WordPress as framework

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Working for couple of Months with WordPress and developing basic plugins I have the impression that wordpress is not able to handle properly requests if more plugins are activated and mainly because that all of theme are reachable inside of the hole framework. Is there a way to setup the plugins in such a way that each plugin should be called when it needs to be called?

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  1. To run a plugin only when it is needed the plugin author has to identify the pages where the code actually does something.

    WordPress offers a surprisingly simple way to do that: the global variable $pagenow.
    It is set before a plugin is called in wp-includes/vars.php.

    In a spam block plugin I have written recently I needed my plugin to run on four pages only:

    • wp-comments-post.php to filter the posted comments
    • wp-admin/plugins.php to add a link in the plugin row to the settings
    • wp-admin/options-discussion.php to show two option fields
    • wp-admin/options.php to save the option fields

    So I added a helper method to my plugin controller …

    /**
 * Check if we need an instance of our class.
 *
 * @return boolean
 */
public static function start_me()
{
    global $pagenow;

    if ( empty ( $pagenow ) )
        return FALSE;

    self::$page_base = basename( $pagenow, '.php' );
    $active_pages    = array (
        'options',
        'options-discussion',
        'plugins',
        'wp-comments-post'
    );

    if ( ! in_array( self::$page_base, $active_pages ) )
        return FALSE;

    return TRUE;
}

    … and check that method before I do anything else in my plugin:

    if ( T5_Spam_Block::start_me() )
    add_action(
        'wp_loaded',
        array ( T5_Spam_Block::get_instance(), 'plugin_setup' )
    );

    And if my plugin is called it does only what is really needed, nothing else:

    /**
 * Register actions.
 *
 * @wp-hook wp_loaded
 * @return  boolean
 */
public function plugin_setup()
{
    // Register callbacks only when needed.
    if ( 'wp-comments-post' === self::$page_base )
        return add_action(
            'pre_comment_on_post',
            array ( $this, 'check_comment' )
        );

    if ( 'options' === self::$page_base )
        return add_action(
            'admin_init',
            array ( $this, 'register_setting' )
        );

    if ( 'options-discussion' === self::$page_base )
        return add_action(
            'admin_init',
            array ( $this, 'add_settings_field' )
        );

    // Now 'plugins' === self::$page_base
    // Used by add_settings_link() later.
    $this->plugin_base  = plugin_basename( __FILE__ );

    return add_filter(
        'plugin_row_meta',
        array ( $this, 'add_settings_link' ),
        10,
        2
    );
}

    As a framework WordPress offers the tools to specialize each part of the plugin code. But it is up to the authors to use these tools, and many authors fail here.