February 2010
Beginner to intermediate
322 pages
8h 40m
English
Content preview from Smashing WordPress: Beyond The BlogBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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Chapter 8. PLUGINS AND FUNCTIONS.PHP
WordPress themes and plugins usually work pretty much by themselves, coming together only when it comes to implementing features. This is usually managed by having the correct widget areas available in the theme's template files, so that the user can drop the plugin's widget where it should be, or by actually putting plugin PHP code snippets into the theme. And sometimes the plugins will output or activate the functionality by use of the WordPress hooks, which in essence means that the theme only has to comply with WordPress to trigger the plugins. It is all pretty straightforward.
However, there is one case where themes and plugins collide, and that's when functions.php comes into play. The theme file can do more or less anything a plugin can, which means that it can be an optional solution for a publisher that normally would require a plugin. It also means that functions.php can clash with plugins, if used without caution.
This chapter discusses when to use what solution, and why.
When to Use a Plugin
In short, there is a good rule for when to use a plugin: everything that extends WordPress functionality should be a plugin.
This means that if you add something to WordPress that you wouldn't be able to do otherwise, you should do the actual addition with a plugin. What that addition of functionality actually is would of course depend on what needs you have, but anything from added data management to integration with third-party apps would qualify. ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.