June 21, 2024 — Many hosting options are available for WordPress, but one of the more popular options for developers is using a VPS or virtual private server. VPS services like Digital Ocean, Amazon EC2, and Google Cloud cost a fraction of more traditional managed hosting, with the benefit of controlling your server.

The downside is that you must know your way around server management, including keeping it secure. Fortunately, a wide variety of knowledge is available to guide you through the process.

Over the next couple of live streams, I’ll explain how to set up and manage your own WordPress VPS. We’ll cover the initial server configuration, installing WordPress in both single-site and multi-site installs, different web server software options and configurations, and some security and maintenance best practices.

The first live stream will focus on the initial server setup, using the Apache web server to host WordPress, as it’s the easiest to get set up and configured.

June 20, 2024 — While WordPress’s built-in debugging options should cover most of your needs, there are a number of plugins that can help you debug your code.

Let’s look at two useful debugging plugins.

June 20, 2024 — When developing in JavaScript, debugging your code at various points can help you see what’s happening.

Let’s examine some ways you can view the state of your JavaScript code.

June 18, 2024 — This lesson introduces the concept of web accessibility, explaining what it is, why it’s important, and how it benefits everyone. It covers key principles from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and addresses common misconceptions about accessibility. The lesson highlights the importance of creating accessible websites from the outset. It presents tangible examples of the difficulties faced by people with disabilities, such as low-contrast text and inaccessible interactive elements.

June 18, 2024 — This lesson provides an overview of testing and fixing accessibility issues in your WordPress content to ensure it is usable by as many people as possible. It covers the importance of accessibility, built-in WordPress tools for checking semantic structure and color contrast, and recommends plugins like WP Tota11y, Sa11y, and Editoria11y for additional checks. The lesson also suggests using OS apps and browser extensions to test technical aspects and emphasizes that authors and content managers can significantly improve accessibility without coding by being mindful of key elements such as heading levels, text size, color contrast, links, and alternative text for images.

June 18, 2024 — The Cover block allows you to display text and other content on top of an image or video. It is a great block for headers, banner-style displays, call-to-actions, and more. Explore various ways you could utilize this container block.

June 18, 2024 — Accessibility testing is a crucial part of the theme development process.

It ensures that a website with your theme installed is usable by everyone, regardless of their abilities.

This lesson will introduce you to some tools and techniques for testing your theme’s accessibility.

June 18, 2024 — Digital accessibility is a broad term that means ensuring that as many people as possible can use the web.

The easiest way to deliver accessible themes, plugins, or sites is to think about it from the outset.

In this lesson, you’ll learn about the fundamentals of accessible HTML and how to apply them to your WordPress themes.

June 17, 2024 — In this online workshop, we will learn how to set up the header and footer within a template using a block theme. We will also examine how to incorporate the Navigation block within the header and footer template parts and use patterns.

June 13, 2024