Bio
Steve Grunwell is a Senior Software Engineer at Liquid Web, working primarily on the Managed WordPress and WooCommerce platforms. Specializing in WordPress and web application development, he has a passion for teaching and contributing back to the development community through speaking, blogging, and open-source work.
When he’s not writing tests or finding new ways to automate the world around him, Steve is off spending time with his family, enjoying a fine cup of coffee, playing guitar, or otherwise getting away from the keyboard.
My Talks
A Crash-Course in PHP Namespaces for WordPress Developers
For having such a large market share, there a number of more modern PHP features that are completely unknown by most WordPress developers.
This talk introduces the concept of PHP namespaces, forev...
Building for the PHP Command Line Interface
Executing PHP from the command line enables us to interact with our applications in new and interesting ways: from performing site maintenance to scaffolding new projects, CLI tools like WP-CLI, Ar...
Code Review: For Me & You
On the surface, the idea of code review is a no-brainer: why *wouldn't* we want a second set of eyes on our code?
As we peel back the layers, however, we find that the topic of code review is much...
Computers <3 Structured Data
Structured data puts you in control, ensuring that search engines and other parsers aren't misreading your information. Get your events recognized as events, your business address as a location, an...
Greener Pastures: Infrastructure from the Ground Up
In late 2016, I left my comfortable agency position to join a small media startup as its first Director of Technology, and a company with zero technical debt; I'd be in charge of deciding everythin...
I'd Like to Write the World Some Docs
It takes a special kind of person to enjoy writing documentation; not only do I have to write [ideally] working code, but now I have to write words that a human being can understand? What is this m...
Professional Development for Professional Developers
The best and worst part about our chosen vocation is that there's an endless amount of stuff to see, learn, and try and nowhere near enough time in which to do it. In an industry where "the new hot...
Testing Like You've Never Tested Before (Because You Haven't)
Testing software in an automated fashion is one of the best ways to guarantee quality, reduce bugs, and prevent regressions in our code. Unfortunately, the most difficult parts of testing come righ...
Up to my Eyeballs in Technical Debt!
Every decision we make in our projects has the potential to increase or reduce technical debt. While the only way to completely eliminate the debt is to never write any code, there are steps that w...
Writing WP-CLI Commands That Work!
WP-CLI is a great tool when you don't need a fancy UI, need to write scripts to perform regular maintenance, or to provide deeper functionality to your awesome plugin. Like WordPress, it's free, op...