Do's and Dont's for Developing a WordPress Plugin

WordPress is a CMS tool that houses certain features and attributes which no other platform can even think to match up with. The freedom that WordPress provides to its users during the entire process of web development makes it the favorable choice of website owners all over the World. 

One really wonderful thing about WordPress is that it is open source. This gives web developers the liberty to customize the platform and develop it according to their business needs or requirements. Apart from thousands of themes, WP also has a wide range of plugins that prove to the very beneficial for the overall development of a WP website. The best part about WP is that it allows you to create or customize your own plugin and use it on your website.

The WordPress plugin development process is continually advancing that has led to the development of some amazing plugins. However, developing a plugin is not as easy as it seems to be. So, if you are looking to develop a WordPress plugin below are some of the Do's and Dont's that you must keep in mind. 

Let's have a look at the Do's first.

1. Having a knowledge of the basics of PHP is the primary requirement before beginning the process of plugin development. You don't have to be a PHP expert, a command over its concepts will do.

2. Subscribing to a plugin tutorial will be of a great help to you as it will make you aware of the best practices that are to be implemented before beginning the development process.

3. Learning about visionary control systems like Git and Subversion (SVN) will prove to be very beneficial to you. These systems will enable you to track any form of version changes that are made to your plugins that are released in the WordPress directory.

4. During the plugin development process, having a look at the code of other plugins will assist you in knowing about the functionalities that other developers have implemented in their plugins. You can tweak the already developed plugins and build a more advanced plugin for yourself.

5. It is always advisable to make your first plugin simple. You don't want to get trapped in any complexities during the development of you first WordPress plugin itself.

Now after discussing what all needs to be done. Let us talk about the Dont's.

1. Most of the developers commit a mistake during the initial phase of plugin development by not enabling debugging. However, this must be the first step that must be followed. Debugging will enable WordPress to raise error messages and warnings when somethings goes wrong.

2. Not using a prefix for your function names will lead to your functions getting clashed with other functions that are defined somewhere else. Each function has to be uniquely named as the functions of each plugin are not separated or isolated from each other.

3. Some plugin developers don't keep a record of the plugin versions. All the different plugin versions must be stored because each and every version of a plugin requires different database table. This will enable you to know the code that is required for creating the database table corresponding to different plugin versions.

4. Most of the WordPress plugins require adding your own settings page or admin menu. However, if you as a user will not enter the settings or options, this will affect the overall operation of the plugin. A settings page must be added to the existing menu or a top-level admin menu should be added to WordPress.

Conclusion

If you are a WordPress Developer looking to develop your first WordPress plugin the above list about the Do's and Dont's will prove to be vital for you. The above article will enable you to build a successful plugin and avoid some of the unnecessary errors that you would have committed otherwise.