Advanced WordPress development with wp-scripts


WordPress development work for agencies can be competitive at the best of times. It requires supreme efficiency and consistency across multiple client projects.

Regardless of how seasoned you are as a developer, managing an entire portfolio of custom themes and plugins still needs perpetual effort when it comes to workflow streamlining. Enter wp-scripts: a powerful suite of utilities that can revolutionize how your agency approaches WordPress development.

This comprehensive guide looks at the capabilities of wp-scripts, and explores techniques for your build processes. Throughout, it will cover optimized compilation and bundling, automated linting, unit testing, and much more — all of it will speak to you if you juggle multiple high-stakes WordPress projects.

The concept of a ‘build process’

Before we look at the specifics of wp-scripts, let’s understand the broader concept of your web development build process. This consists of a series of automated tasks to help take your source code into a production-ready app or website.

For instance, there are many jobs that benefit from automation in this way:

  • Compiling modern JavaScript into browser-compatible code.
  • Transpiling CSS preprocessor languages (Sass, for example) into standard CSS.
  • Minifying and optimizing assets such as JavaScript, CSS, and media.
  • Running linters to catch potential errors and enforce coding standards.
  • Executing unit tests to ensure better code functionality.

These are good aspects to automate for any development workflow, but for agencies, the process is just as crucial. For starters, you can maintain consistency across multiple projects (and your team).

You can also develop and deploy through quicker cycles and maintain all of your projects by leveraging that consistency— even the most complex ones. For the end-user, the optimized performance you gain will trickle down to their overall experience.

Typically, your agency may ‘cobble together’ custom build processes using tools such as Gulp, Grunt, or even manual processes. However, these approaches can often lead to inconsistencies between projects, not to mention a significant maintenance overhead.



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Posted in Wordpress