18 Free Developer Tools To Help You Become a Smarter WordPress Developer

If you are a WordPress developer and want to take your skill to the next level, there are countless resources other than the great WordPress Codex to take you there. One of the key elements behind WordPress’ tremendous growth is its helpful community. You will find solutions to almost any problems if you look around.

Below we tried to build a list of helpful resources that will guide you toward WordPress awesomeness and increase your speed of production.

1. QueryPosts

An excellent code reference site for WordPress developers that extends WordPress Codex with lots of useful information. QueryPosts offers a detailed WordPress code reference with information like description, signature, source, and links to trac and github. Currently it offers references for 1996 functions and plans to add references for classes and hooks. Kudos to Andrey Savchenko for putting up this awesome resource and making the life of a WordPress developer easier.

2. Hookr

An awesome project by Christopher Sanford. It lists information on all the available WordPress hooks and API calls. Hookr currently holds references on actions, filters, classes, constants, functions, and shortcodes.

3. The WP Hooks Database

A WordPress hooks database, built by Adam Brown. It contains information about WordPress action hooks and filter hooks. If you want to see a no-nonsense list of all the hooks along with the version numbers when they first appeared, you should check out this website.

4. WPSeek

This started out as a WordPress add-on for Firefox, but later progressed into a search engine for WordPress functions, filters, actions, and constants. You can browse functions or search functions by keyword. Recently, Oliver Schlöbe creator of WPSeek released WPSeek Android app for searching WordPress functions on the go.

5. 10up Engineering Best Practices

This in-depth guide covers everything from efficient database queries, data storage, namespacing, and security, to helpful tools for local development, dependency management, version control, PHP/JS performance, design patterns, etc.

6. WordPress Code Reference

WordPress Code Reference helps you find more information about WordPress’ functions, classes, methods, and hooks.

7. WordPress Plugin Developer Handbook

An official handbook for WordPress plugin developers. It’s a great resource for any WordPress developer whether you are new to plugin development or a WordPress ninja. It will be able to answer all your plugin development-related questions.

8. Template Tag Reference Guide

A quick template tag reference guide developed by DBS Interactive to increase the speed of their WordPress development. It can be a helpful resource if you are not versed with WordPress template tags.

9. WordPress Stack Exchange

A question & answer community for all your WordPress development-related questions. It’s a great resource for any developer. It’s not only you who is stuck solving a problem, just search around to find the solution and if you know a solution, let others know how to do it.

10. GenerateWP

Generate custom code for your WordPress project. You can generate code for custom taxonomy, post type, post status, sidebar, menu, shortcodes, and many more. And the great thing is you don’t have to worry about WordPress coding standards.

11. WordPress Settings Generator

A generator created by Jeroen Sormani for creating a custom options page for your themes and plugins that is fully compatible with the WordPress Settings API standards.

12. WordPress Plugin Boilerplate

An object-oriented foundation for building WordPress plugins. It started out as an open source project by developer Tom McFarlin but it got a lot of attention and love from the WordPress community. Over the years it has grown tremendously; to this date it has 53 contributors.

13. WordPress Plugin Boilerplate Generator

A plugin boilerplate generator developed by Enrique Chavez based on Tom McFarlin’s WordPress Plugin Boilerplate. Just type your plugin details on the form and a zip file will be generated without you having to replace text strings manually.

14. WordPress Widget Boilerplate

Another great project by developer Tom McFarlin, a Widget boilerplate. It is an organized, maintainable boilerplate for building widgets using WordPress best practices. It is fully based on the WordPress Widget API.

15. WP Dev Tuts

A Google Custom Search Engine for finding advanced WordPress tutorials written by WordPress core developer.

16. Starter Theme

Using starter theme in your development is a great way to create a WordPress theme with all the up-to-date WordPress best practices.

Underscores: A starter theme maintained by WordPress parent company Automattic.
Sage: A starter theme based on HTML5 Boilerplate, gulp, Bower, and Bootstrap.
Bones: An HTML5, mobile-first starter theme for rapid WordPress development.
Quark: A simple starter theme built on HTML5 and CSS3.
JointsWP: A starter theme built with Foundation 5.
Naked WordPress: For designers who don’t know WordPress.
HTML5 Blank WordPress Theme: A WordPress HTML5 boilerplate starter theme.

17. WP Dev Tuts

A custom search engine for finding all the advance WordPress tutorials written by WordPress Core developers and contributors.

18. Local by Flywheel

Previously known as Pressmatic. Local WordPress development platform built by FlyWheel to ease the workflow of WordPress development.

Although this is not a comprehensive list but we intend to make it a go-to resource for any WordPress developer. Let us know if you know any awesome WordPress projects we missed in the comments below; if they’re really helpful we will add them in.