Customer Reviews

WordPress Plugin Development (Beginner's Guide)

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
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This book talks about the why and how of WordPress plugin development with heavy emphasis on the "how". The book's tagline "Learn by doing: less theory, more results" describes the book quite well. There is an introductory chapter that talks about the many benefits of learning WordPress plugin development. After that, the book immediately jumps right into showing you how to develop a series of 6 increasingly challenging WordPress plugins from scratch. It then finishes up by talking about plugin localization, promotion, and support tips.

Even though this book is a "Beginner's Guide," there are a lot things in there that many advanced WordPress plugin developers can benefit from. I don't consider myself a beginner in WordPress plugin development (see my WordPress plugins), and I have definitely learned quite a bit of things after reading this book.

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I bought this book hoping to get one thing out of it: "How to create a plugin which makes use of a custom database table". Unless I missed something, this book doesn't show you how. At least not plainly. All the examples that concerns databases makes use of the existing WP tables.

I would've thought that using custom tables would definitely be in a plugin development book.

But the book did a good job in walking a user through the topics it did cover.

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging programs available and plugins associated with it are also quite popular. This book shows the reader how to create your own and provides excellent instructions on doing this. One concept that is discussed early on is "dogfooding your plugins." This means you should strive to create a plugin that satisfies your needs. And while it addresses a need you have, it very likely is one that others have as well. With all the plugins available now, a plugin that addresses a unique need should become popular quickly.

The book devotes chapters to the creation of seven different plugins, including Digg This (social bookmarking plugin), Live Blogroll, The Wall, and Post Types among others. Each chapter describes in step by step details how to create the plugin and gives numerous code examples along the way. It also explains unfamiliar concepts in a way that makes them easy to quickly understand. There are also brief explanations of how JQuery and Ajax (two important programming languages used in developing plugins) work. The book's final chapter gives tips on documenting and promoting your plugin, as well as ways to improve your overall WordPress knowledge.

Every time I check the WordPress plugin directory, it seems there are quite a few amazing new plugins to try out which have been created by talented people. This book will help you to become one of them.

this book helped me get started in plugin development, really like this book, now i want a more advanced book to do more advanced development, this is a basic intro, if you know how to develop wordpress plugin, this might be a waste of time, but if your new to the wordpress world, i recommend it.

Sometimes I've picked up a development book that is written in such a technical manner, that it's very challenging for me to follow along. When it comes to web development books, I prefer ones that have solid, concrete examples. This book from Vladimir Prelovac is full of nothing BUT such examples.

I am midway through the book, have already built some of the plugins that he reviews in this book, and was able to tackle the "extra challenges" at the end of each chapter. I've learned a little more about jQuery and AJAX programming along the way, and if you have a little bit of knowledge in those areas, are proficient in PHP and like to use WordPress... this book is for you!

In this book the author walks you, step by step, through the creation of several viable WordPress plug-ins. Each new one builds on functionality and process learned in previous ones, to help you gaim more understanding of how the WordPress framework handles it's data, and what capabilities you have, as a programmer, in manipulating and presenting that data, and adding valuable function to the WordPress core.

You don't really want to jump into this book (or this subject) if you don't know PHP from PCP, but I really don't think you'll need more than a basic familiarity with PHP to get rolling with it, either. The author does an excellent job of telling you what the code is doing and how it's doing it when each new bit is added.

While it's definitely time for an update to this title (I'd suggest you search for a newer edition before you buy) the lessons you can learn here are still valid and easily applicable to 3.0.

WordPress has gone from strength to strength since it was released in 2003, and much of its success is due to the open source community's commitment to plugin development. Take a look at the WordPress Plugin Directory, and you'll see thousands of plugins that extend the WordPress core to do almost anything you can imagine.

Packt Publishing's WordPress Plugin Development is written by Vladimir Prelovac, a WordPress expert and developer of WordPress plug-ins such as Smart YouTube and Plugin Central. Part of Packt's Beginners Guide series, the book focuses more on experimentation and learning by doing, and develops 6 real-world plugins throughout its 270 or so pages.

Chapter Overview

1. Preparing for WordPress Development
2. Social Bookmarking
3. Live Blogroll
4. The Wall
5. Snazzy Archives
6. Insights for WordPress
7. Post Types
8. Development Goodies

Aimed at developers who are familiar with PHP, the book wastes little time getting straight into coding. Chapter 1 gives an overview of plugin development, and details the six plugins that are developed throughout the course of the book.

1. Digg This

The first plugin simply shows a Digg button in blog posts. It's a good first plugin, since it shows the reader the fundamental Plugin concepts such as the WordPress API, filters and actions.

2. Live Blogrool

This plugin works at making the basic Blogroll a little bit more exciting. I enjoyed this chapter since it talked about integrating jQuery and AJAX into plugins.

3. The Wall

The Wall is a plugin that creates a shoutbox on your blog's sidebar, where users can leave comments and shouts. This chapter introduces widgets and the WordPress database.

4. Snazzy Archives

This plugin beautifies blog archives, and hooks into posts and the administration panel.

5. Insights

The insights plugin increases blog post writing productivity by offering quick access to common information in the Write Post screen.

6. Post Types

This plugin works closely with the WordPress back-end, and extends the platform's CMS capabilities. Despite WordPress 3.0's core functionality being extended in this area, it's still a useful chapter.

As fantastic as WordPress is, a real sense of power can be gained from extending it. I particularly enjoyed this book, since it got straight `down to business' and focused on the core concepts and practices that enable developers to create reliable, useful plugins.

This book is written in a very easy to understand fashion. Each example builds on the the previous example. Its a great way for someone like me, who likes to learn by doing, to learn how to create plugins.

There is a lot of information out on the web that will tell you how to create a plug-in, but this book allows you to follow the creation of a plugin from start to finish.

Highly recommended