Slow websites are painful. An important value to look at when optimizing your website is the TTFB (Time Til First Bye), which is the delay between when the request is sent to the server and server actually responds. These are some of my notes on improving (e.g. reducing) the TTFB of a WordPress website.
WordPress
WordPress Theme Path and URI
WordPress comes with some helper functions for finding a theme’s path and/or URI, which are tremendously useful but I always have to look them up. Therefore, I’m making note of them here so I know where to look them up: get_stylesheet_directory(), get_stylesheet_directory_uri(), get_template_directory(), get_template_directory_uri()
WordPress CodeSniffer phpcs.xml
I’ve been using PHP CodeSniffer to help me following coding standards. The WordPress Coding Standards are a great resource and the basis of the rules I follow. I have made a few modifications based on my personal preferences.
WordPress .editorconfig
The editorconfig project provides a powerful tool for standardizing the general coding standards used in a project, specifically in regards to: indent_style, indent_size, end_of_line, charset, trim_trailing_whitespace, and insert_final_newline.
WordPress Code to Get the Privacy Policy URL
With WordPress version 4.9.6 a number of Privacy Related Options, Hooks and Capabilities were added (predominantly in response to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation. One option that was added is ‘wp_page_for_privacy_policy’, which stores the page id of the site’s privacy policy page. This is great for programmatically determining the permalink of the Privacy Policy page.
How the WordPress Block Based Editor Stores Blocks
Traditionally, when working with values in WordPress they would be stored in post meta. Now with the new upcoming WordPress editing experience (Gutenberg), these values are often stored right in the content. These are some of my notes on how they are stored.
Define Gutenberg Attributes in PHP
In WordPress 5.0, the editing experience will be changing dramatically. I’ve written information for my clients about this change in Prepare for WordPress 5.0 (Gutenberg). With the editor moving from one general purpose editor field to a series of special purpose blocks, there will be a need for creating custom blocks. In another post, I’ve […]
Gutenberg and the Classic Editor Plugin
With the newly released WordPress 5.0, which includes the new block-based Gutenberg editing experience, many people are installing the Classic Editor plugin to retain the previous behavior. The Classic Editor plugin is the official solution being prescribed for these situations. No problem, install the Classic Editor plugin and 5.0 will be indistinguishable from 4.9.8 for […]
WordPress Custom Editor Block
With WordPress 5.0 a new block-based editing experience will be introduced (a.k.a. Gutenberg). This new editing experience is available via the Gutenberg plugin. By adding this plugin to your (development) WordPress website, you can preview the new editing experience. At the time of this writing, Gutenberg is still under-development so I recommend only installing it […]
WP CLI Local by Flywheel without SSH
I’ve become a big fan of Local by Flywheel for local WordPress development (i.e. running websites on my Mac). One thing I do find frustrating is the need to SSH into my Local by Flywheel website when I want to run a WP CLI command. Thanks to some great work by Morgan Estes with his […]