Table Of ContentWordPress Plugin
Development Cookbook
Second Edition
Create powerful plugins to extend the world's most popular
CMS
Yannick Lefebvre
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
WordPress Plugin Development Cookbook
Second Edition
Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing
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First published: July 2012
Second edition: July 2017
Production reference: 1140717
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-78829-118-7
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Credits
Author Copy Editor
Yannick Lefebvre Akshada Lobo
Reviewers Project Coordinator
Cyril Pierron Ritika Manoj
Ardian Yuli Setyanto
Commissioning Editor Proofreader
Smeet Thakkar Safis Editing
Acquisition Editor Indexer
Shweta Pant Mariammal Chettiyar
Content Development Editor Graphics
Arun Nadar Jason Monteiro
Technical Editor Production Coordinator
Ralph Rosario Shantanu Zagade
About the Author
Yannick Lefebvre is a plugin developer who has published eight projects to the official
WordPress repository. His first creation, Link Library, has been used on thousands of sites
around the world. With a background in Computer Science and working for CM Labs
Simulations — a company providing software tools and simulators for vehicle and heavy
equipment simulation — he started writing plugins for his own WordPress site in 2004 and
quickly started sharing his creations with the community. He is actively involved in the
Montreal WordPress community, has presented multiple times at WordCamp Montreal,
and offers WordPress plugin development services. You can find out more about him and
his plugins on his website, Yannick's Corner.
I would like to thank the WordCamp Montreal organizers for giving me a chance to speak
at multiple editions of the event, for creating great videos of the presentations, and giving
me the opportunity to get involved in the community. This project would not have existed
without them.
I would also like to thank Richard Archambault for his great feedback and encouragement
while I wrote the first edition of this book, as well as the entire Packt Publishing team for
proposing this great project to me, supporting me through the entire process, and coming
back to me to put together this second edition.
Finally, I would like to thank my parents for always believing in me and encouraging me
in all my projects.
About the Reviewers
Cyril Pierron is a tech-savvy, life-curious engineer. He started programming at the age of 8.
He worked in the telecommunications industry for 13 years, leading network value added
service application development. Since 2011 he has been working as an ecommerce solution
architect, supporting customers and partners, building transactional sites on Salesforce
Commerce Cloud platform. He is married and the father of a lovely 7-year old girl.
As an ecommerce expert, Cyril has witnessed over the past few years the convergence of
content sites and online stores into one unified experience for the consumer. He has
integrated with various content management platforms in the context of his projects.
I would like to thank Packt Publishing for giving me the opportunity to work on this book
as a reviewer. I would also like to thank Yannick Lefebvre, who did a wonderful job writing
it, and my wife, who showed quite a lot of patience and support as I kept working on this
book after hours.
Content management systems (CMS) are key for brands to share information and reach
out to their communities and fans. WordPress is a reference in the CMS world, one of the
best known systems in the market. This book will definitely help plugin developers quickly
start building on it.
Ardian Yuli Setyanto, S.Kom, has played with programming since in high school. He
joined national selection for Tim Olimpiade Komputer Indonesia (TOKI, Indonesia
Computer Olympiad Team) in 2002 and 2003, which convinced him to study computer
science at Gadjah Mada University (UGM), and he graduated in 2009 firstly among his
other friends with a score 3.5/4.
He also used WordPress as his essay topic for bachelor degree, he developed his own
plugin and combined it with a GSM phone to read and send SMS, instead of the usual
email, to manage WordPress comments in his essay. After graduating from university, he
start working as freelancer using WordPress and Prestashop. These CMS are widely used in
his home country, Indonesia.
Now he is working as a backend developer using Symfony2, Rails, and Sinatra. You can
reach him on Twitter: @ardianys.
I would like to thank Packt for giving me this wonderful opportunity as a reviewer on their
book once again. I would like to thank Arun Nadar, who assisted me while I was reviewing
Yannick’s wonderful content. I would also like to thank my family, Niela, Nain, Nusa, and
Mazaya. All praise to God.
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products!
To my wife, Andrée, for her everlasting love, her patience throughout the writing process,
and for being a great first proofreader.
To my daughters, Évelyne and Gabrielle, for always making me smile, giving the best hugs in
the world, and growing up to become wonderful young ladies.
Table of Contents
Preface
1
Chapter 1: Preparing a Local Development Environment
6
Introduction 6
Installing a web server on your computer 7
How to do it... 7
How it works... 11
There's more... 12
Creating a remote web development environment 12
See also 13
Downloading and configuring a local WordPress installation 13
Getting ready 13
How to do it... 14
How it works... 17
Creating a local Subversion repository 18
How to do it... 18
How it works... 20
There's more... 20
Manual repository creation 21
Other version control systems 21
See also 21
Importing initial files to a local Subversion repository 21
Getting ready 21
How to do it... 22
How it works... 23
See also 23
Checking out files from a Subversion repository 23
Getting ready 23
How to do it... 24
How it works... 25
There's more... 25
Subversion file statuses 25
See also 26
Committing changes to a Subversion repository 26
Getting ready 27
How to do it... 27
