Topic: Coding with a Team

Speaker: Peter Chester

Peter Chester

One of the most interesting presentations I attended at Wordcamp Sacramento, that was a little over my head, was on coding workflow.

Peter Chester from Modern Tribe gave a great presentation on how to structure a workflow where multiple WordPress Developers can build the same website. This is ideal for large scale web implementations.

Here are a few of the takeaways I got from Peter’s presentation:

1. Move to a more structured workflow over time

It is natural for solo WordPress Developers to start off with an unstructured workflow. As they begin to work with other developers over time, they often develop and refine stronger, tighter workflows.

2. Code for your future self

When hand coding PHP or any computer language, it’s a good idea to document or add comments in your code so that others can figure out the purpose of a particular section of code.

In a former life, I had the opportunity to write business requirements documentation for programmers. I have written some computer code over the years, mostly using database reporting tools.

I understand the need to create your code in a way for you to understand in the future what you trying to accomplish. It’s a best practice. And others should be able to understand it too.

3. Do code reviews

When working on a team, it’s a good idea to have other developers review your code.

The benefits are consistency, quality and learning.

Peter also went into extensive detail on implementing Development, Staging, and Production environments.

It’s nice to know you can model best practices that are used in the mainframe computer environment.

While I didn’t understand everything I heard, it did expand my knowledge and open the door to what’s possible as a WordPress Developer.

About the Speaker: Peter Chester

Peter is a partner at Modern Tribe, the digital agency responsible for The Events Calendar and Image Widget WordPress plugins as well as for large scale WordPress builds including Harvard Law, Stanford Law and Steelcase.com. Peter often leads large technical projects with budgets in excess of $500k. Peter is also a father, musician, artist, surfer and list maker with an obsession for google spreadsheet formulas (though not necessarily in that order).

Twitter: @peterchester

Topic Description: Coding with a Team

As Modern Tribe has grown from a small team to a team of nearly 50

people, we have had to adopt a bit more organization in our workflows.

One thing that we’ve been working on recently is refining our code

sharing, review and deployment practices. In this session, I’ll share a workflow for collaborating with your team. Using this workflow, you will reduce delays, bugs and improve the technical skills of your colleagues.

Presentation Slides:

Click here for Peter’s Presentation Slides

Read my Full Review on Wordcamp Sacramento

Click here to read my full review of Wordcamp Sacramento

Rick Cooper
Online Marketing and Social Media Trainer