When you start to use WordPress as an application platform, one thing is very soon clear: WordPress defines very little base structure for your application code, where to put and how to write tests, how application is loaded, or for example how dependencies should be managed. Because of this, applications or just complex sites built on top of WordPress tend to get really messy. There are application frameworks built on top of WordPress, but none of them seem to have wide enough use for to build any serious applications on top of. Until any of those gets wide-spread adoption, combining existing, non-WordPress specific PHP technologies as a custom solution probably is a more future-proof solution. We will be looking into one possible stack of technologies.

1. The Evolution of WordPress
Software Development
Aki Björklund
@akibjorklund

2. How do you organize your
custom code?

3. Why?

4. I bet it is not pretty

5. WordPress offers no
file/folder structure

6. WordPress offers no
autoloading

7. WordPress offers no
unit test framework

8. WordPress offers no
dependency management

9. WordPress offers no
[insert a “professional” software
development tool here]

10. Probably it shouldn’t either

11. There aren’t any plugins
you can install to get those

12. There are plugin frameworks
and some site frameworks

13. They are not widespread

14. …thus not suitable as basis of
significant applications

15. We could roll our own… or not

16. What can we use then?

17. Create a solution out of existing
widespread technologies

18. Solution like that is on
a stable foundation

19. I’ll introduce to you our stack

20. Yours could be different

21. Bedrock gives us a project
structure, but not for your own code

22. Composer gives us
dependency management

23. Composer PHP autoloader will
load files when they are needed

24. Symfony’s DependencyInjection
component lets us write loosely
coupled code

25. PHPUnit and WP_Mock enable
unit testing

26. WPlinth is our collection of
base classes

27. About code organization

28. Site specific code lives in the
mu-plugins folder

29. mu-plugins/app-loader.php

30. Example folder
structure of the
application
/Connection
/PostType
/QueryFilter
/Service
/Taxonomy
/Test
Application.php

31. Classes inherit
WPlinth base classes

33. Invest in some time to
organize your code

34. No need to use all the tools
mentioned here for all projects

35. Document your solution online

36. Let’s start building standards

37. Write code that you would gladly
inherit from someone else
10 years from now

38. @akibjorklund
akibjorklund.com/2015/wceu
for slides and more info