WordPress Developer Tools

General

• Carl Alexander. How Debugging Can Make You a Better Developer.
• Tom McFarlin. The Independent WordPress Developer Series. 2018-.
  • Part 1: (Introduction) Tools, Processes, and More. 2018.
  • Part 2: Local Development. 2018.
    • Developers should have three environments: (1) local dev, (2) staging, and (3) production.
    • Covers Mac-oriented local dev env setup including Homebrew, PHP, Composer, and Valet.
  • Part 3: Databases and Tools. 2018.
    • Covers Mac-oriented setup of MySQL, also the cross-platform PhpMyAdmin, and connecting to MySQL.
  • Part 4: Installing WordPress for Local Development. 2018.
    • Creating a database, downloading WordPress (stable or nightly), and setting up Valet to run WP.
  • Part 5: Native WordPress Debugging Tools That Don’t Require an IDE. 2018.
    • Changes to wp-config.php that provide native debugging (WP_DEBUG, WP_DEBUG_LOG, WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY, display_errors, SCRIPT_DEBUG, and SAVEQUERIES).
    • Covers the Debug Bar, Debug Bar List Script & Style Dependencies, and Debug Bar Console plugins.
  • Part 6: Reading and Understanding WordPress Error Logs, Part 1. 2018.
    • Location of the native debugging logs, some general principles on reading error logs.
  • Part 7: Reading and Understand WordPress Error Logs, Part 2. 2018.
  • Part 8: Basic Debugging Within WordPress. 2018.
  • Part 9: Installing Xdebug, Part 1: The Xdebug Module. 2018.
  • Part 10: Installing Xdebug, Part 2: The IDE.
  • Part 11: An Introduction to Debugging.
  • Part 12: Debugging: Stepping Around Code.
  • Part 13: Debugging: Changing Values at Runtime.
  • Part 14: Using Coding Standards.

• Brenda Barron. 39 Must-Have WordPress Development Tools. wpmudev, 2016.
  • This page (on WPDeveloping) draws heavily on Brenda’s article.
• Nick Schaferhoff. 40+ Awesome WordPress Development Tools. torquemag, 2015.
  • Another excellent list.
• Matt Geri. The Ultimate WordPress Development Environment. sitepoint, 2016.
  • If you want a suite of tools and not a ton of options, Geri does a good job of offering his optimal suite.
• Tom McFarlin. Tools for WordPress Projects: Some of What I Use Daily. 2018.
  • Terminal, Sequel Pro, Console (Mac), Visual Studio Code (and extensions: ESLint, PHP Debug, PHP DocBlock Generator, PHP CodeSniffer, PHPUnit, TODO Highlighter, WordPress Toolbox), git, Kaleidoscope, WP-CLI.
• Tom McFarlin. Libraries for WordPress Plugins, Part 1. 2017.
  • Recommends PHPUnit, GrumPHP, PHPMD, PHP-Parser.
• Tom McFarlin. Libraries for WordPress Plugins, Part 2. 2017.
  • Recommends PHP CodeSniffer, PHPCPD, PHPMND.
• Tom McFarlin. Using Tools for Quality WordPress Development. tuts+, 2015.
  • Provides an introduction to the basic tools for WP development: IDE, debugger, code linting/minification, version control, and deployment tools.
• Baris Unver. Tools of the Smart WordPress Developer. tuts+, 2015.
  • A series of posts covering Kirki, Theme Check, GenerateWP, WP Quick Install, The WordPress Plugin Boilerplate, Envato WP Toolkit, File Spliter, Search & Replace, GitHub Plugin Updater, Instant WordPress, Vafpress, CMB2, and WP-CLI.
  • Fred Meyer. Truly Useful WordPress Development Tools: Sass, local development, and Git. torque, 2015.

Tools That Needed Their Own Pages

The tooling available to developers these days can be quite extensive. Some of the shorter lists of tools remain on this package but for the longer ones we’ve created separate sub-ages to detail with specific categories of tool in-depth.

• Package Management and Autoloading
• CLI
• Debugging
• IDE’s and Other Editors
• Testing
• Development Environments

Static Code Analysis

• Tom McFarlin. Tools for Writing Better WordPress Code. 2019.
  • Part 4: Static Analysis.
• Tom McFarlin. Using Coding Standards with WordPress. 2018.

PHP CodeSniffer w/WordPress ruleset.

