27 Apr 4 Ways How to Create a WordPress Plugin for Your Web App

If you are interested in WordPress coding, you probably know that it’s the largest content management system (CMS) that currently powers over 30% of the entire Internet. The platform is known for its amazing features and incredible versatility, mostly thanks to the sheer number of plugins.

At the moment, WordPress offers more than 55 thousand plugins that support and augment a wide range of website functions. From marketing and eCommerce to blogging and engineering, you can use WordPress and its supporting features to do pretty much anything online.

One such option is to create a WordPress plugin for your web app. Our goal is to show you four ways to make it, so let’s get straight to it.

A Simple Guide for Making a WordPress Plugin

There are tons of web apps available online and each one requires a little bit of HTML or JavaScript coding to enhance website functioning. But making changes and editing WordPress themes can be quite troublesome for most webmasters, so you could design a plugin to complete the job automatically.

Generally speaking, it’s a four-step process that does not demand expert skills or years of programming experience. Let’s see how it works step by step!

STEP 1: Choose a web app

The first thing you need to do is find and choose the right web app for this project. You can choose from hundreds of different options online, but we will rely on Feedier in this tutorial. Why this web app?

We consider Feedier to be easy and intuitive, customizable, and free. Besides that, it has a reliable API and a pre-built widget, which is fundamental for the small project we are about to describe here.

Namely, our mission is to design a WordPress plugin that can create a new admin page along with a few additional features. It’s not a big project, but it’s enough to give you some basic knowledge and to help you get started.

STEP 2: Create a plugin along with the corresponding architecture

Although it sounds complex, a WordPress plugin does not need a complex structure. Our guide essentially needs only two sorts of files:

• feedier.php: This is the key PHP file of the plugin.
• Assets/js/admin.js: A script that helps us to save the changes.

If you want, you are free to make a new name or directory for the app. This can be done in the wp-content/plugins/ folder. Now, the feedier.php file should contain the basic information about your WordPress plugin. You can add the following data to this file:

• A name of the plugin
• A brief description
• A plugin version (since it’s the first one, it is probably 1.0)
• A name of the author and the URL
• Text domain

You also need to define additional elements based on the goals of the project. For instance, these could be plugin constants, header comments, and the class of the plugin. The new plugin is still not functional after step two, but it already appears in the plugin page.

STEP 3: Make a new admin page

The next step is to actually make a new admin page and add it to the WordPress site. In order to do that, we need to define and formulate three distinct actions:

The first task is to create the so-called addAdminMenu element. This action creates a brand new page on the left side of the WordPress menu. Besides that, the new feature will contain the entire content of the page along with the corresponding callback.

The second task is to create the so-called storeAdminData feature. This action is simple as its sole purpose is to activate whenever a user wants to save changes. In other words, storeAdminData reacts if you click the “Save Settings” option.

The third task is creating the so-called addAdminScripts component. This action has the purpose to register new files in JavaScript, store them in WordPress admin, and preserve every piece of new information. It also serves as a link between PHP and JavaScript.

STEP 4: Add a dynamic code

The last step in this process is to add a dynamic code that activates automatically on every page. You can do it by inserting another code printing method to the plugin. Since it’s necessary to apply this function to every page, you can combine the new method with the wp footer action to get the job done properly. The plugin is not ready to use.

Conclusion

WordPress is the largest and most versatile CMS that allows users to play with different features and design new products. As a developer, you can also create a special WordPress plugin for your web app, so we discussed four ways how to get the job done properly. Keep our tips in mind and make sure to leave a comment if you need additional explanations about this topic – we would be glad to help you out.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Becky Holton is a journalist and a blogger at Bestessays.com, Edugeeksclub, Essaygeeks, EssayOnTime.co.uk, Rushmyessay. She is interested in education technologies and is always ready to support informative speaking at custom essay writing service. Follow her on Twitter.