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Discussion on: I'm an expert in WordPress Development, Ask Me Anything!

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endan • Edited

If you can give one lifehack in developing Wordpress applications what would it be?

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Corey Maass

Not the OP, but I'll jump in. Learn about using nonces with postbacks. It's not overly complicated, but it took me a while to understand the pattern. Once I understood this cycle, WordPress development (writing code) became so much clearer.

  1. Create an html form, that includes wp_nonce_field(). Now your form includes a string that's unique to that form and will be unique to post requests submitted by that form.

  2. In a plugin or in functions.php, add an init action that checks for post requests and uses wp_verify_nonce to check for the nonce. Now you know that form was submitted.

  3. Process the form data however you want, then use wp_redirect with the _wp_http_referer created by wp_nonce_field to send the user back to the form.

I now use this pattern everywhere in WordPress.