Prelovac - WordPress Plug-in Development

Vladimir Prelovac is the author of many popular WordPress plugins and articles about WordPress optimization, security and maintenance. He actively uses WordPress platform as a base for Internet development strategy for small & mid-sized businesses.

For Vladimir, WordPress development is a full time job about which he happily blogs on his web site www.prelovac.com/vladimir.

I'd like to thank my editor Mr. Barnes, for leading me through the book writer's path. Dave, Ervin, and guys at Wordcast, for the professional support they showed in such a lovely way. My family for understanding the long, sleepless nights of writing. Finally, I wish to dedicate this book to my mother, Vera Prelovac (1949-2008), who was and will always be my beacon of light.

Junal Rahman is a Computer Science graduate from the Independent University of Bangladesh. His areas of expertise include programming with the PHP framework and creating Facebook applications. He has worked for several software companies as a Web Application Developer. During his undergraduate studies Junal fell in love with .NET programming, but as soon as he started his internship, he fell in love with PHP. He currently works as a Development Engineer at Trippert Labs. At Trippert, Junal collaboratively works to create Facebook applications. He also maintains a blog that can be found at http://junal.wordpress.com.

I would like to acknowledge my sister Shiuly, follow your dreams

If you can write WordPress plugins, you can make WordPress do just about anything. From making the site easier to administer, to adding the odd tweak or new feature, to completely changing the way your blog works; plugins are the method WordPress offers to customize and extend its functionality. This book will show you how to build all sorts of WordPress plugins: admin plugins, Widgets, plugins that alter your post output, present custom "views" of your blog, and more.

This book focuses on teaching you all aspects of modern WordPress development and usage. The book uses real and published WordPress plugins and follows their creation from the idea to the finishing touches, in a series of carefully picked, easy-to-follow tutorials. You will discover how to use the WordPress API in all typical situations, from displaying output on the site in the beginning to turning WordPress into a CMS in the last chapter. In Chapters 2 to 7, you will develop six concrete plugins and conquer all aspects of WordPress plugin development.

Each new chapter and each new plugin introduces different features of WordPress and how to put them to good use, allowing you to gradually advance your knowledge. This book is written as a guide to take your WordPress skills from the very beginning to the level where you are able to completely understand how WordPress works and how you can use it to your advantage.

This is a Packt Beginners Guide, which means it focuses on practical examples and has a fast-paced but friendly approach, with the opportunity to learn by experimentation and play. Each chapter builds a practical plugin from the ground up using step-by-step instructions. Individual sections show you how to code some functionality into your plugin and follow up with a discussion of concepts.