holds one back is “the legacy factor” that no one is going to refactor.

The bottom line is that Modern WordPress development helps businesses to save a lot in all aspects and levels.