WordPress development best practices. Presented at CPOSC 2012 10/27/2012

1. DOING_IT_RIGHT() WITH
WORDPRESS
Ryan Duff
Fusionized Technology

2. WHO AM I
• Using WordPress since 2004 (version 1.2)
• WordPress Professional for hire

3. WHY DO IT RIGHT
• Save yourself time
• Save others time
• Save your clients money
• Save everybody from headaches

4. WAYS TO DO IT RIGHT
• Learn to organize your code
• ... document your code
• ... optimize your code
• Don’t reinvent the wheel
• Action Hooks and Filters
• Other very bad things to avoid

5. FIRST THINGS FIRST
• Use the debug bar plugin
define(‘WP_DEBUG’, true);
define(‘WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY, false);
define(‘SAVEQUERIES’, true);

6. ORGANIZE YOUR CODE
• What goes in a plugin?
• What goes in a theme?
• Utilize mu-plugins/

7. ORGANIZE YOUR CODE
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy

8. DOCUMENT YOUR CODE
/**
* Simple and uniform HTTP request API.
*
* Standardizes the HTTP requests for WordPress. Handles cookies, gzip
encoding and decoding, chunk
* decoding, if HTTP 1.1 and various other difficult HTTP protocol
implementations.
*
* @link http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4779 HTTP API Proposal
*
* @package WordPress
* @subpackage HTTP
* @since 2.7.0
*/

9. OPTIMIZE YOUR CODE
• Cache
• Get rid of rotten database queries

10. OPTIMIZE YOUR CODE
set_transient( $transient, $value, $expiration );
get_transient( $transient );
delete_transient( $transient );

11. OPTIMIZE YOUR CODE
• Make sure the code you’re expecting matches
• Use $wpdb class in the correct cases, WP_Query otherwise
• Sanitize everything http://codex.wordpress.org/Data_Validation

12. DON’T REINVENT THE WHEEL
• Clever code is not clever.
• Use built in APIs and methods

13. WORDPRESS APIS
• Dashboard widgets • Plugin
• Database • Rewrite
• HTTP • Settings
• File Header • Shortcode
• Filesystem • Theme modification
• Metadata • Transients
• Options • Widgets

14. ACTION HOOKS AND FILTERS
• Hooks are places to DO things
• Filters are ways to CHANGE things

15. MORE THINGS NOT TO DO
• Don’t downgrade jQuery
• Don’t create unnecessary settings
• Don’t forget to update

16. SECURE CODE
• esc_html()
• esc_attr()
• esc_url()
• $wpdb->prepare()
http://codex.wordpress.org/Data_Validation

17. HOW TO LEARN MORE
• Read the code and contribute http://core.trac.wordpress.org
• Ask questions in #wordpress on freenode

18. QUESTIONS?
Ryan Duff
Fusionized Technology
http://fusionized.com
@ryancduff