Brian Coords

WordPress Developer & Educator

wordpress

I’m sharing the best resources and tutorials for developers building in and on the block editor.

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    Enabling SSL & HTTPS on WordPress

    Encryption, the ability to protect data as it is transferred across the internet, has entered the public debate and it’s not going anywhere. In fact it’s becoming more and more clear that as we transfer so much of our lives online, we have to think about privacy and security in ways like never before. This is…

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    How to Use Hosts.cx to Preview a Website

    Update: It looks like Hosts.cx is no longer active. Here’s a decent alternative: https://www.skipdns.link When a website relaunch requires a migration, there’s one really iffy period that’s always given me the most trouble. You’ve drawn and designed, built mockups and prototypes, coded your site on a local server and even pushed it up to a demo…

  • Writing WordPress Content in HTML

    There are a lot of myths and opinions about developers and their reliance on- or aversion to- software that has been built by others. On one side of the spectrum, there’s the camp that believes that everything with your name on it should be build from scratch in HTML and vanilla CSS. These purists like…

  • Custom Post Type Basics – Super Custom WP Part 2

    This is part two of a series on customizing WordPress. Click here to start at the beginning. The transition of WordPress from blogging platform to full-fledged CMS is an ongoing process, but it was around Version 3.0 that the ability to register our own custom post type really kicked it into high gear. Custom post types allow us…

  • CMB2 & the WP REST API

    Update: CMB2 has added support for the REST API. While this method is still valid, I encourage you to review my follow-up post as well as their documentation. CMB2 opens a lot of doors with WordPress development, making it possible to store all sorts of meta, or extra, information about each post. Typically, meta information…

  • Don’t Fear the Auto-Update – Stay on Top of WordPress

    Recently I’ve noticed a new sort of FOMO in the online community, fear of missing out on breaking changes. Every time a new version of something is released, from iOS to WordPress, there’s a large chorus of ‘wait for the .1 release’ online. And I have to say that I understand the hesitance. Breaking changes and…

  • How to Successfully Use Visual Editors to Give Your Clients Control

    I used to be very skeptical about visual builders for websites, especially for developers. Perhaps I just never fully experienced the Dreamweaver era, though I have made a few Flash headers in my time. Or maybe there’s a sense of purity that comes from building something from ‘scratch’, even when ‘scratch’ includes the most popular…

  • WordPress Tip: Quickly Import Posts via Google Sheets and JSON

    Recently, I found myself setting up a new WordPress site, but with an enormous legacy of content that needed to be uploaded in the form of posts and custom post types. We had about 1500 posts just in one category and a few hundred posts under different custom post types like ‘videos’ and ‘events’. To…

  • Data Organization Overall Concepts – Super Custom WP Part 1

    If you haven’t already, feel free to read the first post in the Super Custom WP series that introduces the topic and explores the concepts behind posts in more detail. One of the ways to take advantage of WordPress as a real infrastructure is through the use of Custom Post Types. Custom post types allow us to…

  • Super Custom WordPress – Series Intro

    As we enter the more advanced realms of custom WordPress development and client work, we want to find ways to make the entire experience easier for our clients. Most of our customers come to us to escape some outdated CMS where they’re copy-pasting chunks of HTML, always afraid that they’re going to break something because they’re…