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Product Description
Build powerful, interactive plug-ins for your blog and to share online
- Everything you need to create and distribute your own plug-ins following WordPress coding standards
- Walk through the development of six complete, feature-rich, real-world plug-ins that are being used by thousands of WP users
- Written by Vladimir Prelovac, WordPress expert and developer of WordPress plug-ins such as Smart YouTube and Plugin Central
- Part of Packt’s Beginners Guide series: expect step-by-step instructions with an emphasis on experimentation and tweaking code
In Detail
If you can write WordPress plug-ins, you can make WordPress do just about anything. From making the site easier to administer, to adding the odd tweak or new feature, to completely changing the way your blog works, plug-ins are the method WordPress offers to customize and extend its functionality. This book will show you how to build all sorts of WordPress plug-ins: admin plug-ins, Widgets, plug-ins that alter your post output, present custom “views” of your blog, and more.
WordPress Plug-in Development (Beginner’s Guide) focuses on teaching you all aspects of modern WordPress development. The book uses real and published WordPress plug-ins and follows their creation from the idea to the finishing touches, in a series of carefully picked, easy-to-follow tutorials. You will discover how to use the WordPress API in all typical situations, from displaying output on the site in the beginning to turning WordPress into a CMS in the last chapter. In Chapters 2 to 7 you will develop six concrete plug-ins and conquer all aspects of WordPress development.
Each new chapter and each new plug-in introduces different features of WordPress and how to put them to good use, allowing you to gradually advance your knowledge. This book is written as a guide to take your WordPress skills from the very beginning to the level where you are able to completely understand how WordPress works and how you can use it to your advantage.
What you will learn from this book?
- Get to know the WordPress code base, WordPress’s plug-in architecture, and the plug-in application programming interface (API) and learn how to hack it
- Master the WordPress database and the API – access and manipulate data, handle user roles and permissions, posts, and so on
- Hook into the rest of WordPress using actions and filters
- Change the way your WordPress backend looks by customizing menus, submenus, and the plug-in admin panel
- Integrate AJAX and jQuery into your plug-ins to dynamically generate content
- Hook directly to WordPress edit pages and use AJAX to generate fast searches
- Integrate your plug-in with WordPress panels and the tinyMCE editor
- Access and work with third-party APIs like Flickr
- Implement localization support for users of other languages
- Maintain and manage your plug-in using SVN and publish it to the WordPress Plugin Repository
- Handle security issues and make your plug-ins safer to use
We cover the development of six plug-ins from start to finish:
- Digg-this: Adds a Digg This button to each post.
- Live Blogroll: Adds a recent posts popup for each blog in your blogroll.
- The Wall widget: Displays comments on the sidebar without reloading the page.
- Snazzy Archives: Presents your site archives in a unique visual way.
- Insights: Access your articles and Flickr images from within the WordPress edit page.
- Post Types: Provides pre-defined post templates to quickly add a photo or a link to your blog.
Approach
This is a Packt Beginners Guide, which means it focuses on practical examples and has a fast-paced but friendly approach, with the opportunity to learn by experiment and play. Each chapter builds a practical plug-in from the ground up using step-by-step instructions. Individual sections show you how to code some functionality into your plug-in and follow up with a discussion of concepts.
Who this book is written for?
This book is for programmers working with WordPress, who want to develop custom plug-ins and to hack the code base. You need to be familiar with the basics of WordPress and PHP programming and believe that code is poetry; this book will handle the rest.
Average Ratings : 5.0
Price : $31.50
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This book is written in a very easy to understand fashion. Each example builds on the the previous example. Its a great way for someone like me, who likes to learn by doing, to learn how to create plugins.
There is a lot of information out on the web that will tell you how to create a plug-in, but this book allows you to follow the creation of a plugin from start to finish.
Highly recommended
Rating: 5 / 5
[Reply]
WordPress is one of the most popular blogging programs available and plugins associated with it are also quite popular. This book shows the reader how to create your own and provides excellent instructions on doing this. One concept that is discussed early on is “dogfooding your plugins.” This means you should strive to create a plugin that satisfies your needs. And while it addresses a need you have, it very likely is one that others have as well. With all the plugins available now, a plugin that addresses a unique need should become popular quickly.
The book devotes chapters to the creation of seven different plugins, including Digg This (social bookmarking plugin), Live Blogroll, The Wall, and Post Types among others. Each chapter describes in step by step details how to create the plugin and gives numerous code examples along the way. It also explains unfamiliar concepts in a way that makes them easy to quickly understand. There are also brief explanations of how JQuery and Ajax (two important programming languages used in developing plugins) work. The book’s final chapter gives tips on documenting and promoting your plugin, as well as ways to improve your overall WordPress knowledge.
Every time I check the WordPress plugin directory, it seems there are quite a few amazing new plugins to try out which have been created by talented people. This book will help you to become one of them.
Rating: 5 / 5
[Reply]
This book talks about the why and how of WordPress plugin development with heavy emphasis on the “how”. The book’s tagline “Learn by doing: less theory, more results” describes the book quite well. There is an introductory chapter that talks about the many benefits of learning WordPress plugin development. After that, the book immediately jumps right into showing you how to develop a series of 6 increasingly challenging WordPress plugins from scratch. It then finishes up by talking about plugin localization, promotion, and support tips.
Even though this book is a “Beginner’s Guide,” there are a lot things in there that many advanced WordPress plugin developers can benefit from. I don’t consider myself a beginner in WordPress plugin development (see my WordPress plugins), and I have definitely learned quite a bit of things after reading this book.
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Rating: 5 / 5
[Reply]