Advanced Custom Fields: A Guide to Custom Fields and ACF Blocks
I’ve been a fan of Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) for a long time now. It’s used on almost every site I’ve built or worked on for the last few years.… Read more
Level Up
A collection of resources for WordPress Developers, written and curated by experts
Amazon SES vs SendGrid vs Mailgun vs Sendinblue: Pricing, Features, and WordPress Plugin Quality
It’s no secret that we love Amazon SES – we released a plugin that specifically helps you set it up on your WordPress site. But it’s also worth looking at… Read more
Matt Shaw
Feb 9, 2021
How to Create Custom WordPress Editor Blocks in 2021
The WordPress block editor (previously titled Gutenberg) includes a new way to add content to your WordPress posts, pages and soon all content on your WordPress site. It marks WordPress’… Read more
Peter Tasker
Feb 4, 2021
MailPoet and WordPress Newsletter Plugins vs Mailchimp and Drip in 2021
There are many options when it comes to sending out email newsletters for your WordPress site. You can choose from dozens of plugins or dedicated services like Mailchimp or Drip.… Read more
Matt Shaw
Jan 28, 2021
What is an SVG File Used For and Why Developers Should be Using Them
The adoption and adaptation of SVGs is without a doubt one of my favorite things to happen to the design and developer community in recent years. As a designer, they… Read more
Lewis Warren
Jan 19, 2021
The 4 Best Local WordPress Development Environments in 2021: XAMPP vs MAMP vs Local vs DesktopServer
An easy-to-use local testing server is one of the most important tools in a WordPress developer’s utility belt. Developing in a local environment lets you make changes to dev sites… Read more
Ram Ratan Maurya
Jan 14, 2021
How Unicode Works: What Every Developer Needs to Know About Strings and 🦄
What is Unicode? Waaay back in 2003 Joel Spolsky wrote about Unicode and why every developer should understand what it is and why it’s important. I remember reading that article… Read more
Peter Tasker
Jan 12, 2021
VS Code Wins Best PHP IDE/Editor for WordPress Development in 2021
When building software or websites, you’ll need to use an integrated development environment (IDE), a code editor or if you’re really brave, a text editor. They each offer different benefits… Read more
Caillie West
Jan 9, 2021
How We Use PhpStorm for WordPress Development
Many of the Delicious Brains team use PhpStorm, the PHP IDE from JetBrains, as their go-to code editor, development environment, and all-round PHP best friend. Some on the team swear… Read more
Iain
Dec 9, 2020
Switching to Windows for Local WordPress Development
As you may have noticed from reading our blog, we’ve highly favored Mac and Linux for WordPress development. And we’re not alone – through my very scientific and thorough research,… Read more
Matt Shaw
Oct 15, 2020
The Best Setup for Your Local WordPress Development Environment
When running a WordPress website it’s best practice to at least run a local copy of the site so you can make changes without running the risk of completely ruining… Read more
Iain
Sep 16, 2020
Valet vs VVV vs Chassis: A Comparison Guide to CLI-Based Local WordPress Development Environments
In my last article, I reviewed the best WordPress development environment apps out there. But that’s not all of it, there are a number of great options available as well… Read more
Ram Ratan Maurya
Sep 1, 2020
Set Up Visual Studio Code and xDebug as the Ultimate Editor for WordPress Development
If you keep up with the many text editors and developer tools available, you may have heard of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code. VS Code is a free, open source code… Read more
Matt Shaw
Aug 5, 2020
Grunt vs Gulp: Battle of the Build Tools
In JavaScript land, things move fast and technology advances at a crazy pace. Most modern applications are built using technologies like Vue.js and React, making use of module bundlers like… Read more
Gilbert Pellegrom
Jun 25, 2020
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
Jun 9, 2020
The Ultimate Developer’s Guide to the WordPress Database
Here at Delicious Brains we eat, drink and sleep databases. However, we believe that any developer working with WordPress should have some level of knowledge about the database that sits… Read more
Iain
Jun 3, 2020
SQL Query Optimization for Faster WordPress Sites
You know that a fast site == happier users, improved ranking from Google, and increased conversions. Maybe you even think your WordPress site is as fast as it can be… Read more
Iain
Apr 7, 2020
Vagrant vs Docker: Which is better for WordPress development?
Before Docker came on the scene Vagrant was the go-to solution for creating development environments that can be configured independently of your machine and shared with a team. There are… Read more
Gilbert Pellegrom
Mar 31, 2020
Amazon S3 vs CloudFront: Why Delivering WordPress Media Directly From S3 is a Bad Idea
Amazon S3 is a sensible choice for storing your website’s assets in the cloud, but for delivery the benchmarks show that using a CDN is necessary to see any major… Read more
Matt Shaw
Mar 10, 2020
5 Ways to Create a WordPress Plugin Settings Page
It’s been a while since I created a new WordPress plugin from scratch, but recently I decided to turn some code that was working just for me into a fully… Read more
Iain
Feb 18, 2020
WordPress, JavaScript and PHP Conferences to Add to Your Calendar in 2020
Whether you’re hoping to speak at a conference, looking to network or just there to learn, attending a conference can be beneficial to you and your career in a number… Read more
Caillie West
Jan 14, 2020
Automated API Testing For Your WordPress Site With Codeception
I’ve previously written about how we use Codeception to perform automated testing on our WooCommerce site where we sell our plugins. Automated tests give us peace of mind that our… Read more
Iain
Dec 31, 2019
Inertia.js: Building Single-Page Apps the Old Way
Update: We’ve written a newer, more detailed tutorial on Inertia using Laravel Jetstream. I’ve been building Laravel apps for years now. From large, data-heavy apps like Mergebot (RIP 😢) and… Read more
Gilbert Pellegrom
Dec 4, 2019
WordPress Plugin Development Best Practices: Template Files
When we talk about templates in WordPress we are normally referring to page template files in the theme. However, there are plugins that use template files to display content, and… Read more
Iain