The Delicious Brains site has posted a new tutorial, the third part in their "Automating Local WordPress Setup" series, covering the automation of "the rest" of the setup steps. This includes virtual host setup, plugin installation and cleanup.

In my last post in the Automating Local WordPress Setup series, I created a WP-CLI package for quickly installing and uninstalling WordPress. I’ve been using this package for a while now, and have been itching to make it more useful for a typical development workflow.

[...] I also still catch myself doing things that I know should be automated. Things like deleting unnecessary data, removing the default themes/plugins, and installing new plugins, are things that can be automated to make development easier. In this post we’re going to take a look at some ways to make all that possible.

The article is then broken down into three sections with scripts/code that can help with these automations:

• Working with Virtual Hosts (and MAMP)
• Cleaning Up the Install (deleting extra themes, plugins, etc)
• Installing Frequently Used Plugins (your custom list based on a "plugin list" file

The post finishes out with a screencast showing this plugin installation that makes it easier to come up with easy to reproduce, simple to spin up WordPress environments.

The SitePoint PHP blog has a tutorial posted showing you how to build custom cTools in Drupal that will integrate with the widely used cTools tool set.

cTools is one of those critical Drupal 7 modules many others depend on. It provides a lot of APIs and functionality that makes life easier when developing modules. Views and Panels are just two examples of such powerhouses that depend on it. [...] In this article, we are going to take a look at cTools plugins, especially how we can create our very own. After a brief introduction, we will immediately go hands on with a custom module that will use the cTools plugins to make defining Drupal blocks nicer (more in tune to how we define them in Drupal 8).

He starts by briefly introducing the cTools functionality and different types of plugins included in common use. He then moves on to the "block_plugin" handling and the custom functionality you'll be walked through - a plugin encapsulating a block and its related logic. He starts by defining the plugin type with a function the cTools can locate and the code it should contain. From there the code needed to turn a block plugin into a "Drupal block" is added including a prefix to "namespace" them out. Finally the view handling is implemented and a helper function is created to load the plugin. He then shows how to define one of the block plugins complete with a title, markup and type.

For those either just getting into unit testing your applications (maybe even TDD) or those that are old hat at it and what to figure out a few more tricks of the trade, you should check out this latest post from Chris Hartjes about some of the tools he uses to get the job done.

So how does the Grumpy Programmer write code, TDD style? It starts with using a set of tools that reduce the amount of friction required. First, I do almost all my work from a terminal. [...] Why the terminal? PHPUnit is a CLI application. Yes, many popular editors and IDE's can do things like execute PHPUnit for you, but they are limited in what flexibility they provide.

He also talks about his editor of choice, vim, and some of the plugins he uses in his day to day testing development. This includes tools to handle things like interfacing with git/gists, working with ctags to see the code's structure, working with "surroundings" and the pathogen plugin to make adding other plugins easier. He keeps the code up in one terminal and his testing tool (PHPUnit or other) accessible in a second, making it a simple matter of switching to write the test then the functionality to make it pass.

If there is a lesson to be learned from this, it's to make sure that every tool that you use reduces the friction that is generated when building your application using TDD.

On the Zend Developer Zone, there's a new post about two new browser plugins that have been created surrounding the popular Zend Framework, both related to research/searching.

Some enterprising Zend Framework contributors have hacked together a couple plugins for Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. Ralf Eggert has created a sidebar to allow easy access to commonly used links, as well as a search module. From this idea, Richard Thomas was inspired to create a plugin to search the framework wiki and mailing list using Firefox's built-in search box.

The browser sidebar allows you to have the framework manual at your fingertips, and the search widget can grab information directly from the mailing list and framework's wiki pages to display in your browser.

On the Zend Developer Zone, there's a new post about two new browser plugins that have been created surrounding the popular Zend Framework, both related to research/searching.

Some enterprising Zend Framework contributors have hacked together a couple plugins for Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. Ralf Eggert has created a sidebar to allow easy access to commonly used links, as well as a search module. From this idea, Richard Thomas was inspired to create a plugin to search the framework wiki and mailing list using Firefox's built-in search box.

The browser sidebar allows you to have the framework manual at your fingertips, and the search widget can grab information directly from the mailing list and framework's wiki pages to display in your browser.