Getting Started With WordPress Development

Last night I spoke at a meetup of the Cape Town PHP Group. I was speaking alongside the excellent Gareth McCumskey who was giving a run down of what we can expect in PHP 7 (we can expect a lot of awesomeness by the way – you should really check that out).

My presentation for the evening was a primer on WordPress development and a guide on how to bend WordPress to your will (which would have made a way more awesome title for the talk).

The vast majority of the 30 attendees at the meetup were advanced PHP developers who had minimal experience with WordPress development – this gave me a nice opening where I could talk about some of the basics of writing code for WordPress without having to start with the basics of PHP first. It was also relatively intimidating knowing that most of the people in the room were probably more experienced and more qualified developers than myself, but I think I held my own well enough.

My talk was well received and I think I went on for quite a bit longer than I was supposed to, but that was mainly due to so many questions being asked. It was very encouraging to see that there is clearly a significant interest in WordPress development inside the PHP community.

The video and slides for my talk are below, along with a list of useful links that I either mentioned or feature in my slides at some point.

Useful links:

WordPress plugin developer info: All the information you need in order to get your plugin on the WordPress plugin repository.
WordPress coding standards: WordPress has defined coding standards for PHP, Javascript, HTML and CSS.
WordPress Action Reference: An ordered list of (almost) all of the action hooks available in WordPress core.
WordPress Filter Reference: A list of (almost) all of the filters available in WordPress core.
My WordPress plugin template: A plugin template I developed for my own use that helps get a new plugin off the ground with very little effort.
Varying Vagrant Vagrants (VVV): Varying Vagrant Vagrants is an evolving Vagrant configuration focused on WordPress development.; Whether you were at the meetup or not I would encourage you to dive head first into WordPress development and I’ll happily lend a hand where I can, so get in touch with me in the comments!

2 responses to “Getting Started With WordPress Development”

Hollebeke Christophe

October 16, 2016 at 12:34 am

Hello,

I making my first own simple plugin, What it do…
It displays a simple text on a website (with a shortcode), and this text can you added in a input field in the settings-page. Thats it!
It is a small plugin. Not bigger then the’Hello Dolly’ plugin and writing in procedural php. (i trying uderstanding OOP)

The next step is upload to the WordPress repo. But the big issue for me is i don’t find a good tutorial for a beginner like me, how make the plugin ready for the WP repo. ok, there is the WP codex :-/

I’m searching for a plugin template/sceleton, but the big problem is that this templates very overwhelmed and doens’t find a good tutorial how implement my own small code, a good explenation what i can edit or delete etc…I see in your plugin template that there a lot of comments, but for me it is not easy what and why editing/deleting.

Is there else a very very very good basic tutorial for ‘dummies’ like me, the best way how can used your template? At the moment i don’t know where can i adding my own code.

(sorry for my poor english)

Regards,
Christophe

Reply
Hollebeke Christophe

October 16, 2016 at 12:34 am

Hello,

I making my first own simple plugin, What it do…
It displays a simple text on a website (with a shortcode), and this text can you added in a input field in the settings-page. Thats it!
It is a small plugin. Not bigger then the’Hello Dolly’ plugin and writing in procedural php. (i trying uderstanding OOP)

The next step is upload to the WordPress repo. But the big issue for me is i don’t find a good tutorial for a beginner like me, how make the plugin ready for the WP repo. ok, there is the WP codex :-/

I’m searching for a plugin template/sceleton, but the big problem is that this templates very overwhelmed and doens’t find a good tutorial how implement my own small code, a good explenation what i can edit or delete etc…I see in your plugin template that there a lot of comments, but for me it is not easy what and why editing/deleting.

Is there else a very very very good basic tutorial for ‘dummies’ like me, the best way how can used your template? At the moment i don’t know where can i adding my own code.

(sorry for my poor english)

Regards,
Christophe

Reply