Envato Tuts+ Courses

Video courses taught by expert instructors.

Learn new skills from start to finish.

Downloadable Source Files also available on GitHub.

Course Description

In this course, we’re going to take a look at everything that goes into building a WordPress plugin. We’ll start from the ground up by setting up a web server, a database server and PHP. Next, we’ll install WordPress, and then we’ll look into some of the sample plugins that are bundled with the software.

From there, we’ll move on to examining the event-driven design pattern and how it factors into creating a WordPress plugin, and then we’ll look at the differences between WordPress actions and WordPress filters.

Finally, we’ll build our own plugin using various WordPress APIs, taking into account everything that’s necessary to get the plugin fully functional for use in our installation of WordPress.

What You’ll Learn

How to set up your local development environment and WordPress installation ready for plugin development.
Understand how plugins are put together: what the source code looks like, and the importance of hooks and event-driven programming.
Plan and write the plugin, adding JavaScript and CSS.
Make sure you’re sanitizing data and that the user has the correct permissions.
Create a basic `README` file, and complete your plugin.

About the Instructor

Tom McFarlin is a self-employed developer who loves writing, building, and sharing WordPress-based projects. He runs Pressware, where he provides WordPress goods and services. You can follow him on Twitter.

Introduction to WordPress Plugin Development