This extended category features quality articles about developing clean, smart and fast websites with WordPress.
The articles are intermediate level, with an emphasis on practical, hands-on discussions related to WordPress.
Curated by Daniel Pataki.
WordPress is a wonderfully powerful CMS that ships with many versatile features giving it the flexibility to work out of the box for a wide range of users. However, if you are a professional building custom themes and plugins, sometimes these features can be problematic.
The same features and options that allow off-the-shelf themes to adapt to many different use cases can sometimes also... Read More
If you have an e-commerce website, then SSL is mandatory for safely processing credit cards. But even if you aren’t processing payments, you should still seriously consider secure HTTP (or HTTPS), especially now that I’m going to show you how to set it up quickly, for free. Let’s get started.
In short, SSL is the "S" in HTTPS. It adds a layer of encryption to HTTP that ensures that the... Read More
Editor's Note: Today marks a special day for WordPress. Powering many websites (and yes, Smashing Magazine is one of them), it celebrates its 13th birthday today. Happy birthday, dear WordPress! Here's to many more!
Do you remember when you could run a “fast” WordPress website with just an Apache server and PHP? Yeah, those were the days! Things were a lot less complicated back then.
... Read More
Anyone who has created a WordPress plugin understands the need to create configurable fields to modify how the plugin works. There are countless uses for configurable options in a plugin, and nearly as many ways to implement said options. You see, WordPress allows plugin authors to create their own markup within their settings pages. As a side effect, settings pages can vary greatly between... Read More
Many WordPress superpowers come from its flexible data architecture that allows developers to widely customize their installations with custom post types, taxonomies and fields. However, when it comes down to its search, WordPress provides us with only one-field form that often appears inadequate and leads site admins to adopt external search systems, like Google Custom Search, or third-party... Read More
An increasingly large number of publicly available APIs provide powerful services to expand the functionality of our applications. WordPress is an incredibly dynamic and flexible CMS that powers everything from small personal blogs to major e-commerce websites and everything in between. Part of what makes WordPress so versatile is its powerful plugin system, which makes it incredibly easy to... Read More
Earlier this year, WordPress passed the 24% mark, running almost a quarter of all websites — and for good reason. It has a loyal user base and scores of dedicated developers who bring better features to the system year round.
This article is for those of you who either are new to WordPress or are regular users who want to learn about the best way to run a WordPress website. We’ll be... Read More
The WordPress platform is a magnet for those who want to take matters into their own hands, who want complete control over their websites and want to be independent in running them. WordPress does make it really easily to completely customize a website. If you have a bit of knowledge of HTMl, CSS and/or PHP, there is nothing you can’t change.
I mean, just compare the default themes,... Read More
Even though hooks in WordPress are amazing and everyone uses them knowingly or unknowingly, I get the impression that some advanced users and especially front-end developers still seem to avoid them. If you feel like you’ve been holding back on hooks, too, then this article will get you started. I am also going to reveal some interesting details to anyone who thinks they are familiar enough... Read More
