Slides from the Brisbane WordPress Meetup Group Author: NIk Cree

1. 11 Amazing Things I
Learnt At
Whistle Stop Tour Of Key Learnings

2. It’s All About You
!
- Dee Teal

3. Contribute to WordPress
• Core
• UI
• Accessibility
• Mobile
• Support
• Polyglots
• Themes
• Documentation
• Community
• Plugins
• Training
• Meta
make.wordpress.org

4. “The best, most incredible part of all of
contributing is the amazing people I’ve met.”
– Dee Teal

5. 2 Streams
Tech Stream
User Stream

6. 1. CSS Naming Conventions
!
Peter Wilson

7. CSS Naming Conventions
Why?!
• Avoid Conflicts
• Meaningful Descriptive Names
• Infer HTML from CSS
• Avoid Clashes With WP Core
• More Efficient Code

8. Two Naming Conventions
• BEM
• Block, Element, Modifier
• e.g. .single-post__entry-title—entryTitleHover
• Suit CSS
• Pascal Case (Best to avoid conflicts)
• e.g. .SinglePost-entryTitle_entryTitleHover

9. Read More…
CSSNamingConventions.com

10. 2. Best Practice For
WordPress Coding
!
Luke Carbis

11. Scripts & Styles
• Don’t put directly in head or footer = BAD
• Enque = GOOD
• wp_register_script
• wp_enque_script
• wp_register_style
• wp_enque_style

12. AJAX
• Localise Your Scripts
• wp_localize_script
• makes it translatable

13. Prefixing
• Prefix functions with your theme or plugin slug - a
Unique Name
• Avoids conflicts, fatal errors and the white screen of
death

14. Sanitizing & Escaping
• echo home_url(); <= Don’t Do This
• echo esc_url( home_url () ); <= Do This
• Stops malicious code being injected
codex.wordpress.org/
Validating_Sanitizing_and_Escaping_User_Data#Esc
aping:_Securing_Output

15. Coding Standards
Use Tab not Space

16. Yoda Conditions
Protection against simple mistakes
if ( true === $the_force ) {
$victorious = you_will( $be );
}

17. Make Life Easy Later
Make Code readable rather than clever

18. Use Braces
Always use braces, even where not required.
Not this:
if ( condition() )
return true;
This:
if ( condition() ) {
return true;
}

19. Check Code Standards
github.com/WordPress-Coding-Standards

20. 3 Steps To Becoming An
Awesome Coder
Read Code
Have Your Code Peer Reviewed
Refactor Your Old Code

21. 3. Theme And Plugin Localisation
!
Brian Miyaji

22. Theme And Plugin
Localisation
• Allow your theme and plugin to be translatable
• Other people will do the translations
WHY?!
• Only 27% Internet Users Speak English
• Double Your Conversion Rate

23. Display In Other Languages
WPML Plugin to Serve Different Languages
Translate Pages

24. 4. Popping The Bonnet and
Getting Your Hands Dirty
!
Scott Huntley

25. Popping The Bonnet and
Getting Your Hands Dirty
• Use Child Themes rather than modifying a theme
• SALT
• Jump Into CODEX and learn

26. 5. 99 Ways To Optimise WordPress
Performance
!
James Banks

27. 99 Ways To Optimise
WordPress Performance
• MaxCDN or Cloudflare
• W3 Total Cache
• Good Host
• Host close to most of your customers
• Use Pingdom to check site performance
• WebPageTest.com for finer details of speed testing
• YSLOW or Google Page Speed
• Minimise HTTP Requests - check timeline in webdev tools
• Better WordPress Minify Plugin (Test is works properly)
• Apply the 70/30 Image Compression rule(70% image quality - if OK then drop it down to 35%)
• Compress Images - Use PNG Gauntlet
• Use ImageOptim for Mac
• …and more
goo.gl/NZ3kxt

28. 6. The Internet Of Things
!
Steve Cooper

30. PayPal + WooCommerce
+Cafe

31. Swipe - No Touch
Hygienic For Cafes

32. 7. Being The Leader Of Your Tribe
!
Troy Dean

33. Don’t Do It All
• Delegate & Outsource (zirtual.com)
• Do A Task Once Then Delegate
• Screenflow task
• Upload to Vimeo
• VA write the system

