Innovation through Creation - Flash | PHP | HTML | XML | CSS | SQL - By Eliott Robson

Writing a WordPress plugin – part 1

Jun15
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Eliott
This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Writing a WordPress plugin

And not just any old junk either!

First, you need to find something you need. If it’s a clan website do you need an Awards or Mass Messaging functionality?
If it’s a blog, do you need AJAX functionality?

Whatever you need, you need to need it. Don’t pick an idea for a plugin because you think others might need it, you will make it all wrong and it will be a failure.

Then, ok you you found what you need to make yourself. Now plan it, draw up a simple sketch of design and write down what it should do.

Once you know what it is you are going to make then it’s time to begin.

Posted in Blogging, Ramblings, Tutorials, Wordpress - Tagged , ,

Writing a WordPress plugin – part 2

Jun23
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Eliott
This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series Writing a WordPress plugin

The loader

This file acts like the loader of the plugin:

It should be called the same name as your plugin (my Awards plugin has ‘awards.php’ in the trunk)

And it could start like this:

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<?php
 
/*
Plugin Name: Awards
Plugin URI: http://www.stormation.info/2010/10/awards/
Version: 1.0.0
Author: <a href="http://stormation.info/">Eliott Robson (Stormation.info)</a>
Author URI: http://stormation.info
Description: With awards you can; create, edit and assign awards to users. It has built in shortcodes for easy access to display the list of all awards possible, a table of earnt awards and a table for a single users awards.
*/

It really is that simple, and it’s needed too – this is the bit that WordPress reads in order to understand the plugin itself!

Posted in Blogging, Tutorials, Wordpress - Tagged , ,

Writing a WordPress plugin – part 3

Jul03
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Eliott
This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series Writing a WordPress plugin

The License

WordPress states:

It is customary to follow the standard header with information about licensing for the Plugin. Most Plugins use the GPL2 license used by WordPress or a license compatible with the GPL2. To indicate a GPL2 license, include the following lines in your Plugin:

And so the simplest thing is to simply add this:

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/*  Copyright 2011  Eliott Robson  (email : YourEmail@YourSite.co.uk)
 
    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2, as 
    published by the Free Software Foundation.
 
    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.
 
    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA
*/
Posted in Blogging, Tutorials, Wordpress - Tagged , ,

Writing a WordPress plugin – part 4

Jul05
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Eliott
This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series Writing a WordPress plugin

Template Tags

One of the simple things your plugin can do is to offer custom template tags for use in your themes. These are just PHP functions but a good rule of thumb is to format it like WordPress by prefixing functions that return data with get_, and functions that echo out directly with the_. For example:

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function get_hello_text(){
	return "Hello There";
}
 
function the_hello_text(){
	echo get_hello_text();
}

And used as follows:

The first way:

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echo get_hello_text()

Or the better way:

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echo the_hello_text()
Posted in Blogging, Tutorials, Wordpress - Tagged , ,

Writing a WordPress plugin – part 5

Jul07
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Eliott
This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series Writing a WordPress plugin

Shortcodes

Because giving people HTML and Php to edit themselves is just wrong?

It’s much easier to tell them this:

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[links]
[link url="http://www.google.com" name="Google"]
[link url="http://www.apple.com" name="Apple"]
[/links]

And heres what makes that all possible:

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function links_shortcode_callback( $atts, $content=null ){
	//Set a blank value for default
	$return = "";
	//If there is content between the shortcodes then add our wrapping tags
	if($content){
		$return = '<ul class="links">'
		//Nested shortcodes are not processed by default be sure to make this call if you want to process nested shortcodes
		$return .= do_shortcode($content);
		$return .= '</ul>';
	}
	//Never echo output from a shortcode function
	return $ret;
}
 
function link_shortcode_callback( $atts ){
	//Get the attributes and filter out unwanted attributes
	$a = shortcode_atts( array(
		'url' => 'No Website',
		'name' => 'No Name'), $atts );
 
	//Build HTML
	$return = "<li><span class='link'>";
	$return .= "<a href=\"".$a['url']."\">". $a['name']. "</a>";
	$return .= '</span></li>';
 
	//Again, return NOT echo:
	return $return;
}
 
// Finally, tell WordPress about our shortcodes
add_shortcode( "links", "links_shortcode_callback" );
add_shortcode( "link", "link_shortcode_callback" );
Posted in Blogging, Tutorials, Wordpress - Tagged , ,
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