1An Introduction to Plugins
WordPress is the most popular open source content management system available today. One of the primary reasons WordPress is so popular is the ease with which you can customize and extend WordPress through plugins. WordPress has an amazing framework in place that gives plugin developers the tools needed to extend WordPress in any way imaginable.
Understanding how plugins work, and the tools available in WordPress, is critical knowledge when developing professional WordPress plugins.
WHAT IS A PLUGIN?
A plugin in WordPress is a PHP‐based script that extends or alters the core functionality of WordPress. Quite simply, plugins are files installed in WordPress to add a feature, or set of features, to WordPress. Plugins can range in complexity from a simple social networking plugin to an extremely elaborate eCommerce package. There is no limit to what a plugin can do in WordPress; because of this, there is no shortage of plugins available for download.
How Plugins Interact with WordPress
WordPress features many different APIs for use in your plugin. Each API, or application programming interface, helps interact with WordPress in a different way. The following are the main available APIs in WordPress and their ...
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