34. Create And Lead A Tribe
• Podcasting
• Publish regularly and Often
• Become to leader in you field
• Narrow your market
• Know your client

35. 8. Mastering Custom Post Types
!
Ajax McKerral

36. Mastering Custom Post
Types
• Make It Easy For Clients To Manage
• Avoid Shortcode Hell
• Use WP_Query to manipulate data (See Codex)

37. 9. SEO Is Easy
!
Kate Toon

38. SEO
!
• Now called “Inbound Marketing”
• Panda = Relevant Content
• Penguin = Links
• Hummingbird = Search Intent
(looking for related words on the page to support
the keyword)

39. • 1. Change Permalinks to post-name
• 2. Use - not _ in image and page
names
• 3. “www” or "not www"
• 4. Set up Google Webmaster Tools
• 5. Use HTTPS rather than HTTP
• 6. Setting > Reading - uncheck
discourage box
• 7. Yoast WP SEO
• 8. http://bit.ly/ZhsTvG (http://
onlinemediamasters.com/yoast-wordpress-
seo-tutorial/)
• 9. For keyword research http://
www.wordpot.com/andhttp://
www.keyword.io/
• 11. Don’t bother with keywords, not
used by Google any more
• 12. Write for peoplefirst then
Google
• 13. Synonyms in H2 - H6 Tags
• 14. Use Bullets
• 15. Use Subheaders every 2
paragraphs
• 16. Internal Links are important
• 17. Keep important content a close
to top level as possible
• 18. http://www.wordle.net/ for
readability
• 19. Name image descriptively

40. 10. Remote Worker -
!
Chris Ryan

41. Hiring Remote Workers
• Cheap for you
• Great Pay For Them
• It Is a numbers game
• Advertise => Sift and Filter => Interview => Select
5 => Hire On Paid Trial => Keep the best, sack the
rest

42. Remote Tips
• Be aware of language differences
• Developer vs Programmer
• Ask “What Do You Really Like To Do”
• Project Management Software
• Use Bonuses As Incentives and Rewards
• Buy Stuff They Need
• Hire FullTime / Never Part Time
• Use Project Management Software

43. 11. Writing Plugins - Simple
!
Frankie Jarrett

44. <?php
/**
* Plugin Name: Name Of The Plugin
!
* Plugin URI: http://
URI_Of_Page_Describing_Plugin_and_Updates
!
* Description: A brief description of the Plugin.
!
* Version: The Plugin's Version Number, e.g.: 1.0
!
* Author: Name Of The Plugin Author
!
* Author URI: http://URI_Of_The_Plugin_Author
!
* License: A "Slug" license name e.g. GPL2
*/

45. Writing Plugins
• See Tutorial in Codex
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/
Action_reference
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/
filter_reference
• WordPress Hooks are listed in Codex in the order
they fire.

46. Action vs Filters
• ACTIONS => firing code at certain points in time
• FILTERS => Changing The Value of something
(Always Return; the value)
• Minimalist Development => Use WordPress Hooks
• Use a Text Domain to allow for localisation/
translations

47. Functions or Plugin
• Functions for theme specific modifications
• Plugins for modifications regardless of the theme

48. 12. Planning For
WordPress At Scale

49. Big Brand On WordPress
• Newscorp and WordPress

50. 13. Lightening Talks

51. What I Learned About Project
Management from a Gangster
- Ben Madden
• What Is The Longest Job You Have Incomplete
• Don’t put up with client excuses.
• Take charge and Manage the job and client
• Read: mattersolutions.com.au/blog/2014/09/
project-management-gangster

52. Accessible Websites
!
- Gian Wild
• Many resources to assist with accessibility can be
downloaded from
AccessibilityOz.com.au

53. Good Grammar Counts
!
- Kate Toon
• Use compelling headlines
• Check grammar and spelling
• Related images
• Good content
• Write naturally

54. Unit Testing
PHP Process for testing code

55. Methods of Migrating Sites
• WP DB Migrate Pro
• VaultPress
• Manual Migration & Search and Replace PHP
Script
• Take a screenshot of WP Settings Widgets and
keep on file for Disaster Mitigation

56. Big Brands On WordPress
WordPress.org/showcase
vip.WordPress.com

57. Speaker Slides

58. View and Download
goo.gl/itdzKv