What this book covers

Chapter 1, Preparing a Local Development Environment, shows plugin developers how to install and configure an efficient development environment.

Chapter 2, Plugin Framework Basics, explains the basic mechanics of registering user functions with WordPress to be executed at key points when web pages are displayed, forming the basis of plugin creation.

Chapter 3, User Settings and Administration Pages, covers the creation of administration pages that will allow users to configure the plugins you create.

Chapter 4, The Power of Custom Post Types, empowers developers to add whole new content management sections to the WordPress environment.

Chapter 5, Customizing Post and Page Editors, demonstrates how to alter the default administration post and page editing environment to add new capabilities.

Chapter 6, Extending the Block Editor, shows how to create new content blocks for the new Block Editor and facilitate building websites.

Chapter 7, Accepting User Content Submissions, allows users to submit their own content to new content sections that will be managed by your plugins.

Chapter 8, Customizing User Data, explains how to store additional information for users and how to modify site output based on this data.

Chapter 9, Leveraging JavaScript, jQuery, and AJAX Scripts, makes plugin output very dynamic by using a number of popular script libraries.

Chapter 10, Adding New Widgets to the WordPress Library, shows how to add new widgets that users will be able to easily drag and drop to add content to their web pages.

Chapter 11, Fetching, Caching, and Regularly Updating External Site Data, explains how to extract data from external sites and locally cache that data for efficient use.

Chapter 12, Enabling Plugin Internationalization, prepares your plugin to be translated into any language to make it easier to be used by non-English speakers.

Chapter 13, Distributing Your Plugin on WordPress.org, shows you how to prepare your plugin for sharing with the global WordPress community.