Building your own WordPress Plugin Series: Ronald over at Devlounge has been putting together a very nice series of articles on developing WordPress plugins. Though I believe that these are not designed for the hard core programmer (WordPress newbies might benefits from a quick looksee), they are written quite well with good examples and might make a good project for the weekend coder. I link to the News Post since I cannot find a good place where all the articles are linked. The articles so far include the following:
- How to write a wordpress plugin – Introduction
- Seven reasons to write a wordpress plugin
- How to get ideas for wordpress plugins
- Structure of a wordpress plugin
- WordPress plugin actions
- WordPress plugin filters
Ronald writes well and I like his work. Be sure to ask lots of questions!
Everything I can think of has been done as a plug-in already. But if I do get new ideas, I’ll keep this list in mind.
And that’s the main attraction to open source. There are not just thousands of people thinking of new ideas for programs every day, but millions.
nice tutorial. I wish we will have complete documentation about WP functions and hooks soon OR where can I get them? I will buy the book “WordPress for developer”, if any.
LcF: You’ve hit the nail on the head. No matter how much you try to document yourself there is a huge gap in documentation for WordPress. You end up relying on “10 new things in the newest version of WP” and “3 things you didn’t know” and “Here’s how the new wp_schedule function works”.
Case in point, one of the possibly simplest and most basic functions in wp. wp_insert_post. Is that documented anywhere sensible? I mean the function, not the the hook.
The WP site has it linked, but the link leads nowhere. You have to dig the source code and this is one of the oldest and most used functions in WP (I mean, it’s used in every post you post, except by wp-admin/post.php two years ago, for some reason).
wp_enqueue_script? Let’s hope you like your “documentation” to come from blogs and suchlike. Same for others.
I thought a lot of documentation was created on the fly when new functions were added, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. Similarly there’s nowhere (unless you’re willing to wade through a huge trac listing) where a clear-cut list of what’s new and what’s changed in new versions is outlined.
This may be because it’s assumed people should follow wp-hackers and other lists like it. I think it’s developer-hostile and a huge roadblock against acceptance of WP as a solid product in some circles.
One thing I would love to see required in plugins is an automatic update notice. I have just noticed that half of the plugins I am using are out of date.
Sicuramente leggerò questo tutorial sperando di poter sviluppare
That is cool, I have been wondering about creating a plugin for showing a different video based on the IP address of the person coming to my blog, so I can have information based on the geographical locations of the person coming to the blog.
This could also be useful for tailoring ads for specific areas of the world, too.
Thanks for the tips,
Micheal Savoie
http://productinaweekend.com