The Circle of WordPress Website Development

We’ve been developing websites as a company since 2004. Pixel Jar has a collective experience of 50+ years within the team. We’ve experimented with many CMSs over the years, but in 2007 we began working with WordPress. We were pleased with the results and continued down the WordPress path. Currently the bulk of our work is WordPress-based. There are many reasons why we prefer working with WordPress, but what does it really mean to be a WordPress website development firm? Learn – Build – Give Back, Repeat.

WordPress Website Development “The WordPress Way”

Most developers have a working knowledge of PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript when beginning development with WordPress. But when we develop with WordPress there are three key things to keep in mind beyond standard development skills.

First, we have to remember that WordPress is a big starting point for a lot of development, meaning that a lot of programming for common needs has already been done. So before we decide to write a function or subroutine to automate a repetitive task, it’s wise to check if WordPress already has such a function. Often it does. And it comes from the collective wisdom of the WordPress community, so it’s probably as tight and lean as programming can be. So there’s a great library of functionality already baked in for our use.

Second, comes formatting. There are myriad styles programmers use to format their code, and no way is inherently right or wrong (though many topics can be hotly debated with nerdy passion – tabs vs. spaces). But with WordPress, there is an agreed upon set of rules for formatting code that we like to follow. This way we know what to expect from 3rd party code, and we send our code out into the world in a way that others will be expecting. This standardization makes us a better development community.

Third, is extensibility. One of WordPress’s key strengths is its ability to be customized to meet just about any online need. When code for plugins, themes, and WordPress Core is written smartly, other coders won’t even need to touch the source to make their own customizations to any original work. So our custom client work can live alongside WooCommerce, MemberPress, and Beaver Builder without disrupting updates and the normal functionality of any other theme or plugin.

WordPress website development is constantly evolving and we are constantly learning and growing with it.

Customizing Themes and Plugins

Custom development of themes, plugins, and functionality is where the bulk of our project work lives. WordPress is a great tool to get a user to a certain level of online presence. But as business needs become more complex, so go the needs of that business’s website. This is where Pixel Jar enters the story.

We are here to help businesses customize their website where default feature sets fall short. These can be tasks such as building a fully customized theme when pre-built themes don’t deliver on brand messaging, extending Gravity Forms when special validations are needed or particular data needs collecting, augmenting WooCommerce when shipping has conditional requirements, getting WordPress to talk to a 3rd party marketing tool, or creating events and conversions to track in Google Analytics. We love taking on custom challenges and building solutions that work.

The WordPress Community

The circle closes back with the WordPress community. We embrace and support that WordPress is an open source project. This means that we give back to the project where we can. Giving back comes in all kinds of forms. We review and contribute to WordPress Core. We maintain free plugins in the WordPress plugin repository for others to use. We started and continue to help organize the annual local WordCamp here in Orange County. We present, mentor, and volunteer at other WordCamps we attend. We run a monthly meetup locally geared toward advanced development in WordPress. WordPress is stronger and better because of the community and we are proud to be a part of that.