Latest WordPress news, tutorials, and tips for creating your site. #WordPress
Joined October 2022
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WordPress REST API returning 404 from /wp-json/?
Go to Settings > Permalinks and click Save (don't change anything). That re-flushes the rewrite rules.
Fixes the issue 90% of the time. The other 10% is a security plugin blocking REST.
The wrong place to put a WordPress code snippet: your theme's functions.php.
The right place: a custom plugin (survives theme switches) or mu-plugins (always-on).
functions.php is for theme-specific code only.
smartwp.com/wordpress-functi…
WP-Cron isn't a real cron job.
It only fires when someone visits your site. Low-traffic sites have scheduled tasks that just... never run.
Disable WP-Cron, set a real server cron job to hit wp-cron.php every 5 minutes:
smartwp.com/wp-cron/
The WordPress "white screen of death" has had a built-in fix since WP 5.2.
If a fatal error crashes the site, WP emails the admin a one-click Recovery Mode link to log in and disable the broken plugin.
Most people have no idea.
smartwp.com/wordpress-white-…
Building a vibe-coded app that needs a CMS?
WordPress already has a REST API. Application Passwords + 5 lines of fetch and you're pulling posts into your Next.js/React/whatever in 5 minutes.
smartwp.com/wordpress-rest-a…
If your "Force HTTPS" .htaccess rule isn't working, your host is probably behind Cloudflare. The %{HTTPS} variable reads as off because traffic arrives at the origin already terminated.
Use %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} instead.
Full guide: smartwp.com/wordpress-htacce…
WordPress 7.0 on May 20 will be the 30th major release.
The first one was Miles (1.0) in January 2004. Every major has been named after a jazz musician since.
Built a hub of every release from 0.7 to 7.0 with what each one shipped: smartwp.com/wordpress-versio…
WP-CLI's most underrated command: wp shell.
Drops you into an interactive PHP REPL with WordPress already loaded. Test get_post_meta() calls, query the database, debug a custom function, all without writing a throwaway file.
In WP-CLI since 2014. Most devs don't know it exists.
Wordfence Login Security plugin shuts down in July.
If you use it for 2FA, the recommended replacement is the official "Two Factor" plugin from the WP Plugin Team. Same feature set, actively maintained, free.
Worth swapping before July rather than after.
The marquee feature for WordPress 7.0 just got pulled.
Real-time collaboration, removed May 8 over surface area, race conditions, server load, memory, and fuzz-test bugs.
7.0 still ships May 20. RTC moves to a future release.
smartwp.com/wordpress-7-0-rt…
Plugin security has been rough lately. Multiple WordPress plugins got pulled after backdoors were found.
If you run WordPress sites:
- Audit active plugins now
- Drop anything from a publisher you don't recognize
- Subscribe to a security feed (Wordfence, Patchstack)
4/ WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE = 'staging'
Tells WordPress (and plugins like Yoast and WooCommerce) this isn't prod. They behave accordingly.
5/ WP_POST_REVISIONS = 5
Caps revisions per post. Otherwise long-edited posts can bloat the database with hundreds of stored versions.
Full reference + 12 more constants: smartwp.com/wp-config-php/
WordPress 5.5 added native lazy loading. loading="lazy" gets added to every below-the-fold image automatically.
No plugin needed. No Cloudflare class. No JavaScript executed.
If you're still running a lazy-load plugin, you can probably uninstall it.
70% of WordPress "Error establishing a database connection" errors are one typo in wp-config.php.
The other 30% take 5 minutes too.
Full guide + 4-line PHP script that pinpoints which credential is wrong:
smartwp.com/wordpress-error-…
