Fixing a WooCommerce filter by solving the right problem
A client’s WooCommerce product filter kept timing out. The fix was not a faster query but a custom taxonomy, and the real story is about designing instead of copy-pasting.
Tag: AI
Using the mediator pattern to untangle WordPress plugin code
A tangled inventory plugin had hooks and direct class calls everywhere. Treating the WordPress Plugin API as the mediator, with hooks in a dedicated subscriber class, keeps the core logic clean and testable.
Automating WordPress updates with Bedrock and Dependabot
A client running Bedrock sites updated by hand and worried about missed patches. I set up Dependabot and CircleCI so Composer updates get opened, tested, and deployed automatically.
Stop writing WooCommerce queries that crash your site
I got a Slack message from one of our project managers. A client’s WooCommerce shop, a big one with thousands of products, was crawling. Product…
How debugging skills make you a better developer
A WooCommerce coupon worked for regular customers but failed for wholesale ones. Deactivating plugins got me nowhere; stepping through the code with Xdebug found a role-check bug in about 15 minutes.
Using the Static Factory Method Pattern in WordPress
I was working on a WooCommerce plugin for a client to sync their product inventory with a third-party API. Total classic scenario. The problem was,…
Your code is great, so why isn’t it selling?
A buddy of mine, a killer PHP dev, built a WooCommerce extension for subscription invoicing. It was clean, well-documented, and solved a real problem. He…
Let AI do the grunt work: a dev’s take on MCP
I had a client with about a dozen small WordPress sites, nothing major, mostly local businesses. Every month, they wanted a simple health check report….
Why WordPress developers shouldn’t fear the command line
A sharp junior dev was stuck on a bug that only showed up on staging, because he was lost without a GUI. The command line is the most direct way to see what a server is doing, and a couple of basic commands found the error in minutes.
Technical documentation debt turns a simple fix into a nightmare
A simple VIP discount request stalled on a 1000-line, undocumented function nobody understood. The fix was not more code, it was documenting the intent behind it. A short comment block up front saves hours later.