• Tom McFarlin. Using PHPCodeSniffer with WordPress Series. envato tuts, 2016.
  • Understanding Code Smells.
  • Installing and Using PHP CodeSniffer.
  • Installing and Using the WordPress Rules.
• Official PHP CodeSniffer rules from WordPress.
• Official PHP CodeSniffer Site.
• Tom McFarlin. Ignore Coding Standards in PHP CodeSniffer. 2016.

PHPStan w/WordPress configuration.

• Tom McFarlin. Tools for Writing Better WordPress Code: Static Analysis. 2019.

Code

• CMB2 – WebDevStudios – For the creation of meta boxes and custom fields.
  • Justin Sternberg. CMB2 WordPress Plugin: What is it good for? Absolutely everything! webdevstudios, 2015.
  • CMB2 Admin Extension. 2018.
• CPT_Core – WebDevStudios -For the creation of custom post types and taxonomies.
• WDS-Shortcodes – WebDevStudios – For the creation of shortcodes.
• WordPress Plugin Boilerplate (WPPB) – Tom McFarlin, Devin Vinson.

WordPress Plugins for Developers

• Developer – Automattic
• Debug Bar
• Theme Check
• Monster Widget
• RTL Tester
• User Switching
  • B.J. Keeton. WordPress User Switching: The Plugin You Didn’t Know You Needed. elegant themes, 2018.
• WP Staging.

Starter Themes Themes

• Underscores (_s) – Author: Automattic.

Browser Extensions

• Chrome Developer Tools
• Firefox Developer Tools

Multi Tool Resources

• Roots – Trellis, Bedrock, and Sage

Deployment

• Gilbert Pellegrom. Deploying WordPress. Delicious Brains, 2018.
  • Part 1: Preparing WordPress
  • Part 2: Using the Command Line
  • Part 3: Using Git
  • Part 4: Automated Deployments
  • Part 5: Atomic Deployments

Scaling

• Dave Hilditch. How To: Setting Up a WordPress Cluster for Huge Sites. wpintense, 2018.
• Iana Vasi. Automating WordPress Operations with Kubernetes. presslabs, 2019.

Continuous Integration / Deployment (CI/CD)

• Steve Grunwell. Travis CI for WordPress Plugins. 2019.
  • The best tutorial on CI I’ve read for WP.
• Tom McFarlin. WordPress-Focused Continuous Integration with CircleCI. 2017.
  • A very basic introduction to CI and CircleCI with some reference to GrumPHP.
• Carl Alexander. Getting Started with Continuous Integration and WordPress. 2018.
  • A good overview of the concepts and tools used with CI.
• Taylor Lovett. How To Automate Repetitive Daily Tests. yoast, 2019.
  • Focuses on usage of CodeceptJS and Travis CI.
• Jaye Hackett. A Quick, Free Way to Use Continuous Deployment with WordPress. medium, 2019.
  • Brief, high-level tutorial, focuses on Buddy CI.

Version Control

• See Helen Hou-Sandi’s post On WordPress + Git (2018) regarding the future of Git/SVN for WP code.
• Brian Jackson. WordPress Version Control (What It Is and Best Solutions). kinsta, 2020.

Git

• Jeff Smith. WordPress Version Control with Git. sitepoint/siteground, 2017.
• Jon Penland. How to Use Git for WordPress Development. wpmudev, 2017.
• Bruno Skvorc. Git and WordPress: How to Auto-Update Posts with Pull Requests. sitepoint, 2017.
• Tom McFarlin. Git and WordPress. 2016.

Task Runners

Gulp

• Ali Alaa. Gulp for WordPress. css tricks, 2019.
  • Part 1: Initial Setup.
  • Part 2: Creating the Tasks.
• Craig Buckler. Develop WordPress Themes Faster with Gulp. sitepoint, 2018.
• Adi Purdila. Supercharge Your Local WordPress Workflow with Gulp and Browsersync. tutsplus, 2017.
• Atinger Singh. Using Gulp for WordPress Automation. tutsplus, 2015.
• Tom McFarlin.
  • Getting Started with Gulp Starter Packages. 2017.
  • A Few Gulp Packages for Starters. 2017.

Grunt

Other

• John Hughes. An Introduction to Secure Shell Access and Secure File Transfer Protocol. torque, 2018.
• Ashiq. How to Use PostCSS, SASS and Gulp in WordPress Theme Development. asphalt themes, 2019.
• Nicholas Morera. Using BrowserSync for Cross-Browser Testing. torque, 2017.