October 22, 2020 — An update in WP 5.6 is going to remove support for very old jQuery. I am a Senior Front End Developer for an agency that builds and supports over 40 WP sites a year. Our custom theme, Gesso, does not use older jQuery, but we do use a range of plugins based on the technical requirements of our clients. The jQuery version leap is quite large, and we are trying to account for all the plugins and different versions of these plugins that we use that may have flown under the radar utilizing now deprecated code.

We are currently using the jQuery Test Update plugin and jQuery Migrate on new builds, but we needed a more programmatic way to analyze sites that are currently deployed. First we want to get a comprehensive view of all the plugins we use and their versions. Then we are investigating the plugin code to determine if it uses old jQuery. If it does, we are either, updating that plugin’s version (see Custom Post UI), or taking it out completely if we can’t find a version that complies with the new requirement. Many of our clients are non-profit and government sites that are updated monthly. This WP update requires more rigor than usual, so we need a tool to help.

Enter PyGithub. PyGithub is a Python library that accesses the GitHub API. It allows you to run robust searches throughout all of your repos, when you need to do something more complicated than the GitHub search function will allow. I will demonstrate how to connect to the GitHub API and then drill down to the composer.json and pull out the plugin names and versions. Then I will show how to search within the code for offending jQuery.

I hope to have everyone using this simple tool to do all kinds of analysis on their WP repos, and provide people some confidence in updating sites to the latest version of WP without fear of breaking things. I will also cover some of the typical issues that we ran into regarding plugins, and older theme code.

December 30, 2019 — Most developers have some experience with jQuery, but few of them understand the principles of Javascript and how to write and debug Javascript code. This session will cover best practices for writing object oriented Javascript, benchmarking, and debugging.

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June 2, 2019 — This talk will cover how JavaScript has been used with WordPress in the past, and how it will be used going forward. Instead of proposing one single method or framework to use when coding JavaScript, we will go through a few different combinations you’ll see in the wild in both older and more forward-looking WordPress plugins. Examples will cover AJAX with jQuery, ES6, the Heartbeat API, REACT, and Gutenberg blocks.

After this talk, attendees should feel more comfortable opening up any JS file they come across in the WordPress world and knowing a bit more about how to work with the various frameworks and patterns in use.

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March 9, 2015 — Orlando-based WordPress developer Adam Soucie will share his story on how two years ago he quit his job in sales to follow a career in web development and provide the road map for how you can find similar success using WordPress as your vehicle.

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January 27, 2015 — This session will dive in deep into the proper way to include files from plugins and themes. We’ll learn everything from including a script the easy, proper way, to dynamically calling custom scripts in dynamic situations.

December 3, 2014 — This presentation covers a range of common JS/jQuery pitfalls and best practices, including variable/function declaration and scope, closures, caching, naming conventions, and code linting. Whether you’re looking to get familiar with JavaScript in preparation for using the new WordPress JSON REST API (to be released in early 2015), or if you’re just starting out with front-end jQuery, this talk will provide you with some helpful tips and useful links for further learning.

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May 8, 2014 — As developers, one of the first things we do when starting a new project is enqueue jQuery and start writing code. That’s the way it’s always been, and works for you. But as devices get smaller, processors get slower, and web apps get more complicated, jQuery can cause some fairly serious performance issues. So let’s take a step back from jQuery and talk about ways VanillaJS is faster and simpler.

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September 23, 2013 — This presentation includes a brief overview of jQuery and then explains how to integrate jQuery into WordPress sites. It offers examples of custom jQuery development to produce some common site enhancements and discusses how to customize some common plugins.

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June 24, 2013 — Take a floor plan in PDF format and turn it into an interactive Scalable Vector Graphic. Using Illustrator, discuss free tools such as SVG-edit and Inkscape, demonstrate some jQuery, tweak our functions.php file, use “Specific CSS/JS for Posts and Pages,” “Disable Visual Editor WYSIWYG,” and ultimately embed the SVG directly in a WordPress post.

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June 23, 2013 — This presentation focuses on the basics of how to use Underscore to make your theme and plugin scripts more efficient. It touchs on the significance of adding Backbone to core and provides some resources for Model-View-Controller (MVC, or “MVWTF”) JavaScript development on top of WordPress.

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