Working as an Out-of-House Developer, or

Maintaining Retainers

WordCamp Tampa 2015 - Devin Vinson

@devinvinson(I mostly retweet and follow so you’ve been warned)

Devin Vinson

✦ Developer at Awesome Motive ✦ Maintain the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate ✦ Easily excited

Baseline Expectations

1. Be there when they need you

2. Track your time

3. Don’t break things

Paying in advance to:

Now add WordPressbecause why else would we be here right?

Update all the things(without breaking anything)

Local Development + Version Control = Good

Options for local• VVV (Varying Vagrant Vagrants)

• DesktopServer

• MAMP

• VIP Quickstart (sort of)

• Salty WordPress

Version Control (Git)

• http://beanstalkapp.com

• https://github.com

• https://bitbucket.org

• Managed hosting with built in version control

Workflow

1. Update locally2. Test3. Commit changes with git4. Push up those changes to your live server5. Login on live6. Test again

CelebrateHopefully

https://make.wordpress.org/core

Core changes shouldn’t be a

surprise

Plugin updatesRead the changelog, look at changes in version control (git)

Develop new code the same way you update

Pretend you didn’t write the new code, test it

Write better comments

//because metabox outputs this array dumb

//array of arrays, only get then use the first one

Make feature pluginsAdd features and client requests as plugins to help

compartmentalize projects

Some Examples

• Button added to tinymce to add drop caps to paragraphs, special text or code snippets

• Best-of plugin that uses google analytics data to auto-curate posts

• Custom welcome dashboard specific to client

Keeping up with the industry

When the client drops those buzzwords, be ready

Post Status ClubThe best and easiest way to keep up with daily

WordPress happenings

Pro Plugin Directoryhttps://proplugindirectory.com/

I don’t know

• I haven’t had a chance to work with that yet

• Doesn’t sound familiar, where did you hear of that?

• I always love to check out the newest thing but I’ll need to look at it to make sure its been battle tested

–Everyone at some point

“I can put together a quote for that.”

Build the relationshipFrom one project to the next

Day to Day

• Test and build new things locally

• Use Git to version your clients site (theme+plugins)

• Keep track of changes in the industry

• Enjoy working together with your client to keep things running