WordPress Plugin Development Cookbook book is published by Packt Publishingand written by Yannick Lefebvre. Book contains 80 practical step-by-step problems with easy to follow solutions to most common problems developer can have when creating plugin for WordPress.
WordPress Plugin Development Cookbook on Packt Publishing Website.
Book Contents
Book is split into 11 chapters, each one containing recipes. First chapter deals with setup of development environment (under Windows with SVN and using Netbeans for coding). Second chapter introduces basic WordPress framework concepts (hooks, shortcodes…). Third chapter is dealing with plugin settings and administration interface. Next two chapters deal with custom post types and working with page and post templates. Chapter 6 is continue using custom post type to handle user submissions.
Next chapter deals with mySQL tables and working with data from it in the plugin. JavaScript, jQuery and AJAX got one chapter. And Chapter 9 is dedicated to widgets, with Chapter 10 containing recipes on internationalization of the plugin. Last chapter will help you submit your (free) plugin to WordPress.org repository.
What I liked
Each recipe is listing step-by-step instructions what to do and gives you detailed explanation on how it all works, including screenshots when needed. It is really easy to follow and replicate. Chapters 3, 4 and 9 are overall best chapters.
What could be better
First chapter is something this book can do without, and it would be better to have added more WordPress specific recipes than including most of the recipes from first chapter that offer only partial information on things that are not WordPress related. Setting up SVN (or other similar systems) is much bigger topic than it might look from this book.
But, my biggest negative point is that it only mentions object-oriented approach in one recipe and that continues to use functions only. It would have been much better to use each recipe to build on top of one plugin, and to give it proper files/directories structure, classes for different elements. I guess author wanted to have each recipe presented on its own.
Space given to JavaScript, AJAX and jQuery should be bigger with better examples on how to load JavaScript files and to avoid conflicts with other plugins using JavaScript on admin side. Also, book shows how to use outdated ThickBox control, that is being replaced with other solutions since WordPress 3.4, and it would be better to skip that recipe.
Verdict
I don’t have any other complaints about the content, and I am sure that it would be very useful to beginners or intermediates with development for WordPress. Maybe some future revisions of the book will improve some of the chapters and expand them with more recipes or update them to be more current with the latest version of WordPress.
Overall, this is a very good book and another great addition to Packt WordPress library.
Buy the book
You can get both PDF and print edition of this book from Packt directly, or you can buy print edition from the Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
Win a free eBook copy of this book
I would like to say thanks to Packt Publishing for providing me with a copy of this book for this review, and also giving 3 more eBook copies of the book for 3 lucky readers. Starting today, for the next 7 days you have a chance to win this book by sending the tweet about this review. On Friday, November 9 2012 at 11:00 CET I will announce the winners picked randomly from all tweets:
- You only need to follow us on Twitter.
- Tweet this:
Packt WordPress Plugin Development Cookbook eBook giveaway: http://d4p.me/24x – for a chance to win, follow @milangd and retweet
- You can tweet as many times as you want, all tweets will be counted, tweet more to increase your chances to win.
Three Lucky winners will get PDF version WordPress Plugin Development Cookbook from Packt Publishing.
Winners List
Giveaway is now over, and the winners are picked using random number generator website: www.random.org. List of winners:
- Ján Bočínec: @johnnypea
- Marco FABBRI: @MFCons
Empowermentalist: @mpowermentalist(not responded to messages)- Christopher McGrath: @digitalmcgrath
I have contacted winners via DirectMessage, and they need to send me emails I will send to PackPublishing so they can get their eBooks. Congratulations to all winners!
