The Skinny on Creating Plug-ins and the Downside of Hacks

  • maryjanesfarm

    (@maryjanesfarm)


    12 years, 8 months ago

    I have not done any searching yet, but does anyone know of a good resource that’s the “Cliff Notes” version of writing WordPress plugins (i.e. these are the absolute minimum pieces of code and information that you need for creating your own custom plugins, and the places and methods you need for putting them into play)?

    Otherwise, I would prefer to just modify the PHP directly. It’s just simply an easier or lesser amount of effort for getting at an end effect.
    However, my second question, with WordPress, is there a downside to modifying the code in that future updates might overwrite customizations (i.e. make them disappear altogether without my knowledge until one day I see things not working as expected)?

    Thank you in advance.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Thread Starter maryjanesfarm

    (@maryjanesfarm)

    12 years, 8 months ago

    I want to make minor customizations here and there – like having comments notifications not sent to authors; or making small changes to included functions, etc.
    And I think that just finding where things happen and commenting out a line or two here or there, or making small changes to some loop, is far easier than what I’m going to have to learn in order to write effective, manageable plugins.
    But it suddenly occurred to me that these hacks might be affected by WordPress updates; and that creating plugins is probably a lot smarter, more dynamic way to handle such things, once I load all the know-how into my memory.
    It’s just getting to that point of competency – not going to bother if I don’t have to.

    Thread Starter maryjanesfarm

    (@maryjanesfarm)

    12 years, 8 months ago

    And, yes, I do know about this page:
    http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_a_Plugin

    But if y’all feel this is the best, easiest resource, then that’s reassuring that I’m not just wasting time slogging through all the data.

    I also know I can search plugins, but I never have good luck with that, because plugins don’t work, or do something slightly different than I want, or do way more (and once again, some steep learning curve for a specialized something when I can just spend the same amount of time simply customizing the PHP directly).

    Thread Starter maryjanesfarm

    (@maryjanesfarm)

    12 years, 8 months ago

    Case in point about spending time searching plug-ins:
    http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/wordpress/33-wordpress-plugins-to-power-up-your-comment-section/

    A big collection of comments “stuff”, and not a single one does what I need. I just need to turn off all the random notifications sent out every which way to every admin and their dog, and just notify one person regardless of them being the author or not, without turning off every single other thing that notifies admins about things happening to WordPress.

    Anyway… (Do I sound bitter? I hope not. Not trying to. 🙂

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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