As you know, WordPress is a very flexible, comprehensive platform and can often be used for multiple purposes. And if you’re looking to create a solid foundation for building a good website, here are 9 New WordPress Plugins Development advice that would greatly help you increase your website features!
9 WordPress Plugins Development Tips
To help you learn from other developers, we’ve gone and asked this question to the top WordPress developers & experts:
What’s one setup/configuration thing you do on WordPress sites, that’s different than most people do?
We got advice from some truly WordPress genius! Also if you haven’t seen how u can make your WordPress stand out, go look at our custom fonts for WordPress. It’s also important to keep your website safe, so make sure you follow our tips on our advanced methods of improving security for WordPress.
Experts on Plugin Development
Mushfiq Sarker – The Website Flip
Remkus de Vries – Truer than North
Russell Heimlich – Russell Heimlich
Aigars Silkalns – Crafter and Founder, Colorlib
WordPress Developer’s Insight:
For brand-new websites, we use a headless WordPress setup. This means that our websites load very fast and require fewer computing resources. This setup works only for non-eCommerce sites, but you can achieve a performance that can’t be matched by regular WordPress hosting setups.
Aigars Silkalns is the mastermind behind Colorlib. Aigars has worked with WordPress for the last 10 years as a webmaster until he switched to WordPress theme and frontend development in 2013 and has done it ever since.
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Arpad Szucs – UX & UI designer and WordPress Developer
WordPress Developer’s Insight:
Many WordPress experts use different page builders. I think the era of third-party page builders is slowly fading away. We’ve fully embraced the Gutenberg workflow. We still use tools to speed up development (ie. Kadence blocks), but the main tool remains Gutenberg and a custom plugin for each site to host extra functionality.
Arpad Szucs helps businesses by creating meaningful brands and websites that convert. He is also an advocate of open-source technologies and WordPress, with more than a decade of work experience.
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Jeff Starr– CEO & Lead Developer, Plugin Planet
WordPress Developer’s Insight:
Everyone does things their own way. A lot of folks automate setup. I like to automate and then go through things manually to fine-tune and customize. For example, I’ll enable monitoring of site uptime and admin activity. I also remove or disable any bloat and unnecessary WordPress features, like the default plugins, Embeds, Emojis, and upon request, replace Gutenberg with Classic Editor. Also like to optimize server configuration, but the question asked for “one thing” so gotta leave it there.
Jeff Starr is a professional developer, designer, author, and publisher with over 15 years of experience in web design and development and over 10 years of experience working with WordPress. His books include Digging Into WordPress, The Tao of WordPress, .htaccess made easy, and WordPress Themes In Depth.
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Mushfiq Sarker – Founder, The Website Flip
WordPress Developer’s Insight:
I ensure I have a central location to manage all of my WordPress websites. For this, I use, Manage WP. A plugin is installed on the WordPress site, which connects with Manage WP’s central dashboard. Through Mange WP, periodic backups are done, plugins can be kept up-to-day, and also uptime monitoring.
It’s one tool that not many people use. It saves me countless hours per month.
Mushfiq Sarker is a Founder, Investor, and Operator. Since 2008, Mushfiq’s built a world-class team of growth experts that help operate and grow portfolio sites. He actively buys and sells websites to manage risk and keep things interesting.
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Nazim Ansari – CEO, iPage Solution
WordPress Developer’s Insight:
Whenever I set up a WordPress site for my clients, I take care of security and performance. For security, I set up Wordfence, and for performance, I keep the installation minimal by having a few plugins on the site & GeneratePress theme. Most people ignore this part and bloat their site with unnecessary codes.
Nazim Ansari has been creating high-end WordPress websites since 2016. Nazim’s key focus is on design and speed to ensure best-in-class UI and UX.
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Rhys Wynne – Author & WordPress Development Specialist
WordPress Developer’s Insight:
I don’t know what I do differently as such. There’s a reason most people use them. However, when I was developing, I often found moving from staging sites to live sites, I was not making them visible in search. I’ve created a simple plugin – Check Search Engine Visibility on Migration (https://wordpress.org/plugins/check-search-engine-visibility-on-migration/) which notifies you if you ever change the URL of the site (so from staging to live) to check if the visibility of the site is changed.
Rhys Wynne is a WordPress Developer with over 10 years of experience working with WordPress, with over half of that working with WordPress in a professional capacity. Rhys wrote his first book – bbPress Complete (ISBN-13: 978-1782167242) – the first book on bbPress that has been released commercially.
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Hang in there, we’re almost wrapping this up! How have you been blown away by the insights shared by our expert developers? Have you found a better way to developing WordPress Plugins for your clients?
To find out more, keep going and discover other unique WordPress setups you have not discovered yet!
Remkus de Vries – Founder, Truer Than North
WordPress Developer’s Insight:
Offload everything that should be in front of the site/server to be in front of the server. Think of security, optimizations, and performance-improving as part of the setup of a WordPress site.
Remkus de Vries has been building WordPress sites since 2006. His focus has always been on e-commerce, community sites, and connecting WordPress to external APIs. All his websites are built with a strong emphasis on performance and scalability.
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Russell Heimlich – Marketing Lead Web Developer
WordPress Developer’s Insight:
Over the years, I have honed in on a pattern of component-driven development. Small building blocks of a site that aren’t tied to one particular template. The data can flow from anywhere, and the components can be used across a site in many ways for unparalleled flexibility.
Russell Heimlich specializes in XHTML/CSS, Javascript, Multimedia Authoring, DVD Authoring, Video Editing, Flash Design, Digital Photography, Freelance Writing, Syndicating via RSS, Podcasting, and New Media.
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Tom Rankin – WordPress Project Manager
WordPress Developer’s Insight:
I make sure my workflow is perfect – local, to staging, to production. I’ll also use a Git repo to make changes and updates so my site can stay online as much as possible.
Tom Rankin is an experienced WordPress, small business writer, and project manager.
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Wrapping It All Up
There you have it! 9 answers from WordPress experts themselves!
Isn’t it awesome to have so many WordPress experts sharing their insights on the best plugin WordPress development in one place?
So what are my takeaways from all this?
- Create something unique – WordPress plugin development requires you to do proper research. So, always look before you leap!
- Always consider developing a WordPress plugin customizable to your client’s needs. Much of Slack’s success has to do with its API, which is a great way to build integrations and allows you to build new features and functionality to cater to your business need.
- Always help people. You are a genius at what you do, and most often if not, it requires so much of your time when helping. But it surely will help you produce better plugin ideas as you sincerely become more involved in understanding what’s needed to help better.
What’s one unique configuration thing you do on WordPress sites that’s different than most people do?
Have you got any ‘must-have’ WordPress development ideas? Let us know in the comments section below!
