Sharing best practices for agency developers
I've spent almost the past decade on both sides of web projects - agency and managing agencies from in-house.
I've seen a lot of different approaches to projects, particularly around the WordPress CMS that runs 50-60% of the internet.
I started this blog as a way to share my own thoughts about the best practices to deliver maintainable sites to clients, but it has evolved to also house a course on WordPress custom block development and lots of content around efficiency and process optimization as well.
Usability beyond the visitor
One of the biggest frustrations I've seen and experienced is how often agencies deliver sites that are utterly unmaintainable.
In WordPress this could be everything from hard-coding every page and bypassing the CMS entirely, to disabling large chunks of functionality that cripple the site editing, or even taking the time to create custom blocks, but not bothering to polish the dashboard experience, so working with the blocks is a nightmare.
I've been a big proponent of what WordPress' own team refers to as "Editor Curation". Strategically setting up the backend CMS to maximize the likelihood of success for inexperienced web managers.
This means disabling some features that could be confusing, or limiting options, but leaving power in the user's hands to create and manage their own content.
This also means giving as much attention to the look, feel, and usability of the backend dashboard as the frontend of the site.
This is the spirit of my Block Creator course and I think it has hit a chord with a lot of other developers in the community. Though the course is still a work in progress, I have received really encouraging feedback so far:
I just want to say that your Block Creator Course is the best on the web. So comprehensive, and up-to-date. I’m already pretty versed in custom blocks, yet I still learned quite a few new things about the process from your tutorial. Kudos, and THANK YOU!
This really is a good series. Fills in a lot of gaps I’ve seen in other sites. Even something as simple as including the filename is missed.
Keep up the good work! I look forward to the rest of the series.
Thank you!
Hey, thanks! I was wondering if this was even possible, and turns out that it is + it’s simple when following your tutorial! 🙂 Thank you!
Thank you so much for making all these. It is such a great resource and a key contribution of the WP community.
If you are a WordPress developer or work in web development - please consider taking a look and letting me know any feedback you may have.
Though this site is aimed at developers, I try to approach these topic through a lens of developer/designer collaboration, since this is necessary to create a polished experience.