WordPress

Practical WordPress tips, development guides, and performance improvements.

Why Did I Move My Site to WordPress.com?
February 26, 2020
Self-hosting gave me control. WordPress.com gave me peace of mind — and I didn’t lose any of the flexibility I cared about.
For years, my site lived happily on SiteGround. I managed the SSLs, the CDN, the updates — all the knobs and switches that come with running your own WordPress installation. It worked, but it also pulled focus away from what I actually wanted to do: write.
At some point, I realized that maintaining my own infrastructure was solving a problem I didn’t have anymore. I wanted a space that just worked — one login, one dashboard, zero maintenance. That’s when I moved everything to WordPress.com.
It wasn’t a professional decision because I work at Automattic. It was a personal one, shaped by the same instinct I wrote about in Do You Trust Your Instincts? Making Smart WordPress Choices. Sometimes, the best move is simply choosing ease over control.
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Custom Fields and How to Use get_post_meta
March 1, 2017
Have you ever heard about custom fields or custom meta boxes in WordPress? You probably already use them without realizing it!
Custom fields are one of WordPress’s most powerful features. They let you store extra information (called post meta) about your posts, pages, or products; things like prices, ratings, or custom messages.
Many developers get stuck when it comes to retrieving these values in their themes or plugins. In this article, I’ll explain exactly how to use get_post_meta() to get your custom field data and make the most of it in your projects.
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Adding a Logout Link in the Main Menu
May 31, 2016
Want a simple way to add a login/logout link to your WordPress menu, no coding, no plugins required?
With Full Site Editing, you can do it in seconds.
For years, adding a logout link to WordPress menus meant editing your functions.php file or relying on custom plugins. With Full Site Editing (FSE), that’s no longer necessary. You can now manage login and logout links visually, right inside the Site Editor.
This guide shows how to add a dynamic login/logout link using WordPress’ built-in blocks. It automatically switches between “Login” and “Logout” depending on the visitor’s session.
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WordCamp Torino 2016: A Community Reborn
April 4, 2016
Last week I attended WordCamp Torino 2016, the first Italian WordCamp in several years.
The event took place on April 1st and 2nd, and it was incredible to see the community come back to life.
Since the last WordCamp in 2012, the Italian WordPress scene had gone quiet, but in just nine months, a group of passionate contributors managed to revive it, organize local meetups, and finally bring WordCamp back to Italy.¹
That energy and collaboration were exactly what our community needed.
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Tweak Your WordPress Theme, How to Add Custom PHP
March 3, 2016
I already talked about how to add custom CSS to your site. It’s now time to learn how to add custom PHP code as well!
In most of my posts on this website, I tell you to add custom code to the functions.php file. How should you do it? And what is the best way to do it?
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