Category: Development

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The Challenges Of Building a Site For a Friend

I often receive referrals or friends asking me to set up a WordPress website for them. It's usually something fairly small - such as a 5-page business website or a simple magazine website. They are close friends of mine or have been recommended through my network. They have received some offers, but are looking for a reliable solution instead of a shady freelancer or a random website building company. [caption id="attachment_12623" align="aligncenter" width="821"] Costs vs. Value[/caption] Generally speaking, I usually price services based on one of these two approaches: Free help for friends and family for trivial tasks and general guidance.… Continue Reading
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Code Quality And Free Plugins

Update Apr 29, 2015: My friend Emil from ThemeReview.co announced their Plugin Review service which I highly recommend for all plugin authors, business owners and clients - high quality means higher security, better performance and compatibility for your project. We have these regular discussions on Open Source, the future of WordPress and such. I've been discussing the global community aspect and the challenges with the self-made development titles, so let's take a closer look at the community. Growing WordPress As I've said before, I'm all in when it comes to having an Open Source platform for everyone to use and play it. It's… Continue Reading
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The slippery slope of WordPress customizations

There are two things I highly admire in the WordPress ecosystem: being able to precisely budget small projects (where the tiniest error could ruin the entire profit, if not more) and do freelance customization work. We own a small brand under the DevriX hat called Premium WordPress Support, which started as a support engine for maintenance and retainers work. Currently we're testing different approaches related to marketing and SEO, advertisement campaigns and more, and the majority of incoming requests are related to customization work - WordPress websites, themes or plugins. The $500 client I was truly impressed by WP Site… Continue Reading
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Business Around WordPress

The latest WordPress pricing discussions went viral and it's apparently an important subject that should be discussed broadly at WordCamps. The large number of implementers out there are affecting the number of technical experts, and the competitive prices of other platforms lead us to the question: Why are the WordPress budgets underpriced? I'll share my experience so far as a single consultant and an agency owner. Costs of WordPress Development As a European WordPress developer I get occasional requests for WordPress development, and the budgets are often hilarious. At DevriX we get various requests where the budgets for the WordPress-based sites are often significantly lower than the ones… Continue Reading
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Web Development and WordPress Online Training

The end of my PHP course at the Software University is near, and I'm planning a new program for WordPress development. I've been teaching courses since 2006, take a look at my training portfolio. Few of the companies where I have trained employees are: VMware, SAP Labs, Software AG, Melexis, and I have also trained groups at CERN - the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and Saudi Aramco - the world's most valuable company. I am a seasoned teacher at several universities and technical schools, and I have presented at several WordCamps around the world, such as: Edinburgh, London, Oslo, Sofia, Porto, the Netherlands,… Continue Reading
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WordPress Products and Demos

Last year at WordCamp Sofia I gave a talk named "Choosing the right WordPress theme". Contrary to the first guesses title-wise, since I'm not a designer at all, my topic was focused on the different sources to find a theme, based on a given set of requirements. [slideshare id=36183038&doc=choosing-a-wordpress-theme-140623021748-phpapp01] Few of my slides were referring to the product piracy - the humongous number of products being pirated. Or probably the high percentage of users using illegal products. I know of thousands of people using non-licensed operating systems or other cracked products. It's a painful experience really, and it's hard for a product company to… Continue Reading
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Disable WordPress maintenance nag

In case of a WordPress multisite with a specific setup trying to run autoupdates, you could add the following to prevent the WordPress autoupdates: [php] define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false ); [/php] Hiding the automatic update messages in dashboard for site users and single site admins, you could disable the nag actions: [php] add_action( 'admin_init', 'dx_prevent_notifications' ); function dx_prevent_notifications() { if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_users' ) ) { remove_action( 'admin_notices', 'maintenance_nag' ); remove_action( 'network_admin_notices', 'maintenance_nag' ); } } [/php] Continue Reading
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WordCamp The Netherlands – May 10-11

I'm flying to WordCamp The Netherlands  in 6 hours and I'm going to share my thoughts on the WordPress Code Architecture. I've been brainstorming on that subject for years, ever since I've started working with WordPress, being technically challenged compared to all the other programming languages and design patterns I was used to until then. My slides are constantly "in progress" but I hope that I'll be able to share some of my thoughts to the folks there that would lead to a productive discussion rather than flame wars and such. All related comments are welcome upfront as well! Continue Reading
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update_blog_option()

I was dealing with network DB option filtering few weeks back and I was unable to find a proper way to use update_option, update_site_option or any relevant function to update the main site's option value. I just found update_blog_option which is pretty cool and it does the following inside: [php] ... switch_to_blog( $id ); $return = update_option( $option, $value ); restore_current_blog(); ... [/php] Since the option filtering is triggered per update option, I had to hack it with recursively switching the blog and resetting it after the second callback: [php] public function get_network_trzapi_key( $option ) { $site_id = get_current_blog_id(); if… Continue Reading
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My MVC Experiment for WordPress Plugins

I spent a few days last week working on a new plugin, trying to approach it from different angles and test a few development flows in a way that would possibly change the way I work. One of my experiments was related to building an MVC plugin for WordPress - and I failed to do that in a way that satisfies me. tl;dr - there are ways to build MVC plugins on the top of WordPress, some people do that, it didn't seem natural to me even if I like MVC a lot. Why MVC? Even if some developers, architects… Continue Reading