Author: Mike Lopez
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Why Developer Experience Matters in Plugin UX
When we talk about plugin UX, we usually think about the end user. Is the UI intuitive? Does the feature solve the user’s problem? Is the performance snappy? All valid questions—but often, we forget one critical piece: the developer’s experience building and maintaining that plugin. Developer Experience (DX) isn’t just an internal concern—it has a…
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Making Tough Calls: A Leader’s Daily Reality
When I first became a team lead, I thought “tough decisions” were rare—something you made in a crisis. Big stuff, like letting someone go or killing a project. What I didn’t realize is that making hard calls is a daily part of leadership—and usually, no one claps when you do it. No roadmap tells you…
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Aligning Roadmaps With Team Capacity
Early in my career, roadmaps felt like a wishlist. Marketing wanted X, sales wanted Y, and we—engineering—were somehow supposed to make it all happen. And when we couldn’t, we were labeled blockers. It took years (and more than a few failed quarters) to realize the issue wasn’t execution. It was misalignment. We were promising more…
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How to Onboard a New Developer to Your Plugin Codebase
Bringing a new developer into your plugin project can go one of two ways: smooth and productive—or completely chaotic. I’ve seen both. Whether you’re working on a public WordPress plugin or a custom solution for a client, onboarding a new dev isn’t just about giving them access to the repo and saying “good luck.” It’s…
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The Hidden Costs of Not Documenting Your Plugin Code
We’ve all done it. You’re deep in the flow, building out a plugin feature, squashing bugs, hitting milestones—and you think, “I’ll document this later.” Then later becomes never. I used to think documentation was a “nice-to-have.” Something you do when the real work is done. But over the years—especially maintaining my own WordPress plugins and…
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Helping Your Team See the Bigger Picture
I’ve worked with plenty of talented devs who could debug gnarly logic, optimize slow queries, and write clever abstractions—but struggled to see why their work mattered beyond the next ticket. Early in my leadership journey, I assumed it was enough to just assign tasks and let people do their thing. After all, I trusted the…
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Setting Boundaries: Managing Workload, Not Just Projects
There’s a difference between managing projects and managing workload—and I learned that the hard way. Years ago, I was tracking all the right things: timelines, tickets, blockers. Everything looked “green” on the outside. But inside the team, people were burning out. Quietly working late. Missing lunch. Pulling weekend hours they weren’t talking about. The projects…
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Supporting Team Growth Without Micromanaging
I used to think being a good leader meant staying on top of everything—checking in constantly, reviewing every detail, giving feedback the moment something was off. You know, just making sure things don’t fall apart. But over time, I realized something: the more I tried to stay in control, the less control I actually had.…
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Keeping Morale High During Crunch Time
Crunch time. Two words that make most developers groan and most managers sweat. No matter how well you plan, estimate, or try to keep the team agile and lean, there’s always that moment when a deadline barrels toward you like a freight train, and suddenly it’s all hands on deck. It’s stressful. It’s exhausting. But…
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Why I Still Love Developing for WordPress After 25 Years
It’s been 20+ years since I started developing with WordPress, and a lot has changed in the tech world. Frameworks have come and gone, trends have shifted, and countless tools have promised to “replace WordPress.” And yet—after all this time—I still find myself coming back to it. Not out of nostalgia or habit, but because…