You create a beautiful website for your client. Then, you hand over the website to them. Sometime later, you get a desperate call from them because they did something that made it so the site either doesn’t display or looks horribly messed up and they need your help to fix it. What can you do to make certain that the site you build isn’t easy to break?

User Roles

WordPress has different user roles. Use the different roles based on the clients needs. They don’t need to have full administrator access if they are going to be publishing blog posts and page updates.

No Account for adding posts

Use Gravity Forms to create a form for adding content to the website. You add this option for people who are creating content and don’t need access to the admin section. The website’s editor can approve and release content to be seen by your website visitors.

Hide options on the Admin Menu

Install the plugin Admin Menu Editor. It allows you to hide certain menu items from your clients. The less they have access, the less likely for them to make a mistake that damages the website.

TinyMCE Advanced

Add the TinyMCE Advanced plugin to make editing simpler for your clients. The existing editor may have too many features and make it too easy to break the website. This plugin can help to create an editor that has only the features that they need.

Add Custom Widgets to the Dashboard

Create custom widgets to the dashboard that provide extra help for your clients. You may want to create a help section that provides step by step instructions on how to edit and update their website.

Brennan Bliss gives his tip in his talk at WordCamp Albuquerque 2018.

Summary

When you hand a website over to your client, you want them to be able to maintain it as smoothly as possible. You want to give them a site that is hard to break. By making adjustments to the admin dashboard, restricting the type of user roles they get and using custom widgets and plugins that change how the admin works can help both you and your client have a better experience with the WordPress site that you built.

Resources mentioned in WordCamp Albuquerque 2018 talk

• Make WordPress Client Proof
• Adding Custom Widgets to the WordPress Dashboard
• Make WordPress Safe for Clients

APIs or application programming interface provide you with a way to integrate services or features with your website. Before APIs, you need to partner with companies in order to use their code in your website or app. You have a WordPress website. Can you use an API to create additional features? With their WP API, you can build solutions unique to your WordPress website.

What can you do with WP API?

You can use the WP API to build solutions that integrate with WordPress or use it as a back-end database. Maybe you need to create new features that talk to an external API. I found four examples that show you how to use the WP API to integrate with WordPress and an external API for Instagram.

Fetch Random Posts

Chris Coyier demonstrates how to use the WP API to randomly fetch posts from WordPress. In his example, he uses WordPress to store quotes about design and randomly displays one to you.

Go to Quotes on Design to see the api at work.

Retrieving Posts in C#

What if you want to use the WP API with a different programming language? With WP API, you can use a programming language like C# instead of PHP to retrieve posts from WordPress. Hendrik Bulens chose to use ASP.NET MVC as the front end to retrieve the latest blog posts from WordPress.

Voting for Blog Posts

You spend time writing blog posts and want to allow your readers to vote on whether or not they liked the post. In the past, you need to write a plugin using PHP. You can use WP API to accomplish this. Use this example from Delicious Brains to create your blog voting.

Integrate WordPress with Instagram

If you use Instagram, you may want to include photos from your account. WebDev Studios show you how to use the API to integrate Instagram with WordPress.

Summary

These examples show you how to use WP API to modify WordPress and work with an external API. If you want to learn more, Chris Lema has a guide that contains resources and tutorials on Getting Started with APIs and WordPress. You can also check out Getting Started with using an API.

When you write a blog post that features code, you’ll want to show your code. But, you don’t want it to act like code. What are your choices for adding code to a blog post? You can manually show your code, use a plug-in or embed it into your post. Which one do you choose?

1. Code it manually yourself

Write the code to style it yourself without using a plug-in or hosting your code on another website. You can create a code snippet with HTML and CSS. With the HTML tags <pre> and <code> and CSS, you can style your snippet to work with your design.

2. Use a plug-in

If you prefer not to code it yourself, your next option is to use a plug-in. For WordPress, you can use a plug-in called Code Snippets. With Code Snippet, you can manage your snippets easily.

3. gist.github.com

Don’t want to code it yourself or use a plug-in and you have a github account? You can host your code on gist.github.com. They provide you with a way to embed code snippets on your blog.

4. CodePen

Are you a CodePenner? If you are and have a self-hosted WordPress blog, you can embed your pens or use the CodePen Plugin. CodePen takes care of the code and formatting for you. Refer to CodePen’s documentation on the best method for you.

Summary
Whether you create code snippets with code, use a plugin or host on gist.github.com or CodePen, these methods provide 4 different ways to show your code.