How to create extendable wordpress plugins

2 comments

1. The following:

   • Use hooks and filters to power things. Pass args into a filter before doing things with them, pass return values to filters before returning them, etc, hooks and filters everywhere
   • namespace everything, tomjn_twittercount is a better function name than twittercount
   • Practice good common sense generic programming, e.g. use dependency injection, use proper OOP ( a single class containing a bunch of functions isn’t OOP )
   • Document your APIs
   • Use your APIs internally to build the plugin
   • Document your APIs
   • Did I mention documenting your APIs?

   I’d suggest using PHPDoc inline documentation extensively. It’ll allow you to auto-generate documentation using PHP Documentor

   e.g.

   /**
    * Prints hello world
    * 
    * @access private
    * @abstract
    * @return void
    */
    private function helloworld() {
        echo 'hello world';
    }
   

2. It is about creating custom hooks. The main ways is by using apply_filters() and do_action().

   More detailed explanations is here https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/hooks/creating-custom-hooks/

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