Generating Accounts with Gravity Forms and MemberPress

Gravity Forms and MemberPress are paid plugins which solve very different problems. Both are developer friendly and extendible. The following is some custom code which runs after Gravity Forms creates a subscriber account and assigns it with a predefined MemberPress membership. Run Custom Code Using a Gravity Forms Hook This code is triggered by a Gravity Forms hook to…

My Setup for Running WordPress Maintenance and Hosting Service

I thought it would be fun to do a quick run through of the equipment, products and services I use to run my WordPress maintenance and hosting service. As you’ll quickly see, I’m a minimalist. Let’s start with equipment Computer – 15″ Macbook Pro, Late 2016 with Touch Bar Backpack – Under-The-Jack Pack Phone –…

Using WordPress to Document & Manage Business Processes

The following is a little something I wrote over the course of a weekend using ACF with two custom post types. My goal was to use WordPress to document all of my internal processes for running my WordPress maintenance and support business. Nothing crazy elaborate but it works for me. The main process page…

Let 1Password Handle Your WordPress Logins

The push for a complex password is never ending. Having a really long and complicated password doesn’t have to be hard to use. With the right setup you’ll be more secure and more efficient with your time. Use a Password Management System If you’re not currently using a password management system, use 1Password. It will save you…

Production, Staging, Development oh my!

How you build and deploy a WordPress site will vary greatly depending on the project scope. The following are a few tips for dealing with production, staging and dev sites as a single developer working with a small business client. Start development locally using Git (Theme folders only). You might ask, why Git if…

Using Jetpack’s markdown on custom fields

Jetpack’s markdown module is easy way to add markdown to WordPress. If your not familiar with markdown then this is a good starting point. Out of the box you can use this on any WordPress page or post. Recently I was curious if I could use Jetpack’s markdown other places like custom fields. Turns out, yes…

WP Engine vs Kinsta comparing bulk site economics

I’ve been using WP Engine since mid 2014. I’m not a typical customer. Currently have 4 dedicated WP Engine servers containing 518 installs. A rough breakdown of the installs would be 10% high traffic, 10% normal traffic, 70% low traffic and 10% development only. I recently opened up a Kinsta account to run some comparison on…

Using page template as custom API endpoint

The WordPress REST API is awesome and fully extendable to do your own custom crazy ideas. The following I’m about to explain goes against all of that. Instead of extending the WordPress REST API I’m creating my own custom API endpoint using nothing other then a custom page template. Learn APIs by building the most basic version…

WordPress plugin template for repeat tasks

Ever once in a while I have a customer with a custom PHP file running some daily batch process. Moving these over to a managed WordPress host can get well messy as there isn’t a great way to run a custom cron jobs. In order to keep things clean I like wrapping the custom PHP code…

When to not recommend WordPress

WordPress is awesome. I use WordPress for my business and all of my clients use it for their business. Recently I’ve been wondering if there a guide that people could use to figured out if WordPress is the best choice to them. One of my customers recently reached out to me for advice on what to do…