WordPress Plugins Development Guide: How to Create your own Plugin

WordPress Plugins Development Guide: How to Create your own Plugin

Fun in getting started in wordpress plugin development?

WordPress, with its expansive ecosystem of plugins, offers unparalleled flexibility and customization options for website owners. However, for those looking to go beyond the available plugins and create their own custom solutions, WordPress plugin development opens up a world of possibilities. 

In this article guide, we'll explore the ins and outs of WordPress plugin development, empowering you to create custom plugins tailored to your specific needs.

How to use Plugins in WordPress 2024 | Step-by-Step Guide

To start, we'll cover a general introduction to WordPress plugin development, including the basic elements of WordPress plugins. Then, we'll go through a step-by-step tutorial on how to build your own WordPress plugin

Here's everything you'll find in our WordPress plugin development tutorial:

Understanding WordPress Plugin Development

Getting Started with Plugin Development

Essential Components of a WordPress Plugin

Building Your First WordPress Plugin

Advanced Plugin Development Techniques


Understanding WordPress Plugin Development

WordPress plugins are PHP scripts that extend the functionality of WordPress sites. It contains features like a contact form or a complex functionality like e-commerce integration, developing custom plugins allows you to tailor your WordPress site to meet your unique requirements. 

Wordpress plugins

Understanding the basics of WordPress plugin development, including hooks, actions, and filters, is essential for creating effective and efficient plugins.

You'll also need some basic HTML and CSS knowledge, which will help you control your plugin's output. JavaScript can also be important, and is essential if you want to work with the new block-based approach that WordPress introduced in WordPress 5.0 with the block editor (AKA Gutenberg).

With all of that being said, if you don't feel ok working with JavaScript, you can avoid it and use the older shortcode-based approach.


Getting Started with Plugin Development

To get started with WordPress plugin development, you'll need a basic understanding of PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Get yourself familiarize with the WordPress Codex, the official documentation for WordPress development, which provides comprehensive guides and tutorials on plugin development. Set up a local development environment using tools like XAMPP, MAMP, or Docker to test and debug your plugins before deploying them to a live site.

To customize/design your WordPress site, you can't just go ahead and edit the main WordPress files. This is because those files are completely overwritten every time you update your WordPress site. It is done automatically by wordpress, you can't change it.

To get through this, WordPress plugins let you add, modify, and extend functionality using one or more PHP functions.

Some basic elements you can rely on why creating WordPress plugin

  1. Hooks/Actions
  2. Blocks
  3. Shortcodes
  4. Widgets
In this new era of Wordpress, shortcodes and widgets are not that important as they used to, they are now phased out.

Hooks/Actions

Hooks are a way for one piece of code to interact/modify another piece of code at specific, pre-defined spots. They make up the foundation for how plugins and themes interact with WordPress Core, but they're also used extensively by Core itself.

They allow you interact with different parts of WordPress without needing to edit the core files.

Example, a hook lets you execute a code function at a certain point in time or on a certain part of the website.

Formats For WordPress Hooks

Action HooksThis provides a way for running a function at a specific point in the execution of WordPress Core, plugins, and themes. Callback functions for an Action do not return anything back to the calling Action hook. Two processes of adding an action hooks are 

  1. Create a callback function: This function will be run when the action it is hooked to is run.
  2. Assign your callback function (Hook): Add your callback function to the action. This is called hooking and tells the action to run your callback function when the action is run.
When your callback function is ready, use add_action() to hook it to the action. This requires two parameters, the $hook name and the $parameter.


 function wporg_callback() {
    // do something	
   }
 add_action( 'init', 'wporg_callback' );  
  



Action hooks lets you do things

Filter Hooks: This provides a way for functions to modify data during the execution of WordPress Core, plugins, and themes. Two processes of adding an filter hooks are 

  1. Create a Callback function which will be called when the filter is run. 
  2. Add your Callback function to a hook which will perform the calling of the function.
You will use the add_filter() function, passing at least two parameters: $hook name and $callback

  function wporg_filter_title( $title ) {
	return 'The ' . $title . ' was filtered';
}
add_filter( 'the_title', 'wporg_filter_title' );

Filter Hooks lets you change things


Block

Blocks are the components of your content in the WordPress editor. Blocks helps you in inserting plugin content or even creating content using your plugin.

