Brian Messenlehner - 11 Dec

by Brian Messenlehner and Jason Coleman

Copyright 2020 Brian Messenlehner and Jason Coleman. All rights reserved.

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978-1-491-99008-7

[LSI]

For the past several years, Ive spent 15 to 24 weekends each year visiting software developers around the country. After something like 25,000 conversations, Ive become convinced of three things:

Its difficult to imagine life without web applications in it. Today, we do our banking online. We book hotels and vacations online using web applications; we do our taxes online in what certainly feels like an application; we check in on our phone to Supercuts before we arrive for our appointment using what feels like a simple form, but it, too, is an application. Web applications are everywhere.

If you talk to nondevelopers, theyll tell you that their developer friend is a genius who can do anything with a computer. But if you spend time talking to developers directly, youll discover that they see the world very differently.

They look at the web applications that they consider real and the companies behind them, and they have convinced themselves that the people that work over there know things about building web applications that no one else knows.

Theyre convinced that they can build only small applicationsthat they dont know what they need to know to do the stuff that will result in wildly popular web applications.

When you sit with developers to talk about web applications, you quickly find out that the missing element is confidence more than anything else. Writing the code isnt hard once you know what you need to do. But that doesnt mean that developers dont need a bit more insight into the process.

These conversations have taken place across the country at local conferences called WordCamps. These are community events that typically have 200 to 500 participantsequally split between developers and nondevelopers. What they have in common is the use or the intention to use the web publishing product called WordPress.

WordPress, if youve never heard of it, powers a third of the internet sites on the planet. Its primarily used as a content publishing platform. But the truth is that you can use WordPress to kickstart your web application.

Thats what youll find in the pages of this book.

What I love about this book is that it doesnt skimp in the early chapters. It helps readers slowly navigate the early questions. It gives you confidence. And I know how valuable youll find that. It creates a roadmap for how to get from where you are to where you want to be.

But what I also love about this book is that it pushes you deeper into the details of every line of code you need to write. Some of it will be new to you. Some of it wont. But what you wont find is high-level writing that doesnt explain itself and leaves you wondering how to apply your newfound knowledge.

Instead, Brian and Jason introduce you to every part of WordPress that you need to know to use it as a web application framework. There are coding schools today that need to teach from this material. Thankfully, you dont need to pay for those schools, which cost far more than this book.

I cant recommend this book with any more excitement than in this foreword.

Until now you may have thought that there were two kinds of developers. The first is the kind who builds hardcore applications that you never could. The other is the kind like you, who could build small or simple applications.

When youve finished reading this book, there is one thing that I know for sure. When youre done, when youve read the words and played with the code, when youve put it into actionyou will know that theres only one kind of developer: the kind that can build anything they can imagine, and youre that kind of developer.

The fact that youre reading these words now makes that already true. Now its time for you to discover that reality.

Chris Lema

VP of Products & Innovation at Liquid Web