Yesterday I was pleased to speak at the WordPress Cheltenham group. My talk was all how to write extensible WordPress code. I actively speak and have spoken at a number of these local events and something I wanted to explore was filming to talks to put up on the web. Here is how I did it and the kit that I used.
I gave a talk at WordPress Cheltenham about “How to write extensible WordPress code”. You can view the information about the talk here:
https://highrise.digital/blog/how-to-write-extensible-wordpress-code/
Thanks to WordPress core making plugins to add functionality is not that difficult. However for each plugin you make, there are some sound principles you should follow in order to make your plugin the best it can be.
This talk will teach you some of the principles to follow when making your plugins, which will make it easier for you to develop and upgrade your plugin, as well as allowing other developers to make changes in a safer way and keep things secure. Ideal for beginners and intermediate developers in plugin development.
WordPress is known for its extensibility – the ability to change the behaviour of the software without breaking the core code. This is added through plugins and themes.
Understanding how to extend WordPress is essential if you want to develop solutions using WordPress. This talk will teach you how actions and filters work, with some practical and theoretical examples to illustrate their functionality.
Attendees should hopefully come away from this talk with a greater understanding on how actions and filters, or hooks as they are collectively known, can unlock the door to building greater things with WordPress, and as I worked out being able to say “Wow, you can do (almost) anything with WordPress!”.
WordPress allows users to manage their content through the WordPress admin screens. This means users can add, edit and delete content and media and manage their sites without the need to ask developers for every change. WordPress is a content management system, but all too often it can end up becoming a content mismanagement system when editing and managing the site is just too difficult, This talk goes through some of the ways in which we build sites so they are easy to content manage, whilst allowing clients to edit pretty much all of their site. It will cover the different methods we use to make content management easy and some of the problems that we see with sites we have been asked to improve. Hopefully by the end of this talk attendees will come away with some practical examples on how to make content management with WordPress easier and quicker for users.
I received some great feedback about the talk.
In 2013/2014 the UK government made major changes to the ICT curriculum, most notably removing a lot of the traditional “how to use” content and replacing this with a Computing focused curriculum. As a former teacher at the time I went through this transition.
In this talk I outline what is now taught in UK schools at the moment along with some of the techniques and software programs used to get these skills and knowledge across to our youngsters. The talk touches on the role WordPress could and perhaps should play in the curriculum.
View the video below. My talk starts at 18 minutes in as I was the second speaker.
Taxonomies have been around in WordPress for a long time as a way of grouping things together, but did you know there is a lot you can do with taxonomies which you may not know? In this talk I will outline what taxonomies are and how you can create your own custom taxonomies. I will share some use cases for having custom taxonomies as well as some different and interesting ways in which I have used taxonomies on some sites in the past. In addition I will looks at some of the ways in which you can optimise the admin UI for taxonomies, making it more appropriate in some cases. The talk will also look at how you can associate data with different taxonomy terms.
How do you get a plugin onto the WordPress.org repository? What steps do you need to take? Are there any specific requirements? These are just some of the questions this talk, aimed at anyone who wants to push a plugin to the WordPress.org repository will answer. We will go through the steps you need to take in order to prepare your plugin, some best practices in the plugin code and how to submit it to .org.
During a discussion over on the WP UK Community Slack channels I was asked by Jenny Wong “I would like to know what drives you to be a WordCamp Speaker?” After a little discussion after I thought this would make a really good blog post – so here goes!
I thought it would be a good idea to give you a little background on my WordCamp speaking. It all started back in 2014 when I was encouraged to speak at WordCamp Sheffield, a one-day WordCamp organised by Kimb Jones and others. I spoke about Customising the WordPress admin for clients and the talk went very well. I was very nervous before hand but I was made to feel very welcome and comfortable and it passed without incident!
Last year I spoke at WordCamp Manchester about freelancing. The talk went down well and I enjoyed sharing my experiences of finally being an established freelancer. Fast forward nearly 6 months and I am no longer freelancing. Today I can introduce my new business, in partnership with Keith Devon, we have launched Highrise Digital Ltd.
I have worked with Keith for 18 months now, as a freelancer on a number of projects. We met at the WordPress London Meetup in September 2014 where I spoke about my development setup. At the time Keith was on the lookout for freelancers to help him with projects that he had at the time.
We worked really well together with complementary skills sets. Keith very much more front-end focused and me liking to work in the back-end of WordPress. The projects we worked on were a great success and it became obvious that we should go into business together at the back-end of 2015.
So Highrise Digital Ltd was born on February 5th 2016, when we incorporated the business and set things up officially. We spent much of the early part of the discussions deciding what to call the business and agreeing on some branding. You can find out about this, on this post Keith wrote about the experience.
The last few weeks have been extremely busy getting the business setup and in the right place to trade correctly. However it is very exciting and I look forward to working with Keith for many years to come on lots of exciting WordPress projects!