In order to utilize blocks in your plugin, you'll need to have a solid understanding of JavaScript, Node.js, React, and Redux, which has turned off some developers since WordPress plugin development used to be much more PHP-focused.

Congratulations, WordPress for Developers has already brought out a hand book tutorial which is for a fair price for users who are beginners to block. Block Editor HandBook

Shortcodes

Shortcodes were presented in WordPress version 2.5 because running PHP inside WordPress content is forbidden; to allow dynamic interactions with the content. This is for security precautions. 

Shortcodes are "old" way of giving users a way to interact with your plugin.

By default, WordPress includes the following shortcodes:
  1. Caption – allows you to wrap captions around content
  2. Gallery – allows you to show image galleries
  3. Audio – allows you to embed and play audio files
  4. Video – allows you to embed and play video files
  5. Playlist – allows you to display collection of audio or video files
  6. Embed – allows you to wrap embedded items
You can add shortcodes using the add_shortcode function.


function year_shortcode() {
  $year = date('Y');
  return $year;
}
add_shortcode('date_today', 'year_shortcode');

Explanation: When a user adds the [date_today] shortcode to the editor, it will display the current year.

Widgets

A widget lets you adds content and features to a widget area (also called a sidebar). Widget areas provide a way for users to customize their site. A widget area can appear on multiple pages or on only one page.

Examples of ways you can use widget areas are:

  1. Homepage Layout
  2. Footer Layout
  3. Sidebar Layout
A widget is also a PHP object that outputs some HTML. The same kind of widget can be used multiple times on the same page 

widget

To create a new kind of widget, navigate to the user’s Administration Screens at Appearance > Widgets.

HTML output of how a widget looks like


<div id="text-7" class="widget widget_text">

	<div class="widget-wrap">

		<h4 class="widgettitle">
			This is a text widget
		</h4><!-- .widgettitle -->

		<div class="textwidget">
			I can put HTML in here. <a href="http://google.com/">Search me!</a>
		</div><!-- .textwidget -->

	</div><!-- .widget-wrap -->

</div><!-- #text-7 -->

How to Create and Display a Widget

  1. Create your widget’s class by extending the standard WP_Widget class and its functions.
  2. Register your widget so that it’s made available in the Widgets screen.
  3. Make sure that your theme has at least one widget area in which to add the widgets

Essential Components of a WordPress Plugin

Every WordPress plugin consists of several essential components, including:

1. Plugin Header: The plugin header contains metadata about the plugin, such as its name, description, version, author, and license information.

2. Plugin File: The main plugin file, typically named `plugin-name.php`, initializes the plugin and defines its functionality.

3. Hooks: WordPress provides a system of hooks, including actions and filters, that allow plugins to interact with core functionality and modify the behavior of WordPress sites.

4. Functions: Functions within the plugin file define the plugin's functionality, including adding new features, modifying existing functionality, and interacting with WordPress database and APIs.


Building Your First WordPress Plugin

To build your first WordPress plugin, follow these steps

1. Select Name and Requirements

Start by creating a name for your plugin. Check to see if there's already a plugin that exists with that name, as this might cause disorderliness. Avoid using some trademark like "WordPress" in our plugin's name. This violates the WordPress trademark issues. But you can use "WP" abbreviation.

Example: We will create a plugin which we will name Hello World.

2. Create a New Plugin Folder & Structure

We will create a plugin folder named Hello World.

WordPress stores all plugins inside the …/wp-content/plugins folder.

