software-engineering-practices

Software Engineering Practices

Structured workflows for planning, reviewing, documenting, and managing WordPress development projects.

Compound Planning

Break complex tasks into phases with clear deliverables.

Planning Template

## Goal
[One sentence — what does success look like?]

## Context
[Relevant existing code, constraints, dependencies]

## Phases
1. **Research** — Understand existing patterns, identify risks
2. **Design** — Architecture decisions, API surface, data flow
3. **Implement** — Code changes with tests
4. **Verify** — Testing, code review, performance check
5. **Ship** — Documentation, changelog, deployment

## Decision Log
| Decision | Rationale | Date |
|---|---|---|
| [Choice made] | [Why] | [When] |

Code Review Checklist

Security

• No unsanitized input
• All output escaped
• Nonces verified on form submissions
• Capabilities checked on protected actions
• $wpdb->prepare() used for all queries with user input

Performance

• No N+1 query patterns
• Transients/caching for expensive operations
• Assets loaded conditionally
• No blocking operations in init or wp_loaded

Quality

• Follows WordPress Coding Standards
• Functions are focused (single responsibility)
• No dead code or commented-out blocks
• Error handling is present
• i18n applied to user-facing strings

WordPress Patterns

• Hook-based architecture (no code at file load time)
• Proper activation/deactivation hooks
• Uninstall cleanup via uninstall.php
• Text domain matches plugin slug

Git Worktree Strategy

Maintain parallel working directories:

# Feature work
git worktree add ../my-plugin-feature feature/new-feature

# Bug fix while feature work continues
git worktree add ../my-plugin-hotfix hotfix/critical-fix

# Cleanup
git worktree remove ../my-plugin-feature

References

• WordPress Plugin Handbook
• WordPress Inline Documentation Standards