Aaron Brazell - WordPress Bible, 2nd Edition

WordPress Bible, 2nd Edition

Aaron Brazell

WordPress Bible, 2nd Edition

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Copyright 2011 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

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ISBN: 978-0-470-93781-5

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About the Author

Aaron Brazell is a Co-Founder at WP Engine, an Austin, Texas-based startup built to meet the technical needs of WordPress bloggers. He is a WordPress core contributor and has been an active member of the WordPress community since 2004 as a developer, user, and consultant.

He is a frequent public speaker, engaging with the WordPress community at WordCamps around the United States, as well as at marketing, social media, and other industry events. He has organized WordCamp Mid-Atlantic, a WordPress community conference catering to the Greater Capital region, which includes Maryland, D.C., Delaware, and Northern Virginia. He believes in challenging conventional thinking and assumptions, and as a result, often takes actions that are provocative, strategic, and unconventional in an effort to move dialogue and popular opinion forward.

In addition to his work with WordPress and social media, Aaron is an avid photographer and sports fan (his favorite teams are the Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Ravens), and has one son, Devin Michael. He currently lives in Austin, Texas.

Dedication

To Devin, my only son, for giving me something to think about even when I don't realize I need to be thinking about it.

Credits

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Robyn Siesky

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Rosemarie Graham

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Richard Swadley

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Sheree Montgomery

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Melanee Habig Ronald G. Terry

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Foreword

When Aaron first mentioned he was writing the WordPress Bible , I immediately offered him a hand in editing. I figured it was a safe bet. After all, I'm a PHP guy with five years of Drupal experience and zero years of WordPress. In fact, my only involvement with WordPress was attending WordCamp Mid-Atlantic; I'd never even installed it before. I had to open my mouth....

Fast-forward a couple months and suddenly chapter after chapter fill my inbox. So I started digging into this alien environment from two different perspectives: first, from the community perspective and second, from a developer's perspective.

For open source projects, the community is important to understand. Not only do you need to know how to get involved, but also you also need to know how healthy it is. Is this project going to be active a month or year from now? Therefore, I started reading with the intent to learn about the WordPress community. I wanted to know its motivations, how it interacted, how decisions were made, and how information flows within, into, and out of the team. Delving into the community and help chapters, I learned quite a bit. I found myself dropping into IRC, exploring a mailing list or two, and hitting WordPress forums to see how new voices were welcomed. To be honest, I appreciated the perspective and guidance from someone who gets it.

Secondly, one of the joys of open source is looking at things from a developer's perspective. Unfortunately, many open source projects are a pile of messy code with horrible documentation, and you'll find yourself huddled under a desk crying pitifully in under 15 minutes. With WordPress, I didn't have that experience. Sure, there were times when something didn't make sense at first pass, but I kept digging. I asked some harsh questions related to PHP 5 and object-oriented principles and coding standards and APIs and a variety of other things. Each response even those which I disagreed with was well-reasoned and internally consistent. More important, the documentation and explanations supporting the system were amazing and provided numerous great examples. In fact, the underlying concepts were useful enough that I've duplicated a few in one of my projects.