All of your plugin's files will be contained inside a folder in that directory. For example - …/wp-content/plugins/hello-world/.

When using a single PHP file, all of the functionality of your plugin would be available at …wp-content/plugins/hello-dolly/plugin-file.php.

You can store complex plugins like CSS and JavaScript in wp-content/plugins/hello-world/assets for your separate subdirectories for different types of files.


3. Add the Plugin File Header

After you create your main plugin PHP file, you need to add a file header to help WordPress understand your plugin.

The plugin file header is just a PHP comment block that includes basic details about your plugin, such as its name, version number, author, license, and more.

WordPress will use this information to show details about your plugin in the Plugins area of the dashboard.

WordPress Codex has fully detailed about the plugin file header


You can find the full plugin file header at the WordPress Codex.

Here is a real example on how it looks like: 

/*
Plugin Name: Health Check
Plugin URI: https://wordpress.org/plugins/health-check/
Description: Checks the health of your WordPress install
Version: 0.1.0
Author: The Health Check Team
Author URI: http://health-check-team.example.com
Text Domain: health-check
Domain Path: /languages
*/

Full Code Details at WordPress Codex


4. Add the Code

It's now time for adding the actual functionality for your plugin!

A fully 100 lines of code

Add the code

Interchange the Hello Dolly! to Hello World

This is where the majority of the WordPress plugin development happens, so this will naturally take you more time than other previous steps.

You can visit WordPress.org Plugin Handbook for more detailed explanation if you confused in any way or on the various part of WordPress functionality.

The above code does two main things.

First, the hello_dolly_get_lyric function lets us define the song lyrics that we want to display and randomly choose a line from it.

Second, the add_action( 'admin_notices', 'hello_dolly' ); action hook uses the admin_notices hook to actually insert the song lyrics inside the WordPress admin dashboard.

Visit WordPress.org Plugin Handbook


5. Test/Deploy Your Plugin To WordPress

Once you've finished your plugin, test it on your local development environment first before deploying it. So many WordPress users make this exact mistake over and over again. You run a local check to check for possible errors, if no errors then you can deploy to WordPress.

The simplest and easiest way to let other people use your plugin, is to just package your main plugin folder as a ZIP file.

You can let others install the plugin directly from the WordPress dashboard by going to Plugins → Add New and uploading the ZIP file.

Upload as Zip file

Once the installation finishes, the plugin will show up in the regular plugin list. Again, you can control the information that appears in the plugins list by using the plugin file header from the third step above.

If this is a custom-built plugin for your own site that you'll be updating in the future, you might want to consider alternative methods for code deployment and management.

Using GitHub to manage your plugin's code and then deploy straight to WordPress using a tool like WP Pusher.


Advanced Plugin Development Techniques

As you gain experience with WordPress plugin development, you can explore advanced techniques to enhance your plugins' functionality and performance. Some advanced topics to consider include:

1. Custom Post Types and Taxonomies: Create custom post types and taxonomies to organize and display different types of content on your WordPress site.

2. Shortcodes: Use shortcodes to insert dynamic content, forms, or other custom functionality into posts, pages, and widgets.

3. Ajax: Implement Ajax functionality to enable asynchronous communication between the browser and the server, improving user experience and interactivity.

4. Security: Follow best practices for plugin security, including sanitizing and validating user input, escaping output, and implementing proper access controls to prevent security vulnerabilities


Conclusion

WordPress plugin development is a powerful tool for extending and customizing the functionality of WordPress sites

The most simplest way to get started with this is to create a single file plugin. All you need is a folder and a PHP file with the proper header 

As you upgrade your knowledge, you can start creating more complex plugins that include more assets. Tools like the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate Generator or WordPress MVC would help you get started with the proper structure for more complex plugins.

WordPress plugin development empowers you to take control of your WordPress journey and create a truly unique and tailored web experience. 

GoodLuck in creating your first WordPress plugin today!

wordpress plugins development

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