Step By Step Guide To WordPress Plugin Development 2024

What is a Plugin?

Plugin is a package of files which can be added to your WordPress website. It can be used to extend the core functionality or add new functionality on your WordPress site without modifying the core. A WordPress package can be created with PHP, images, CSS and JS file resources as per your business needs

Do you want to add some custom functionality to your WordPress website? The first thing you would like to do is to search various free WordPress Plugin repositories and sources to see if any WordPress development company has already created a WordPress Plugin that suits your business needs. If not, Here is an easy guide on how to create a WordPress plugin from scratch

Getting Started with WordPress Plugin Development

Step 1: Creating New Plugin Files

The first thing you need to do for the development of a plugin is to create the directory structure of the plugin which it will be following and create the starting point file which handles the entire plugin and its resources.

Step 2: Create Header Comment of Plugin File

The next step is to define the plugin which you are developing. WordPress requires all the plugins to follow its standards and provide plugin information and definitions accordingly

Plugin file must contain some basic meta information which provides WordPress and users, the basic knowledge about the plugin and its development.

These details are to be filled out in the plugins main file:

 Plugin Name: My Plugin Plugin URI: plugin url Description: Basic WordPress Plugin Header Comment Version: 20160911 Author: Author name Author URI: Author URL License: GPL2 License URI: Licence URl

Step 3: Create Custom Code of Plugin File

After we are done with the basic plugin setup, we can move on to the next step of development and define what will be the plugin’s functionality and how it should work.

For that, we have to understand how we can use different types of hooks and how to override default WordPress or create new functionality.

There are two types of hooks:

1. Actions Hooks – Actions hooks can be used for adding new or override core functionality of WordPress
2. Filters Hooks – Filters hooks are used for altering the WordPress content

Let’s Check Some Real Time Examples

We will create a new post type with help of the plugin. By this, we can create a new section in admin which can provide us an additional functionality like Posts and Pages.

 Plugin Name: My Plugin Plugin URI: plugin url Description: Basic WordPress Plugin Custom Post Type Version: 1.0 Author: Author name Author URI: Author URL License: GPL2 License URI: Licence URL / function custom_setup_post_type() { $args = array( 'public' => true,
        'label'     => __( 'Custom Post', 'textdomain' )
    );
    register_post_type( 'custom_post', $args );
}
add_action( 'init', 'custom_setup_post_type' );

This will register a new post type custom post on plugin activation. And you can see a new menu Custom Post in WordPress Admin in the left side panel.

Add a new custom post by clicking on Add New in the Custom Post menu.

Here you can fill out all the info for this new post type and after filling out the details click on Publish to save details.

Step 4: Create Shortcode to Load the Custom Posts

Now next step is to load all the custom posts which are added on the front page from the admin. For that, we have to create functionality for shortcode so that it can load that custom post from the plugin.

We will use the same file to add the shortcode functionality and the complete file myplugin.php will look like as below

Plugin Name: My Plugin Plugin URI: plugin url Description: Basic WordPress Plugin Custom Post Type Version: 1.0 Author: Author name Author URI: Author URL License: GPL2 License URI: Licence URl */ function custom_setup_post_type() { $args = array( 'public' => true,
        'label'     => __( 'Custom Post', 'textdomain' )
    );
    register_post_type( 'custom_post', $args );
}
add_action( 'init', 'custom_setup_post_type' );

add_shortcode( 'custom-post-list', 'custom_post_listing' );
function custom_post_listing( $atts ) {
	ob_start();
	$args=array(
      'post_type' => 'custom_post', // Post Type Slug
      'posts_per_page' =>-1, // Show All
	  'order'=> 'Desc'
    );
	    $new = new WP_Query($args);
    while ($new->have_posts()) : $new->the_post();

The code after the “add_shortcode” function is to show the list of the custom posts on any page in WordPress.

Step 5: Use Short Code to Load the Custom Posts

Now the only thing left is to use the shortcode in WordPress to get the list of custom posts and show on front side pages. To achieve that go to WordPress Admin and create a new page. Provide the title of the page and just use the code below in the description and Publish the page to save it.

Now if you go to this new page on the browser then you can see the post list which is added in admin inside the new created custom posts.

By following the same process you can add any images or any other resource for your plugin to meet your requirements.

If this process seems difficult to you, Hire WordPress Developer from IceCube Digital to build an easy-to-manage WordPress Plugin.