Hey! Welcome to the seven most important tools for modern WordPress development! I’ve been building higher-end WordPress sites for the last decade, but the last few years I’ve really leaned into the block editor (after much kicking and screaming, I promise).
Over the next seven posts, you’ll receive seven short videos introducing you to some of the most important tools for building advanced, modern WordPress themes and plugins. To get the best out of this series, you’ll probably want to be comfortable with:
- A local WordPress dev environment. (I like Local, but you can use anything from Mamp to Docker with wp-env)
- Using Node.js & NPM
- Basic experience with JavaScript and PHP
You don’t have to be an expert theme or plugin developer, but you do have to be curious and open to the world of modern web development!
Tool #1: Query Monitor
Today we’re kicking things off with a stone cold classic, Query Monitor: “the developer tools panel for WordPress.” I use Query Monitor on every site I build, at least in my local and staging environments (and sometimes on production for quick health checks).
Watch the video below to learn how to use Query Monitor to check your site for errors and performance issues, debug variables (without using var_dump), and track down your slowest, heaviest database queries.
If you have any questions, add them in the YouTube comments. And feel free to share this video- and hopefully this whole series- with anyone you think would want it.
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