How to Begin Writing Your First WordPress plugin

This entry is part 1 of 7 in the Writing Your First WordPress Plugins, Basic to Advanced Series

Structuring Your First WordPress Plugin →

How to Begin Writing Your First WordPress plugin
Structuring Your First WordPress Plugin
Writing Your First WordPress Plugin Part 3
Writing Your First WordPress Plugin Part 4
Writing Your First WordPress Plugin Part 5
Writing Your First WordPress Plugin Part 6
Writing Your First WordPress Plugin Part 7 – Final

The world of plugins can seem a scary place to venture if you’ve never been there before. I remember when I first started, it was because I wrote a tutorial over at Pro Blog Design about how to create a custom Font Uploader for your WordPress theme, and readers asked that I make it into a plugin. My first thoughts were “no way, I have no idea how and I’m comfortable with themes.” After a little bit of groaning, I decided to jump in and figure it out. A year and a half later I’m here, telling all of you how to write a plugin. Believe me, it’s not nearly as scary as I thought it was.

The video below describes the process of creating your first plugin. If you want, skip straight to the code with minimal explanation, but get started in seconds. Your first plugin can be ready to go in less than a minute.

This code should be placed at the top of a .php file that is named after your plugin. In this case, I have named my file “my-first-plugin.php”.

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plugin, plugins

7 comments on “How to Begin Writing Your First WordPress plugin”

dkotter says:

January 25, 2012 at 9:56 pm

Awesome intro to plugin dev. I have a few plugins in mind that I’ve been meaning to make and this series should be just what I need to get going. Thanks for the time and effort in putting it together.