January 18, 2019 — A quick talk about how Debug can be really helpful in identifying issues with your WordPress site and how it can help even beginner developers fix problems with their code.

August 23, 2018 — Everyone has their preferred choice of Development tools, but it is important to see what options are available. While there are a number of benefits, this talk is designed to cover some of the top reason to give an IDE a test drive.
1. Using xdebug to troubleshoot your code.
2. Stepping through the code.
3. Jumping to where a function is defined.
4. Code suggestions due to the fact that the IDE knows about WP Core functions.
5. PHP Codesniffer

August 22, 2018 — You wouldn’t try and work out what’s wrong with your car engine by looking at the front bonnet.. so why debug your application from the outside when you can “pop the hood”?

The xDebug extension for PHP offers some amazing tools for developers to both understand and debug problems in their applications, but is frequently passed over as its benefits, setup, and configuration are poorly understood.

This talk aims to bring xDebug to the masses, discussing the setup of xDebug for a couple of local environments ( currently Local by FlyWheel, Laravel’s Homestead and Laravel’s Valet, though open to including more ‘WordPress’ environments like chassis ) and the configuration of your IDE ( VS Code / PHPStorm). Along with some demonstrations of how this method of working can help everyone take their development to the next level.

March 28, 2018 — XDebug is a tool for developers to gain insight into how PHP is executed. Using it for profiling is a very effective, fast and precise method to find bottlenecks in your WordPress site. In this talk I explain how to use it with Webgrind, how to find potential optimization targets, show examples of real cases when XDebug helped fix a performance problem and also explain what XDebug is not suitable for and what can be used instead. If you are not a developer, you’ll learn what XDebug is capable of and when to ask a developer to use it.

Presentation Slides »

February 3, 2018 — XDebug is a tool for developers to gain insight into how PHP is executed. Using it for profiling is a very effective, fast and precise method to find bottlenecks in your WordPress site. In this talk I explain how to use it with Webgrind, how to find potential optimization targets, show examples of real cases when XDebug helped fix a performance problem and also explain what XDebug is not suitable for and what can be used instead. If you are not a developer, you’ll learn what XDebug is capable of and when to ask a developer to use it.

October 23, 2017 — This talk will demonstrate the benefits of using Xdebug to debug PHP, why it beats the pants off of `var_dump()`, and how it has helped, and continues to help me become a better developer. I’ll talk a bit about what Xdebug is, how it works, and a few common scenarios where Xdebug has helped me to solve problems and gain a better understanding of how various tools work together. I’ll be running Xdebug on a Vagrant box and using PHP Storm for my demonstration. I will cover: 1. How to quickly configure a project to use Xdebug 2. How to set break points and step through code execution 3. How to inspect variables 4. How to use the console to evaluate expressions Xdebug isn’t hard to use, and once you’ve used it you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Presentation Slides »