2. Use Separate Environments

To ensure a smooth and reliable development process, it’s crucial to set up separate environments and follow a one-directional flow for code deployment. Here’s a rephrased explanation of the recommended setup:

Ideally, you should have three development environments in place: local, staging, and production. This setup ensures that changes to your code progress through each environment in a controlled manner: local → staging → production. By following this workflow, you can avoid conflicts and minimize the risk of downtime or client dissatisfaction.

Here’s how the process works:

Local Environment: Development and testing should primarily take place in a local environment. This is where you make core, plugin, and theme updates, as well as develop new features or functionalities. Working locally allows you to iterate quickly and test changes without affecting the live site.

Staging Environment: Once you are satisfied with the changes made in the local environment, the next step is to deploy the updated code to a staging environment. The staging environment mirrors the production environment as closely as possible. It serves as a testing ground for your code changes before they go live.

Production Environment: After thorough testing and validation in the staging environment, the updated code is ready to be deployed to the production environment. This is the live site that visitors and clients interact with. By deploying changes only after they have been thoroughly tested in the staging environment, you reduce the chances of introducing errors or disruptions to the live site.

3. Use Linting

Linting is a valuable tool for developers, regardless of project size. It involves automatically checking your code for errors. While fully-featured IDEs like PHPStorm offer built-in linting capabilities, simpler editors like VSCode or Sublime Text require a separate program called a linter. One way to set this up is by configuring your editor to run the linter whenever a file is saved.

For PHP, PHP_CodeSniffer is the widely-used linter. It not only detects syntax errors but also ensures adherence to style guidelines such as PSR-2. This simplifies the process of following coding standards.

When it comes to JavaScript, ESLint is a popular choice. It offers an extensive ruleset and supports custom configurations for various JavaScript flavors and frameworks.

A compelling use case for linting is integrating it into a CI/CD build pipeline, allowing automatic code validation before deployment. This ensures that all code goes through the linting process, promoting consistent quality and reducing the chances of introducing errors in the production environment.

4. Use “Separation of Concerns” Rule:

In modern WordPress development, it is essential to adhere to the principle of “Separation of Concerns.” This principle emphasizes the need to keep different parts of WordPress PHP code separate based on their specific functionality or purpose. Instead of mixing everything together, code should be organized into distinct sections or modules that communicate with each other through well-defined interfaces.

By implementing separation of concerns, each code module or function is assigned a single responsibility. This ensures that each module focuses on one specific task and doesn’t encompass multiple functionalities. This approach promotes code modularity, making it easier to maintain, extend, and reuse.

Let’s explore how we can split the code into modules:

SQL Queries: Move all SQL queries to a separate module. WordPress provides the WP_Query class, which offers a well-abstracted and standardized way to perform database queries. Utilize this class as an example to structure and execute your SQL queries.

HTML Templates: Place all HTML code within dedicated template files. This promotes the separation of presentation and logic. PHP templating methods, such as utilizing the WordPress template hierarchy or creating custom template files, can be employed to organize and display the HTML content.

Functionalization: Wrap the remaining PHP code within functions. If the code becomes lengthy or complex, it can be split into multiple functions. Pass parameters, such as $id, via function arguments to ensure flexibility and reusability.

5. Avoid the use of global variables:

When developing in WordPress, it is advisable to avoid the use of global variables as much as possible. Global variables are variables that are accessible from anywhere in your codebase. Here’s why it is recommended to minimize their usage:

Namespace Pollution: Global variables can pollute the global namespace, leading to naming conflicts and unintended variable interactions. This can make your code harder to read, debug, and maintain.

Dependency and Coupling: Relying on global variables creates dependencies between different parts of your code. It introduces tight coupling, making it difficult to modify or test individual components independently.

Security Risks: Global variables can pose security risks, as they are accessible throughout the application. Sensitive data stored in global variables can be accessed and manipulated by unauthorized parties.

6. Use Object Oriented Programming:

Utilizing Object-oriented Programming (OOP) is considered a best practice in modern WordPress development. OOP is a programming paradigm that allows you to structure your code around objects, which are instances of classes that encapsulate data and behavior. Here’s how you can incorporate OOP principles into your WordPress development workflow:

Class Structure: Identify logical entities in your WordPress project and create classes to represent them. For example, you can have classes for custom post types, custom taxonomies, or specific features of your application.

Encapsulation: Encapsulate related data and functionality within classes by using properties (variables) and methods (functions). This helps to organize code and maintain a clear separation of concerns.

Inheritance: Utilize inheritance to create hierarchical relationships between classes. This allows you to define a base class with common properties and methods, and then derive specialized classes from it.

Polymorphism: Apply polymorphism to define methods in base classes that can be overridden in derived classes. This enables you to have different implementations of the same method based on the context or specific requirements.

Dependency Management: Implement dependency management techniques such as dependency injection or inversion of control to decouple classes and improve testability and maintainability. This ensures that classes rely on abstractions rather than concrete implementations.