Level Up

A collection of resources for WordPress Developers, written and curated by experts

Delicious Brain Bytes: DE{CODE} Registration Open, Plugin Madness, and Running Doom on Bacteria

In this issue of Delicious Brain Bytes, we open the doors on DE{CODE} 2024, look into the “sustainability crisis” in open source, and much more. Registration Open for DE{CODE} 2024… Read more

Mike Davey

Feb 29, 2024

How to Test Webhooks From Public APIs in Local Development

Webhooks are a mechanism for receiving notifications about events from disparate systems without having to continuously poll them. Also called Reverse APIs, they can be thought of as providing “API… Read more

Sanjucta Ghose

Feb 15, 2024

How to Use Next-Gen Images With WordPress

Improving the Core Web Vitals for your WordPress site is one of the best ways to boost its rank in Google. Serving “next-gen images” is one of the more frequent… Read more

Mike Davey

Feb 12, 2024

Security Releases Regarding the Use of unserialize() in Delicious Brains Plugins

We were recently contacted by Wordfence and Patchstack regarding PHP Object Injection vulnerabilities related to the use of unserialize() in Better Search Replace and WP Migrate, respectively. An additional internal… Read more

Kevin Hoffman

Feb 8, 2024

How to Set Up AMP on WordPress

Should your WordPress sites use Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)? It’s a simple question with a complicated answer. In this article, we’ll cover how AMP works, how to use both… Read more

Mike Davey

Feb 1, 2024

How to Use WebP Images on WordPress

Serving lightweight WebP images can help boost your site speed, critical to the user experience and as a ranking factor. In this article, we’ll look at a few different ways… Read more

Mike Davey

Jan 25, 2024

Delicious Brain Bytes: WordPress Accessibility Day, Dodge – A WordPress Game, and Improving WordPress Search

In this issue of Delicious Brain Bytes, we dip into the latest from the WordPress Developer Blog, play around with making sure WordPress stays free, see how text compression saves… Read more

Mike Davey

Jan 19, 2024

Creating UI Elements With HTMX

HTMX is a JavaScript library that enables developers to perform AJAX requests, trigger CSS animations, and invoke WebSocket and server-side events directly from HTML elements. It is designed to remove… Read more

Mike Davey

Jan 17, 2024

Using Npm Scripts as a Build Tool

There are typically two types of JavaScript build tools: task runners and module bundlers. In this article, we’ll look at how to use project specific npm build scripts as a… Read more

Jonathan

Jan 5, 2024

Online Conferences for WordPress Devs in 2024

Conferences offer a blend of targeted education and networking opportunities, a combination that can advance your skills and career. They can be expensive to attend, though. Between the ticket prices,… Read more

Mike Davey

Dec 20, 2023

WordPress Developer Trends to Watch in 2024

The 20th anniversary year of WordPress is drawing to a close. It’s tempting to take a look back as we enter the last weeks of 2023, but we thought it… Read more

Mike Davey

Dec 18, 2023

Delicious Brain Bytes: State of the Word 2023, PHP_CodeSniffer Needs Support, and HTML Hacks

In this issue of Delicious Brain Bytes, we dive into changes with PHP_CodeSniffer, report on the WP Awards 2023, look at HTML hacks that helped build the modern web, and… Read more

Mike Davey

Dec 11, 2023

Everything You Need to Know About Installing WordPress in a Subdirectory

In this article, we look at the benefits and limitations of installing WordPress in a subdirectory, how to install and manage subdirectory installs, and how to move WordPress core out… Read more

Iain Poulson

Nov 30, 2023

Using JavaScript FileReader to Upload Large Files in Chunks and Avoid Server Limits

If you’ve spent any amount of time messing with PHP config files to get a file to upload, you know that uploading large files can be a real pain. You… Read more

Matt Shaw

Nov 25, 2023

Delicious Brains, Advanced Custom Fields, and WP Engine Cyber Savings

As we slide into the tail end of our first full year at WP Engine, it’s pretty awesome to look back and celebrate all the big releases! From custom post… Read more

Rob Stinson

Nov 15, 2023

Delicious Brain Bytes: WordPress 6.4, Awards Season, and the Future of Yelling at Your Computer

In this issue of Delicious Brain Bytes, we take a look at what’s coming in WordPress 6.4, awards that honor the best in WordPress and awards that honor the ability… Read more

Mike Davey

Nov 1, 2023

Why You Should Use the WordPress HTTP Functions to Make API Requests

Sometimes your WordPress site needs to talk to other services around the web. This almost exclusively happens using the HTTP protocol. A common example is when your WordPress installation contacts… Read more

Erik

Oct 27, 2023

Handling AJAX Requests in WordPress: WP REST API vs admin-ajax.php vs Must-Use Plugin

The WordPress REST API was merged into WordPress core in version 4.7. Before that, developers relied on the default AJAX implementation, otherwise known as admin-ajax after the /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php file that… Read more

Matt Shaw

Oct 17, 2023

Is HTTP/3 the Future of the Web?

The web as we know it wouldn’t exist without our old friend Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The latest iteration, HTTP/3, promises to revolutionize the way we interact with the web.… Read more

Mike Davey

Oct 13, 2023

Should You Use Bun for Your Projects?

Bun is an all-in-one JavaScript runtime and toolkit created with the explicit goals of serving as a drop-in replacement for Node.js, eliminating separate layers of tooling, and speeding up the… Read more

Mike Davey

Sep 21, 2023

Examples of Refactoring PHP Code for Better Readability

Refactoring code is when you restructure existing code without changing its external behavior. Basically your aim is to make “bad” code better without changing the underlying functionality, and one of… Read more

Gilbert Pellegrom

Sep 15, 2023

Delicious Brain Bytes: Measuring Developer Productivity, New Releases, ACF Survey Results, and the State of WordPress Dev Tools

In this issue of Delicious Brain Bytes, we look into contentious methods for measuring productivity in software development, new releases from ACF, WP Migrate, WP Offload SES, and WP Offload… Read more

Mike Davey

Sep 7, 2023

Catching Up on CSS Features

There’s a pretty good chance that CSS is one of the most consistently used tools in your kit. It’s highly familiar and often used, so much so that it’s easy… Read more

Mike Davey

Aug 18, 2023

What MySQL 5.7 EOL Means for WordPress Developers

After eight years of general availability, no one can say MySQL 5.7 didn’t have a good run. MySQL 5.7 officially reaches its End of Life (EOL) in October 2023. The… Read more

Mike Davey

Aug 17, 2023