WordPress® All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 6: Exploring Plugin Development Best Practices

In This Chapter

• Exploring best practice options
• Naming, filing, and locating your plugin
• Internationalizing your plugin

During the eight years the WordPress platform has been around (since 2003), thousands of WordPress plugins have been developed. As with any method or technique, the practice of WordPress plugin development has improved and standards have emerged from the developer community as the best ways, or best practices, for developing WordPress plugins. This involves making sure that you not only have the necessary functions in place to make your plugin do what you want, but also standard techniques to ensure that your plugin includes all the essentials, such as localization (translation), security, speed, and compatibility.

This chapter looks at the standards for WordPress plugin development and provides you with a checklist, of sorts, to ensure that your plugin has covered all the bases before you release it for public consumption.