A Beginners Guide: WordPress Plugin Development

Clarity eCommerce - The eCommerce Platform to Scale and Grow Your Business
A Beginners Guide to WordPress Plugin Development

WordPress Plugins: Introduction

We cannot doubt the fact that WordPress content management system has excellent functionality and functionalities in its bag. WordPress is the most effective CMS framework that provides us with a valuable and welcoming repository and has powerful features to build a dynamic website without much technical knowledge. The main factor behind its popularity as a CMS is the integration of Plugins and Themes. A plugin is an automated component of the WordPress website, providing a collection of functions. They are an integral part of the WordPress ecosystem, which serves as a great way to boost and expand your website's functionality (i.e. by using a WordPress directory plugin you can develop a company's directory quickly and dynamically).

Clarity's eCommerce Marketplace platform has been used in such marketplaces for more than 10 years.

The PHP-coded WordPress plugins may comprise other properties, including images, CSS and JavaScript, etc. There are a broad range of plugins available. From simple plugins that add styles or minor adjustments, to comprehensive plugs that carry significant changes, such as, eCommerce integrations or third-party connections. There also exist WordPress plugins for SEO efficiency, adding ways of touch, social media buttons, galleries, etc.

Why Create A Custom WordPress Plugin?

WordPress plugins are self-contained packages and simple ways to integrate additional features, like social networking, breadcrumbs, Google Maps, etc. While website developers find thousands of useful plugins on the WordPress plugin list, they can sometimes have specific requirements that can only be fulfilled by creating a custom WordPress plugin. Creating your plugins helps you make your website more customizable, giving nearly infinite versatility and control over a WordPress site's output.

Best Practices for Plugin Development

By creating custom WordPress plugins, you can have various functionalities and keep them intact on your WordPress website. However, there are chances that plugins may go wrong or often fail to succeed due to a lack of effort. That is where the need to practice best for the creation of a plugin arises. So let's address the basic best practices needed to perform WordPress customization without any further delay.

Lets take a look at all the steps

From Start to Finish Guidance

1. Make A Productive Strategy:

It is vital to ideally strategize the creation process since it helps you primarily handle the code according to the plugin's complexity. If your plugin has little association with WordPress' Core Data, less work is needed unless you foresee it growing substantially later. Conversely, comprehensive plugins with more groupable code support the classes, different style sheets, and the active code organization's script files. It definitely will credit you with plugin maintenance for a more extended period. This stage calls for a significant time.

2. Use Namespacing For WordPress Plugin:

All your files, functions, classes, and variables are required to be namespaced (prefixed) with your plugin name. Note that your plugin's functions are implemented in the global namespace with other non-namespace functions, which means it possibly clashes with the same function somewhere else. The best option to fix this problem is to make a class for your plugin, so that all methods will be namespaced under the class name, and even better, you can even now add notable names to the function like this:

3. Take Security Measures:

Many developers relegate protection as an afterthought status and end up making a mistake. Make sure your WordPress plugin is safe. WordPress ensures safety by providing an apprentice function, sanitize *() class of support functions to not allow attacks to infringe your website's protection. This feature is perfect and ensures that user inputs are thoroughly sanitized before moving to the database. Data sanitizing is important when dealing with the user entry or exposing your site to XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) and other harmful consequences. The following are some sanitize inputs and escape outputs that we’ve highlighted for you:

  • ü esc_url_raw
  • ü esc_url
  • ü esc_textarea
  • ü esc_html
  • ü esc_attr
  • ü wp_filter_kses

4. White Screen Death:

When a public user accesses your .php files directly via URL, you must always make White Screen Death, shortly known as WSoD, a must. Want to know why? Since it may eventually activate and lead to unpredictable actions if your file includes any I / O operations. You can prevent your vital files from being accessed (directly), ensuring that plugin directories and data are only run within the WordPress setting.

5. Extendable Plugin Development Method:

You have to follow a strategy of extendable plugin development if you periodically come up with an issue of modifying the plugin but can't seem to find any other means aside by cracking the source code? To ensure that your WordPress plugin is up to par, you can have action/filter hooks to enable other people to expand plugins' functionality according to their ability.

6. Implementation Of Ajax:

AJAX's implementation is advantageous if you want to be versatile enough to use the core WordPress CMS. Ajax is a flexible tool that helps developers to create more efficient and streamlined applications. It's not built-in support for WordPress workflow, but an amalgamation of numerous programming languages.

7. Do Not Overload:

Do not frivolously flood your plugin with code that is better called elsewhere. Your web pages and sections should load global stylesheets, html, and other files that apply across the site. If there is ever an opportunity to avoid duplicate code, those files are the ones to first look into calling for your plugin.

8. Internationalization:

Since WordPress is used globally, it's best to develop a WordPress plugin that translates easily to any language. Internationalization does not require us to provide the translations (although the multi-lingual one among us can do so quickly), only for the potential translators to take the appropriate steps. This isn't a necessary step to do, but it is always vital to reach the broadest possible audience.

Looking for a more complex solution?

What to Look in A WordPress Plugin Developer?

With a vastness of 30,000 plugins available on the official WordPress framework, you can sometimes have unique needs that can only be fulfilled by making a custom plugin. It’s always better to seek a WordPress plugin developer who will add new features to your site to attain individual needs. When looking for a competent developer, Do check out the skills (listed below) that your WordPress developer should have:

  • Effective communication and customer service
  • Technical Experience
  • Strong organizational skills
  • Core Marketing
  • Self-Learning Attitude
  • Deliberation
  • Well focused personality

Selection of WordPress Developer

Finding a skilled and knowledgeable WordPress developer is indeed a long, tiring, and challenging job, but this article provides sources for finding the best WordPress developers.

1. Job Advertisement

It could be an excellent idea to put a job description on various platforms if you know the functionality you want to add to your site and how it should work.

Freelancing Websites: It is possibly the best and most straightforward way to reach a broad community of developers by posting a work advertisement or request on a freelancing website. Freelancers from around the world on these boards have much different communication (including language obstacles), technological skills, and personal expectations for their work. Although you know how to recruit and handle projects, you can achieve a good result at low prices. The following are some useful Freelance websites:

  • ü oDesk
  • ü Toptal
  • ü Freelance.com
  • ü Upwork
  • ü Elance
  • ü Mode Effect
  • ü Smashing Jobs

Word Press Jobs: WordPress Jobs is the official listing page for WordPress jobs. Job activities are divided into different categories: development, design, performance, plugin creation, customization, migration, and more. The advantage of this alternative is that you can recruit and collaborate with someone right in your community to make a quality outcome but at an expensive cost.

2. Direct Approach

Another way to address your needs is to connect developers directly through their websites. This approach can potentially take more effort but fits better than posting a work request on a freelancing site hoping that you and the developer are both on the same page. By browsing through portfolios and testimonials you can see the relevance of the developer and can contact the applicant immediately.

How can we help

Clarity WordPress Experts

Clarity Ventures can help your business with the right solutions based on the current market trend, business area, business industry, and your potential client's interest. We encourage small businesses to achieve BIG and make a difference! Let's have a successful digital journey together.

Related Posts