What do you want to see in an Advanced WordPress Development Course?

Hi Zac,

Here, I'm listing a few items that I would love to see be implemented into future Advanced WordPress Development courses. If these suggestions do not meet the advanced courses you have in mind, please consider adding these under the beginners wp course. I would specifically love to see partial courses that teach just one specific area in it's entirety with much details and clarification for various uses. Example of that would be something like the WP Native Gallery, or Adding Shortcodes, etc.

• Developing a commercial theme to sell in different Marketplaces

• Must Use Plugins Dev- Understand the uses of "Must Use" Theme Plugins, when to create one, how to apply it, and best practices in general when it comes to adding custom theme widgets and theme plugins

• Theme settings functions file- understanding what goes in a "theme setting's functions file vs. a regular theme functions file." Learning the how, why, when and how to apply these two together for commercial themes

• Automatic Updates- How to add and update commercial themes automatically, or push updates automatically to commerical themes

• Theme updates- when do you update a commercial theme, why and where do you find best practices on what needs to be updated as WP core continues to update itself moving forward (this relates to offering automatic theme updates for commercial themes)

• How to add a support forum for developers selling commercial themes

• How to add support languages with Right-to-Left (RTL) scripts for commercial themes

• Shortcodes- Understanding add_shortcodes, when and how to apply it in best practices, break down of different uses for it

WP Native Gallery:

• How to work directly with WP Native Gallery- how to create different style galleries (i.g. grid, mansory, tiled)

• where and how to add bigger image thumbnail sizes for the wp native gallery and make them responsive

• Adding additional custom links to wp native gallery media panel

• Making the native gallery responsive and especially understanding how image sizes work and reflect in responsive design output

• How to add overlay transitions to the wp native gallery, or how to customize it for overlay transitions (i.g. half, full with different colors, opacities and images)

• Understanding how style the captions and description together with the overlay transitions

• Images- How to create custom triptych container boxes without the use of plugins

• How to properly add variable image sizes for responsive designs

• WP single post page layouts- How to commercially develop a theme that automatically outputs 2, 3, or any type of columsn layout display for the end user WITHOUT needing to use shortcodes or buttons in editor, etc.

• How to customize and style the native search widget

• Adding different styles of blockquotes or pullquotes

• Understanding and customizing the WP Wysiwyg Editor (i.g. adding buttons for pullquotes, blockquotes styles, columns, slider buttons and how to connect the slider so that it works with that button, shortcodes, etc..)

• How to add theme support for commercial theming using the WP customizer in front-end for the end user. In general just learning more about adding different theme options via WP customizer

• Customizing the admin panel to create full width and/or boxed layout themes and more complex feature options

• Understand and customizing a double side-by-side loop for double authors theming

• How to properly code Facebook Embeds and iframe widgets for responsive purposes

• Sitemaps without a plugin, if that's an option

• How to customize different output in the loop tiled, grid, mansory, etc...

• More on how some plugins make too many unnecessary page requests- how to find these and find a solution to it

• Optimizing a wp site for speed

• How to convert a plugin into a widget. In other words, I don't want it to function as a normal plugin, I want it to register as a widget that I can add to commercial themes

• How to add "Related" content or posts under single post page without the use of a plugin

• How to customize the native comment form - Example adding a check box that allows users to either receive emails responding to their comments, or signing up for specific category posts.

In closing, I'm not a fan of using too many plugins. I get the need for plugins and how some "devs" prefer a theme settings plugin vs hard coding it in theme itself. However, the concern I have is that I'm still learning code myself, so it's not like I can tell right off the bat which is a well written plugin, or not. I don't want a bloaded. plugin making additional, unnecessary page requests that essentially will slow down my site. For those reasons, I prefer to hard code somethings into my theme rather than adding too many plugins to any theme.

+1 Dustin Matlock