Support » Everything else WordPress » Plugin maybe? Where to start?

  • First, I am a newbie to the WordPress community. I was very fortunate yesterday to have attended Wordcamp in Orlando and want to give an extra big “thanks” to all the organizers, sponsors and staff of WordPress itself. It was a really wonderful day.

    Second, I got a general idea about some coding questions but now I need to get a little more specific, particularly about where do I start?

    The situation I have now is that I have developed a “distributed” web directory. Basically it works in a manner similar to Adsense in that any webmaster can get a couple of snippets of php code from registering. One snippet they would normally paste in the head section of one of their site templates and then paste the other snippet into the body of the page.. Doing this results in them having a complete web directory for their site with categories, links, management (mine) of submitted links etc The web directory pulls the categories and links from my database so they can have a link directory without the work. Visitors can visit their site and add their links as well and their new link is not only on their site but on all the other “distributed” directories as well.

    What I want to do is make that available to wordpress users and I really don’t know where the best place or way to “hook” into word press with it. Would this be a plugin? Or a widget? Or is it better to just paste the two snippets of php into the head and body sectyions of the particular wordpress page? If someone can help me with tha basic starting point I’ll start researching and building from there.

    Thanks in advance

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  • I’d recommend starting with a plugin and then perhaps adding a widget to the plugin package for those what want it. The best places to start would be:

    http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_a_Plugin
    http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API

    If you want to distribute this you really want to try to avoid having the user edit files. That means you need to produce a theme– not a reasonable option in your case– or create a plugin. A plugin can do the ‘inserting into the head’ and with a widget coded into the plugin you can provide access to the directory with very little user effort. if you want this in the body of a page or a post maybe create a shortcode.

    I’m having trouble seeing how this would work though because it looks like your categories, links, etc are all divorced from those built into WP. That strikes me as a bit weird, no offense.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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