Fast & Furious WordPress Theme Development

Updated on February 14, 2011, Posted February 13, 2011

I’m somewhat of a productivity nut; I automatically track my time through rescuetime, try to automate my workflows and absolutely despise repetitive work. After all, life is short, why spend it doing the same thing over and over again (I’m also fortunate enough to be able to make career choices)?

As a designer, coding has always had more of this “have to get it done” feel to it. Although I respect it (which is why I’m learning), I can’t relate much to the phrase “code is poetry”. I also don’t check into the WordPress Trac all too often or even know a single feature planned for PHP 6.  However, I love developing themes for WordPress and designing functional end-user solutions. This is also why I had taken it upon myself to delve into PHP, some jQuery and plenty of WordPress functionality. My first steps could probably be characterized as the typical NotePad & FTP Client setup, the equivalent of swimming laps in quicksand. The guide below is based on my experiences & needs as a designer,  I hope that you will join in and share yours.

All of the solutions I offer below are free, except for Beanstalk (where I can offer 10% off through this link). So in other words, this setup runs at about $15/month (or $0 if you’re willing to do away with automatic deployments). Before describing my time-savers, let me show you them!

It may seem like a lot of stuff, but I find it very manageable as a one man show. As WordPress is a core part of my daily business (Individual Clients + Theme Development for Theme Force), there’s no more room for inefficient workflows. I work on more than one theme everyday and certainly make more than a single change. It’s important that this process is safe, fast and efficient. Lets discuss the actual applications that help me save time:

1) netbeans (advanced editor)

What Photoshop is to MS Paint, Netbeans is to Notepad. It’s a pimped out code editor (or “integrated development environment”) that provides a project view, supports all the  common languages and even tells you off when you’re typing something funky (“This is your final warning Noel, stop using Excel functions for PHP!“). I had originally transitioned from Notepad to Notepad++, but even that was holding me back when I started getting serious about PHP. It’s really well done and easy to use for the non-developer types like myself, definitely give it a shot:

Time-Saving Features

  • Project View – When you close a project (or the application) it remembers which files you were working on. So when you re-open a project or start Netbeans the next day, you’ve got the same files open again.
  • Code-Assist (Error Checking) – It’s very smart at detecting mistakes or typo’s which can otherwise take you plenty of “investigating”. You can also easily comment lines or assign yourself To-Do’s.
  • SVN Support – You can commit changes directly from Netbeans.
  • Out of the Box Functionality – As soon as the install was complete, I didn’t have to touch anything more; PHP, XHTML, CSS, JS, etc. all recognized perfectly.

Overall and as a “non-developer”, I really enjoy working with this tool and feel like I have a much clearer overview of the items I’m working on.

2) xampp (local testing)

Confession: I actually used to upload my files via FTP for every single change (“overwrite existing file?”), it brings a whole new meaning to pissing in the wind. It gets old quick, especially once this WordPress stuff doesn’t become a hobby anymore. As a result I found XAMPP, and haven’t looked back since. The official website states “XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use – just download, extract and start.”. The statement is bang on and WordPress runs flawlessly within the environment:

Time-Saving Features

  • No more uploading / committing for testing – Instead of having  to go through your whole upload process, you just save the file and refresh your browser, voilà! Easily the biggest time-saver on this page (along with the auto-deployment from beanstalk, essentially the same thing).
  • Easy Test Environment Setup – It’s very easy to set up a new site or instance of WordPress (no upload, cpanel or general connection lag)
  • phpMyAdmin – Also included in the package and easily accessible through localhost/phpmyadmin . This sort of easy access is great when you’re troubleshooting database related matters.
  • Out of the Box Functionality – No different from Netbeans here; plug & play.

3) tortoisesvn (version control)

(Optional: As Netbeans can commit changes too, but has fewer features) Tortoise is a straightforward tool, enabling you to have easy version control right within Windows Explorer (given that you’re using a repository). For those who don’t know, the purpose of subversion is what could be summarized as a controlled collaborative environment where every change to the code is tagged as a revision, a full audit trail if you will. I like to keep my repositories on managed servers elsewhere (in my case beanstalk). Although I back up all my files through another provider, version control and collaboration is a massive plus here:

Time-Saving Features

  • Feature Rich – Be it grabbing a newer/older revision, exporting/relocating the repository or just committing your latest goods; its dead simple and integrated within Windows Explorer (i.e. right click access)
  • Windows Integration – Tortoisesvn is not a separate application visually, it integrates into your “right-click” menu within Windows Explorer. That’s a huge plus as it’s always accessible.

4) beanstalk app (subversion hosting)

I really love beanstalk; Have a look at the screenshot below, I did a commit by right clicking a folder within Windows and 16 seconds later it had been saved to my repository as well as deployed to my 2 production environments (as you can see deployment is set to “automatic” once the repository receives an update):

Although I’ve been self-sufficient for a while now, it’s also very helpful for easily verifying changes from other contributors:

Time-Saving Features

  • Automatic Deployment – Really just what I was looking for. Once everything looks good locally, I send it off to the repository which in turn automatically gets deployed (and I only pay $15 a month for this service).
  • Manual Deployments – You can rollback a deployment to any revision or do a full deployment (i.e. all files) at any time.
  • Collaboration – Easy user setup and great overview of what changes or contributions were made.

With a money back guarantee, you have nothing to lose by testing it out (and here’s 10% off).

5) wordpress time-savers

Last but not least, when you’re actually working within WordPress, there are some great tools out there to help you out:

  • WP-Devel (link) – If you want to see what’s going on within the back-end, this is the tool for you. I love using it to call me out on issues (non-existent variables, etc.) or reducing queries.
  • WP Dummy Content (link or a static pack here) – You don’t want to create dummy posts, pages, comments every time you’re testing a new theme. Get smart and use a tool to pre-populate your installation right off the bat, be it for testing design (i.e. unordered lists) or functionality (i.e. protected posts).
  • WP3 Cheat Sheet (link) – This actually has to do more with your actual WordPress knowledge, but the fact that there are consolidated lists out there, that are print-ready was worthy enough for me to mention (and I’m a big fan).

what does your development environment look like?

My method is by no means perfect or the only way of doing things (certainly not), but it fits my work style very nicely. I’d be interested in hearing how you work or develop on WordPress (be it for themes or plug-ins), so comment below and share with everyone else!