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WP Plugin Starter Kit

by BDazzler
5 replies
I've been writing technical books, articles etc. since the mid 80s and have become pretty decent at creating WP Plugins.

I'm considering creating a WordPress plugin starter kit. My initial thoughts are listed below. Do you think it would be worth my time and effort, or is this too simple?

  • Basic Plugin Creation Tutorial
  • Base source code for starting any plugin
  • Base source code for widgets
  • Shortcode templates
  • Automatically Include jQuery/jQuery UI
  • Admin Page(s)
  • Setup Page(s)
  • Timers
  • Plugin Reference “Cheat Sheet”
  • “Snippet File”
  • Diagrams (UML, ERD, System etc.)
  • Getting Onto WordPress.org


Thoughts appreciated.

Thanks
#kit #plugin #starter #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author SJL
    I dont't see why not, but if you are going to sell it, I would recommend having more plugins of your own at wordpress.org for credibility.
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  • Profile picture of the author BDazzler
    Thanks ... yeah, I've got quite a bit of general credibility in technical writing ... but in WP specifically ... we have one on wordpress.org and others in the pipe line, that's where I'm getting the material from. But that is a good point. The "starting" is the hard part, once you have that it goes pretty quickly, which is what gave me the idea.

    Here's a link to some of my writing: http://news.dice.com/author/davidebrumbaugh/
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  • Profile picture of the author David V
    Originally Posted by BDazzler View Post

    I'm considering creating a WordPress plugin starter kit. My initial thoughts are listed below. Do you think it would be worth my time and effort, or is this too simple?
    This is a tricky one because there are quite a few plugin starter frameworks, and 2 are exceptionally coded.
    They are free.

    I think selling it would be tough, better to give it away free.
    The people that would be interested are typically non-coders who are testing the waters and trying to learn.

    You have some great ideas but it's a little counter-productive to someone learning to code a plugin properly to give them too much.
    It almost becomes a copy-n-paste thing where they learn about your coding style, snippets, shortcodes, etc... instead of actually doing the coding.

    I completely agree with a solid widget or plugin codebase to start from, but it already exists.
    RE: Tom McFarlin has a plugin boilerplate and widget boilerplate.
    Both have been around awhile and have been refactored extensively.

    I will on the other hand say if you came out with a full coding course to back up the frameworks, you could likely sell quite a few copies assuming it's all up to par with WordPress and PHP standards.

    The only thing I would note is about this:
    Originally Posted by BDazzler View Post

    Automatically Include jQuery/jQuery UI
    99% of the time it's not necessary to unhook the default WP jQuery and hook your own.
    WAY to many plugin devs do this and it's a poor practice that can cause problems.
    I'm not saying there aren't exceptions to use your own jQuery, but it's heavily abused.

    I only mention this since it's on your bullet list.

    If you can show people how to do things the right way, many people may find it useful.
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    • Profile picture of the author BDazzler
      David V ... thank you very much. That was the exact kind of feedback I was looking for. I included the jQuery stuff because when I wrote my plugin, The jQuery/UI stuff was a bigger pain that I expected because it had to be enqueued in the right order, with the right dependencies. It wasn't obvious to me until after I got it right. Then it was terribly obvious.

      I had hoped to save some people from my frustrations.

      I agree 100% about the quality standards. Although I am new (less then 3 years) to WordPress, I've been coding and writing about coding for over 25 years ... dang, I'm old ... crap ... when did that happen?? ... Selling or giving out bad open source code is doubly evil ... not only do you hammer the person getting it, you teach them to write code badly as well.

      I think for now, I'll keep my starter kit "in house" and learn more about what's out there before proceeding. I appreciate the links.
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  • Profile picture of the author Member8200
    If you're gonna earn money on building this plugins then why not, the only moment you would say it's worth-it is when you start making money selling this.

    Best of luck.
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