Some deliveries are better than others. In April 2014, a stack of fresh copies of Building Web Apps with WordPress arrived, with the familiar O'Reilly animal on the cover and two names under the title: Brian Messenlehner and Jason Coleman. O'Reilly Media lists the first release of the first edition as April 7, 2014, and the photo of the first copies is from later that month.
What the book is about
The subtitle says it plainly: WordPress as an Application Framework. The book was written for developers who already knew WordPress as a CMS and wanted to use it to build real applications. It covers the parts of WordPress that make that possible:
- Users, roles and capabilities as a ready made permission system.
- Custom post types, taxonomies and metadata for modeling application data.
- Plugin architecture, hooks and filters for business logic.
- Working with APIs and building for mobile.
- Performance, scaling and security for applications that grow.
Brian had been making this argument on stage for a while, at events like WordCamp Sofia in 2013 and WordCamp Norway and WordCamp St. Louis earlier in 2014. The book put the ideas in one place, with working code.
Life after launch
A technical book has a long tail. A Spanish translation followed, and in December 2019 O'Reilly released a second edition, updated for the WordPress of that era, and it was soon on Barnes and Noble shelves as well as available from Amazon, Target and Barnes and Noble online. Over the years, readers have reached out to say the book changed how they approached a project or a business, which is the best possible review for a technical author. Brian has also signed and given away copies at many events, including WordCamps and PrestigeConf.
Why it matters to AlphaWeb clients
Writing a book forces you to explain why, not just how. Every chapter had to justify a design decision in terms another developer could check. We bring that same discipline to client work:
- We document architecture decisions so the next developer is not guessing.
- We choose standard WordPress patterns before custom ones, so the site stays maintainable.
- We separate data, logic and presentation, which is the single most important lesson in the book.
When a client hires AlphaWeb, they are hiring the team that literally wrote the book on building web applications with WordPress. We try to live up to that on every project, from a simple marketing site to a complex membership platform with a mobile app.
Thank you
Thanks to Jason Coleman for being a great co-author, to the O'Reilly editors, and to every reader who bought a copy, left a review or brought a dog eared copy to a WordCamp to be signed. If you are building something ambitious on WordPress, we would love to help.
At a glance
- Title: Building Web Apps with WordPress: WordPress as an Application Framework
- Authors: Brian Messenlehner and Jason Coleman
- Publisher: O'Reilly Media
- First edition: first release April 7, 2014
- Second edition: December 2019
- Translations: a Spanish edition followed the first
Related: WordCamp Norway 2014: Building Web Apps with WordPress in Oslo, WordCamp St. Louis 2014: Taking WordPress Beyond the Blog and WordCamp Sofia 2013: WordPress as an Application Framework.
Have a question about this event or a project like the ones mentioned here? Reach out to AlphaWeb and Brian will be glad to talk it through. We are always happy to compare notes on WordPress, mobile apps and migrations.
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