19 Free WordPress Developer Resources For Advance WordPress Users

Being open source software, WordPress has really helped communities and developer resources. A short of list of useful WordPress developer resources have been listed here, Hoping that these resources will help you to speed up your development efficiency.

1. Developer WordPress Reference

If you ever wanted to know what’s going on inside WordPress and it’s code. Which functions, hooks, APIs, Classes and methods are being used, this is should be your go-to place. You can search this Code Reference for more information about WordPress’ functions, classes, methods, and hooks. Upon clicking them you get to see sources of these functions, hooks. With each WordPress version, it gets updated so you can be sure of its authenticity and relevancy, a perfect theme development resource.

2. WPmail.me

You should always keep yourself up to date with the latest WordPress news. Hence, I’m recommending wpmail.me . It is a free WordPress newsletter that sends you an email once a week and has been operating for a long time. With a round-up of WordPress news and articles. A great source to stay up to date with WordPress eco-system.

3. Generate WP

A great tool to generate custom codes for WordPress. You fill up a form with information regarding function name and other necessary parameters depending upon the type of generator you use, And then you click the “update code” button to generate the code for you. Generators are divided into –

1. Admin

1.1 Toolbar Generator
1.2 Quicktags Generator
1.3 oEmbed Providers
1.4 User Content Method Generator
1.5 Dashboard Widgets Generator (Premium)

2. Content

2.1 Shortcode Generator
2.2 Post Type Generator
2.3 Meta Box Generator (Premium)
2.4 Taxonomy Generator
2.5 Term Meta Generator (Premium)
2.6 Post Status Generator

3.Core

3.1 Hooks Generator
3.2 wp-config.php Generator
3.3 Plugin Readme Generator
3.4 Schedule Cron Job Generator
3.5 Register WordPress Scripts
3.6 Register WordPress Styles

4. Design

4.1 Menu Generator
4.2 Sidebar Generator
4.3 Widgets Generator (Premium)
4.4  Theme Support Generator
4.5 Theme Default Header Generator

5. Query

5.1 WP_Query Generator
5.2 WP_User_Query Generator
5.3 WP_Comment_Query Generator
5.4 WP_Term_Query Generator
5.5 WP_Site_Query Generator
5.6 WP_Network_Query Generator
5.7 WP_Meta_Query Generator
5.8 WP_Data_Query Generator

6. General

6.1 Custom Generator

A lot of custom snippets have shared in this Snippet section might also be useful to you, pretty useful WordPress developer resource.

4. WordPress Reference

Prepared by the DBS Development team, It’s basically a reformatted Template Tag section of the WordPress.org Codex. Great for quick reference from of WordPress, Kinda encyclopedia to WordPress theming, and a great reference for your WordPress developing questions. The DBS web development team created this quick reference guide to expedite their WordPress theme development and found it so useful that they thought to share it. You get WordPress tags and their parameter description just the way you see it Codex except it’s been reformatted in a cleaner way.

5. WP REST API

With REST API introduction in WordPress 4.7 it is now more important than ever to know about REST API. This is the official WP REST API website. You have Glossary, Change log, User guide, Common problems, Compatible plugins and tools, API reference. Also extending API references such as –  modifying responses, adding endpoints, hooks references and all the things you need to know about WP REST API under one roof.

6. WP Rollback

For people out there suffering from their theme/plugin update, this could be your solution. It quickly and easily rollbacks any theme/plugin from WordPress.org to any previous/newer version without any of the manual FTP stuff. It works exactly like the plugin/theme updater, except for the fact that you’re rolling back/forward to a specific version. With this handy plugin, you can say goodbye to your update fear. WP Rollback just cuts down the manual downloading and FTPing the files or learning Subversion or any other complex kinds of stuff and takes care of the trouble for you.

Do check out their GitHub Wiki Page for more information. And as always use this plugin in a staging environment or make a backup copy of your site. Definitely, a must-use among many WordPress developer sources.

7. Github Updater

If you want to update your themes/plugins from GitHub, this could be your go-to plugin. Github Updater enables automatic updates to your GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab-hosted WordPress plugins, themes, and language packs. It also allows for the remote installation of plugins or themes. The plugin also has a Slack channel – Slack team for GitHub Updater and click here for an invite.

• Requires at least: 4.0
• Requires PHP: 5.3
• Tested up to: 4.7
• Stable tag: master

In order for this plugin to work your plugin/theme must contain a header in the style.css or in the plugin’s header denoting the location on GitHub. Check the Github page for the header format and more information.

