By default, WordPress is set up to run in one environment—it has one configuration file, wp-config.php, that holds one set of database credentials along with authentication keys/salts and debugging options. With just a few tweaks, you can get WordPress set up to handle multiple environments with different databases and options for each environment.

Now that you’ve started to integrate Grunt into your development workflow, here are a few tips to tidy up and optimize your Grunt setup along with plugins that you may find useful for development.

Sass 3.3 has introduced some neat features with the ampersand—it now has BEM-selector support and allows you to prepend a class to the parent element.

Keeping track of all your z-index values can be quite a task, especially on large projects or projects that involve more than 1 developer. Sass and its recent introduction of the maps data-type can help you keep track of your z-index by having them all in one place.

A couple of days ago, Google pushed an update to both Canary and beta builds of Google Chrome that hides the full URL of a website from the address bar. At first it drove me crazy, but now I like it.

Sass 3.3 introduced a new maps data type—you can create a variable that holds comma-separated, key-value pairs, and allows you to do some neat things like call a value by the key or loop through the key-value pairs.

PHP 5.5+ now comes baked with a password_hash function to generate secure, one-way hashes along with a password_verify function to match a hash with the given password—If you’re a PHP developer, you should always be securely storing user passwords, no excuses.

A serious security vulnerability that affects a large part of the web was discovered this week—this is a good time to reevaluate how you log in to websites and use the web, and implement best practices to keep yourself safe.

Grunt has become an essential part of my workflow—like Sass, I never start a web project without it. Here’s an introduction to Grunt, its benefits and what it can do for you along with a guide to help you get started.

Built entirely from the ground up, my new site has a need for speed. From the workflow and build to deployment, each aspect was carefully scrutinized, then painstakingly tailored. Let me take you through some of the technologies and processes required for this build.