WordPress provides a nice little function for displaying the title of the current post: the_title(). This function gets used all over the place: in the site header, at the top of single posts and pages, in the loop, in the footer, etc. It is probably one of the most commonly used functions by theme developers,…
Restrict Content Pro, my plugin for selling premium memberships and restricting site content to paid subscribers, includes a template files system that makes it really simple for users to customize the registration form, profile form, login form, and more. This quick tutorial will walk you through how to use them to make modifications to the…
In part 3 we discussed the general best practice of separating your plugin out into multiple files. Today we’re going to look at how you actually do that and also go into more depth about why this is a good practice that you should be adopting for all of your plugins once they begin to…
The term Session in web development refers to a general method of storing semi-permanent data, such as user logins, user interactions, ecommerce shopping carts, and many other examples. PHP has a system called $_SESSION, which is exceptionally simple to use, but has same major draw backs, including security issues, and intermittent support across server environments. A few months…
Right-To-Left languages are those that start on the right and move to the left, in terms of word order and letters. By default, WordPress runs in Left-To-Right mode, but there are thousands and thousands of WordPress users that read RTL. One of the points that most WordPress plugin developers fail on is testing and ensuring…
Github is an extremely popular tool for managing WordPress plugins, and one of the greatest things about it is how easy it makes contributing back to plugins. Even someone who has never touched version control or even thought about it can easily submit improvements or bug fixes to plugins that are hosted on Github. This…
Adding new menus, both top level and sub level, to the WordPress Dashboard is a really common task for plugins. Whether it be via a custom post type, a settings page, or even a help page, dashboard menus are often the focus point for plugins from a user perspective, so it’s really important that you…
In this part of Plugin Development 101 you will be introduced to how to load scripts and styles in your WordPress plugins. This is a fundamental element of WordPress plugin development and is used in the vast majority of all plugins. There are many ways that asset loading can be done wrong, so I want to…
This part of the User Follow System tutorial series will focus on writing the necessary javascript for trigger the follow/unfollow actions. When a follow or unfollow link is clicked, the javascript will trigger an ajax action that then talks to the server and tells it which user is being followed or unfollowed, and which user…
The WordPress short code API is one that plugin developers use a lot. Short codes are used for kinds of things: gallerys, related post lists, purchase buttons, alert messages, etc. Whether your plugin uses them or not, every single plugin developer will write at least one short code. This part of Plugin Development 101 will…
This part of the series is the first one where we look at creating a complete sample plugin. It’s a very simple plugin, but a complete plugin nonetheless. For this plugin we are registering a new customer post type called “Books”. Registering custom post types is something that we do a lot in plugin development,…
In this part of Plugin Development 101 we take a look at another of the most important tools plugin developers use every day: actions. Just like filters, the presence of actions throughout WordPress are one of the elements that make plugin development possible, so having a good understanding of what they are and how they…
In this part of the User Follow System tutorial series, we will be writing our function to display follow / unfollow links.
In this part of Plugin Development 101 we take a look at one of the most important tools plugin developers use every day: filters. The presence of filters throughout WordPress are one of the elements that make plugin development possible, so having a good understanding of what they are and how they work is extremely…
Having an understanding of best practices that should be followed when writing a WordPress plugin is nearly as important as understanding how to write the plugin itself. The advantages of following general best practices are huge, and there is not a single valid reason why best practices should not be followed. This part of Plugin…
