Book Preview: WordPress Plug-in Development (Beginner’s Guide)

I still remember the very first day that I got started with WordPress. I had found the open source platform online and decided to get my feet wet with it. At the time, I wasn’t really aware of the true power of WordPress content management system. That’s just it. WordPress is not just a CMS but a community of people dedicated to making it better. Folks behind WordPress have given bloggers a platform to express their ideas easily, free of charge. But the community has pushed WordPress to newer heights by creating thousands plug-ins and themes for WordPress.

Learning how to use WordPress is not that difficult. There are many books out there that you can use to get started with WordPress. But learning how to write plug-ins for WordPress platform could be a tricky affair. First off, you need to be technical enough to code in PHP. You also need to know the base code behind the WordPress platform. If you are dedicated enough and have a lot of time on your hands, you can probably find resources online to teach yourself WordPress programming. But for the rest of us, I recommend WordPress Plug-in Development: The Beginner’s Guide.
Wordpress Plug-in Development guide is the newest WordPress book that targets folks who are technical enough to get started with plug-in development with WordPress. Developing free plug-ins is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your sites, and if you have the skills to pick it up quickly, you can gain a competitive advantage over most of your competitors. And let’s not foret that by creating plug-ins for WordPress, you help make the platform even better than before. WordPress Plug-in Development is hands on and shows you how to write 6 cool plug-ins for your WordPress blog:

• Digg-this: Adds a Digg This button to each post.
• Live Blogroll: Adds a recent posts popup for each blog in your blogroll.
• The Wall widget: Displays comments on the sidebar without reloading the page.
• Snazzy Archives: Presents your site archives in a unique visual way.
• Insights: Access your articles and Flickr images from within the WordPress edit page.
• Post Types: Provides pre-defined post templates to quickly add a photo or a link to your blog.

What I like about this book is the fact that the author doesn’t assume that you are an expert when it comes to WordPress code base. The plug-in architecture and the ins and outs of WordPress platform are all covered here. WordPress Plugin Development also covers different APIs that you can use to enhance the functionality of your WordPress site.

The book will be released on January 30th by Packt Publishing (who else?!). If you want to get your feet wet with plug-in programming for WordPress or you are just a programmer looking to pick up an in demand skill, you should definitely check this book out. But you probably want to read up on your PHP if you are rusty or fairly new to it.