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Building a WordPress plugin
- 1. Buildingyour First WordPress Plugin Keanan Koppenhaver CTO, Alpha Particle http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 3. Whatisaplugin? • Piece of PHP code that can be enabled or disabled through wp-admin and adds functionality to WordPress • Can be distributed through the WordPress Plugin Respository (https://wordpress.org/plugins) • Over 50,000 plugins as of 08/2017 http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 5. Hello Dolly • https://wordpress.org/plugins/hello-dolly • One of the original plugins written by Matt Mullenweg • When activated you will randomly see a lyric from Hello, Dolly in the upper right of your admin screen on every page. http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 8. Whatare Hooksand Filters? • add_action( 'admin_notices', 'hello_dolly' ); • Hooks and filters provide the ability to change and modify WordPress without modifying the core • Triggered at certain times based on what WordPress is loading and when http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 9. Now let’s build our own http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 10. Basic requirements • We want to build a plugin that lets authors pick a tagline and lets them display that tagline using a shortcode • Main Features • Create a custom DB table for storing these values and associating them with authors • Let authors modify their own tagline directly on their User page • Create a settings page so that admins can see all of the currently set tag lines • Let the author display their tagline anywhere they want using a shortcode http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 11. Step 0: Initialplugin setup http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 13. Step 1: Custom Database Table http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 14. Custom Database Tables • Can be added when data that doesn’t match an existing WordPress data format needs to be stored • In our case, we’ll create a simple table that stores author ID and author tagline • More simply, we could be storing this as metadata on the User object, but we want to see how to create custom DB tables • Two tasks: Create our DB table when the plugin is activated and clean it up when the plugin is deleted (not deactivated) http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 16. Step 2: Letuseradd taglineand save http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 17. Custom User Fields • We can use WordPress hooks to add an input field to the User edit screen that an author can use to update their tagline • We’ll save this in our custom database table • Validation of this input is important. NEVER TRUST THE USER (even when they’re logged into wp-admin) http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 19. Step 3: Give the admins aview http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 20. Admins should beable to see everything • Let’s give them a table where they can view all their author’s taglines • We’ll create a plugin settings page that only admins can access underneath the Tools menu in wp-admin • For a fancier version of this we could use the WP_List_Table class, but look very closely on that implementation http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 23. Letauthors displaytheir taglines • We’ll create a shortcode so that the tagline can be inserted into any post • Whenever our plugin sees [tagline] in a post, it will query the DB and echo out the post author’s tagline http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 25. Distribution • Submit to the WordPress plugin repo (will need a README file and comply with coding/security standards) • Distribute through GitHub or your own site • Sell through Envato or other similar marketplaces http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com
- 26. GeneralTipsand tricks • Namespace your functions (either in a class or by using a prefix) • All our function names were prefixed by wpat_ so that our function names didn’t conflict with anything in WordPress or other themes/plugins • Be sensible with what you enqueue (don't require a bunch of CSS/JS with your plugin that’ll slow down your users site) • Test your plugins and keep them up-to-date with WordPress releases • Use WordPress coding standards to help with submitting to the plugin repo http://alphaparticle.com AlphaParticle keanan@alphaparticle.com