Book Image

WordPress 3 Plugin Development Essentials

Book Image

WordPress 3 Plugin Development Essentials

Overview of this book

WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for building blogs and general websites. By learning how to develop and integrate your own plugins, you can add functionality and extend WordPress in any way imaginable. By tapping into the additional power and functionality that plugins provide, you can make your site easier to administer, add new features, or even alter the very nature of how WordPress works. Covering WordPress version 3, this book makes it super easy for you to build a variety of plugins.WordPress 3 Plugin Development Essentials is a practical hands-on tutorial for learning how to create your own plugins for WordPress. Using best coding practices, this book will walk you through the design and creation of a variety of original plugins.WordPress 3 Plugin Development Essentials focuses on teaching you all aspects of modern WordPress development. The book uses real and published WordPress plugins and follows their creation from the idea to the finishing touches in a series of easy-to-follow and informative steps. You will discover how to deconstruct an existing plugin, use the WordPress API in typical scenarios, hook into the database, version your code with SVN, and deploy your new plugin to the world.Each new chapter introduces different features of WordPress and how to put them to good use, allowing you to gradually advance your knowledge. WordPress 3 Plugin Development Essentials is packed with information, tips, and examples that will help you gain comfort and confidence in your ability to harness and extend the power of WordPress via plugins.

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WordPress 3 Plugin Development Essentials
Mar, 2011 | 300 pages
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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
WordPress 3 Plugin Development Essentials
WordPress 3 Plugin Development Essentials
Credits
Credits
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Preparing for WordPress Development
Preparing for WordPress Development
WordPress background
Extending WordPress
Understanding WordPress architecture
Summarizing architecture
Tools for web development
Coding best practices
Basic organization
Planning ahead / starting development
Debugging
Summary
2
Anatomy of a Plugin
Anatomy of a Plugin
Deconstructing an existing plugin: "Hello Dolly"
Information header
Understanding the Includes
Bonus for the curious
User-defined functions
Referencing hooks via add_action() and add_filter()
Actions versus Filters
Summary
3
Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking
The overall plan
Proof of concept
The master plugin outline
Checking WordPress versions
Summary
4
Ajax Search
Ajax Search
What is Ajax?
The overall plan
The proof of concept mock up
Creating our plugin
Summary
5
Content Rotator
Content Rotator
The plan
Widget overview
Preparation
Add custom text
Adding widget options
Generating random content
Expiration dates: adding options to our widget
Adding a custom manager page
Randomizing content from the database
Review of PHP functions used
Summary
6
Standardized Custom Content
Standardized Custom Content
What WordPress does for you: custom fields
What WordPress doesn't do for you
Standardizing a post's custom fields
Creating a new plugin
Having trouble saving data?
Displaying custom data in your Templates
Known limitations
Summary
7
Custom Post Types
Custom Post Types
Background: What's in a name?
Understanding register_post_type()
Customizing our post type
Customizing our plugin
Creating a settings shortcut link
Cleaning up when uninstalling
Summary
8
Versioning Your Code with Subversion (SVN)
Versioning Your Code with Subversion (SVN)
Why Subversion?
Setting up an SVN repository
Checking out a local working copy of our repo
Adding files
Committing changes to the repository
Overcoming errors
Moving files
Exporting your working copy
Quick reference
Summary
9
Preparing Your Plugin for Distribution
Preparing Your Plugin for Distribution
Public enemy number one: PHP notices
PHP short tags
Conflicting names
Modifying loader.php
Testing WordPress version
Testing PHP version
Testing MySQL version
Testing PHP modules
Testing WordPress installed plugins
Custom tests
Unit tests
WordPress limitations
Health check page
Storing test results in the database
Death to clippy: Use sensible configurations
Double check your interface
Documentation
The decalog of documentation
Summary
10
Publishing Your Plugin
Publishing Your Plugin
Internationalization and localization
Processing each message
Best practices
Working with formatting
More advanced messages
Plural vs. singular
More complex messages
Language files
Creating a POT file
Creating translations: .po files
Loading a textdomain
Updating a translation
Format for the readme.txt file
Requesting and using SVN access
Publicity and promotion
Summary
Recommended Resources
Recommended Resources
PHP reference
Function reference
The WordPress forums
WebDev Studios
Viper007Bond
Kovshenin
SLTaylor
XPlus3
WP Engineer
Other plugins
WordPress API Reference
WordPress API Reference
PHP functions
WordPress Functions
Actions
Filters
Index
Index

About the Reviewers

Srikanth AD is a Web Developer and SEO Consultant. He is passionate about developing and optimizing websites for better search engine visibility and user experience. Sharing interesting tools and services pertaining to web development and SEO across technology blogs is one of his active hobbies.

He has written articles for some of the popular blogs such as MakeUseOf, TheNextWeb, QuickOnlineTips, Lost in Technology, 1stWebDesigner, and others.

Portfolio: http://www.adsrikanth.com

Blog: http://www.readaboutseo.com

Sam Rose is a 20 year old Computer Science student living in Wales, UK. He has recently entered his second year of his Computer Science degree at the University of Glamorgan in South Wales.

Sam writes code primarily in Java, PHP and has intermediate knowledge in an array of other languages.

In his spare time, Sam is usually playing pool, watching comedy produced by Chuck Lorre, writing code on his current favorite open source project, ThinkUp, managed by the lovely Gina Trapani, or writing on his blog, http://lbak.co.uk.

This is my first time as a technical reviewer for a book and I would really like to thank Erika from the Packt team for finding and giving me the opportunity to review this book and Michelle, also from the Packt team, for being a wonderfully happy and helpful point of contact throughout the review process.

Paul Thewlis is seasoned web marketing professional. He is currently in charge of the Search Engine Marketing department at a leading full-service digital agency in the UK. Previously, he was the E-Communications Manager for a multinational transport company. He began his web career as a Technical Editor, working on web design books for a well-known publisher. He has extensive experience of many content management systems and blogging platforms. His first book, WordPress For Business Bloggers, was published by Packt. He is an expert in the use of social media within corporate communications, and blogs about that subject, as well as WordPress, SEO, and the Web in general, at http://blog.paulthewlis.com.

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