8. Poststatus.com

A go-to site for news & information for WordPress professionals. Starting from Matt Mullenweg’s interview to core team updates and follow-up on new topics, everything is covered in Post Status.

9. Fakerpress

Unlike the theme test unit, If you want to create content as you develop this plugin can help.  It lets you create various types of dummy content on the fly.

10. WP CLI

A command-line-based tool for managing WordPress installations. You can update plugins, configure multisite installs and much more, without using a web browser. The main goal of this plugin is to provide a command-line interface for any action you might want to perform in the WordPress admin. It also includes commands for many things you can’t do in the WordPress admin, such as – deleting all the transients.

11. 10up Engineering Best Practices

10up is well versed in the WordPress ecosystem and is well known for specializing in WordPress enterprise solutions. Following their footsteps would do nothing but help you in your WordPress coding journey. From markup to project structure most everything has been mapped out.

12. Codepoet

An AUTOMATTIC Medley, You can browse videos by categories such as – CSS, Theme Dev, Plugin, Security, SEO, Business, Client Service. You can also check out the articles, resources, and books page for more WordPress resources.

13. Mattreport

Podcast site focused on WordPress freelancers, agency owners, product creators, craving actionable advice. You get industry news, interviews, and advice from renowned WordPress developers, Which will definitely help you to understand the ecosystem better. 

14. Hookr.io

You get a list of all the hooks (Action/Filter), Classes, Constants, Functions used in WordPress. These sections are alphabetically organized. Each section has a usage section and where it has been used in WordPress along with the version number. You can download the free Hookr plugin for your own development purpose. Hookr plugin feature includes –

• Augments pages to illustrate which actions & filters run during the page life cycle
• Inspecting  filters
• Details of every hook
• Built-in lucene search engine for fast filtering
• Tweak settings options to suit your development workflow
• Provides what file & line(s) the code/object is defined, also any related hook callbacks sharing the same tag name or signature.
• Dynamically generated usage blocks are available for every action, filter, function & constant
• hyperlinked & annotated source code blocks to find what you need

15. WPSeek

Another WordPress tool, geared toward developers and theme authors. You type your query on the search box and AJAX-powered search results will be shown in the list. You can search through functions, filters, actions, and constants. More information such as – where these functions are used in WordPress software since when it was added to WordPress can be also found. And the good thing is wpseek is very much updated and maintained. On top of all these features. You have extra goodies like –

Plugin Doctor – Check your plugin for deprecated functions. Check what WordPress version is required based on the functions used. Upload files from Box.net, Dropbox, Google Drive, Github, and your local computer.

Plugin Slug Availability Check – Check for the plugin name your want to use.

You also get a jQuery API plugin, Ubiquity plugin, Sublime Text Plugin, and an Android app.

16. WordPress.tv

Another good resource for savvy WordPress users. You get how videos, videos from renowned WordPress people,  Interviews from popular WordPress professionals, and videos from WordCamp.

17. WP Glossary

WP Glossary is a side project by Anders Norén. WP Glossary contains definitions of most of the words you come into contact with when you’re using WordPress. It’s built for anyone who spends time in the WordPress administration panel, whether you’re a professional using it as part of your job or someone who has a personal WordPress blog. The definitions are short and to the point.

18. WP Settings API

Created by Jeroen Sormani, You can create your plugin/theme setting page using this tool. All you need to do is type your plugin/theme name, prefix, and text-domain. And then on the “Setting” tab, you get this default WordPress dashboard area and on the right, you have the type of setting you want to create. It’s all drag and drop, so you can drag and drop the text field, checkbox, radio button, text area, or select option. Then just click the Let’s go button and all the code will be generated for you. Additionally, you have options to display the menu on a menu page,  Sub-menu page, not in the menu and options page.

19. WordPress.Stackexchange

http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/ is purely focused on WordPress. It’s a question & answer community for all WordPress development-related questions.

Final Thoughts

Even though this is not a comprehensive list but I believe some of these WordPress developer resources will be useful to you and your development team. However, if you’re still new to WordPress and wondering how to get started with it, here is a useful resource that will help you learn WordPress and its best practices. What are the resources you personally use and prefer? Do you want to include any other cool resources I haven’t mentioned? Do let me know in the comment section or shoot me a Tweet, if they’re really helpful I will add them in.