Level Up

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

How to Use Xdebug for Advanced PHP Debugging

You could just debug your PHP code using dump debugging functions such as error_log, print, and var_dump, and let’s be honest, we’ve all done it a lot! While helpful sometimes,… Read more

Iain Poulson

Apr 21, 2021

Why You Should be Using WP_DEBUG_LOG in Your WordPress Development

Whether you’re a developer, or a site owner troubleshooting a problem with your site, understanding the WP_DEBUG_LOG constant for turning on the WordPress debug log is very important. In this… Read more

Brad

Apr 13, 2021

Delicious Brains Labs: Our Experiment with an AI Content Bot

Hey there, my name’s Jonathan. 👋 I’m the new Developer Educator at Delicious Brains. When I joined Delicious Brains in March, I had no idea what my first writing task… Read more

Cee Bee

Apr 1, 2021

PHP and cURL: How WordPress makes HTTP requests

cURL is the workhorse of the modern internet. As its tagline says, cURL is a utility piece of software used to ‘transfer data with urls‘. According to the cURL website,… Read more

Peter Tasker

Mar 24, 2021

Vue vs React: Which is the Best JavaScript Framework in 2021?

React or Vue.js, which JavaScript framework should you choose? React powers WordPress’ new editor while Vue.js is a popular framework in the Laravel community. In this post we’ll go over… Read more

Peter Tasker

Mar 17, 2021

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

Iain Poulson

Mar 16, 2021

Introducing the Elementor Integration for WP Offload Media

In the first of hopefully many plugin releases this year, the WP Offload Media team has been working hard on some big integrations and improvements. Today we’re pleased to announce… Read more

Iain Poulson

Mar 3, 2021

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

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

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 Poulson

Dec 9, 2020

WP Offload Media 2.5 Released: Improved WooCommerce Integration and New Tool for Already Offloaded Files

It’s been a busy few months since our last release. In that time we’ve been hiring, settling into a regular release cycle format, planning out the future roadmap for the… Read more

Iain Poulson

Nov 11, 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 Poulson

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

WP Offload Media 2.4 Released: Private Media with a Custom Domain and Amazon CloudFront

This is a big release, six months in the making…well, really 5 years in the making! Check out the date on this GitHub issue 😱… We’re so excited to finally… Read more

Brad

Jul 14, 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

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 Poulson

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 Poulson

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 Poulson

Feb 18, 2020