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WP Plugin Development – Final Thoughts
No comments · Posted by johng in Wordpress, Wordpress Plugin Development
In our last post we added more functionality to our plugin through the use of the jQuery.cookie plugin. This allowed us to keep of the user’s selection and maintain it throughout our site. This post is the conclusion of the wordpress plugin tutorial. Even though the bulk of the coding for this plugin is done, there is still more to do before releasing it to the public. Some of my thoughts on what else needs to be done follow.
README.txt
One thing we need to do is to create a readme.txt file. This file will be used to explain our plugin to the general public. WordPress has developed a standard format for this file. It is located here.
Documentation
In addition to the readme file, we should also take care that our code is well documented. This can be done with standard code commenting as well as any additional files and screenshots we wish to take. Instructions on using the admin portion of our site can be extremely useful to users.
Internationalization
We were careful with this plugin to make sure we allowed for internationalization using the __() and _e functions. However, there is more to internationalization then those steps. Full documentation on internationalization can be found here.
Submitting to WordPress
Once our readme, documentation, and internationalization are done, we can submit our plugin to WordPress (and other sites as well.) WordPress has written some nice documentation on this process as well as promoting your plugin that can be found here.
Create a Webpage for the Plugin
You should consider creating a webpage or pages for your plugin so people can find out more information about it (and you.) This is a good way to help promote your plugin. It is also a good idea to have a working demo if you can!
Final Thoughts on elasticFonts
Although this plugin has nice functionality, these is still more I want to do to it before releasing it to the public. I intend to add additional admin features such as choosing where your button shows on the page via the admin, choosing a button image via admin, and handling issues where the plugin stretches areas that need to be reformed after resizing. There are many ways I can expand on this plugin, and I hope to have some of them done soon. Keep an eye out at WordPress.org for this plugin!
Oh and if you’d like the source code for this tutorial, the link is below.
Tutorial Source Code
plugin · tutorial · Wordpress · wp
