• Rules vs Standards
• PHP code sniffer
• Plugins : the first step

Rules vs Standards

When we are writing code, we are making something that will be used by other people. As we go on writing code, it becomes a huge mess if everyone just wrote whatever they want however they want as long as it works.

To stop this from happening and make code readable and manageable we follow some rules while writing code. Rules may be like using tabs instead of spaces for indentation or using camel case for naming functions etc.

There are many rules we can follow, but if in a large group of people, everyone is following those rules it becomes a standard. The standard that is followed within an organization or by a small group of developers or a huge community of open source devs.

When writing PHP code, to enforce the standards we use PHP code sniffer

PHP Code Sniffer

We can set custom standards to be followed and the PHP code sniffer detects in our code where we have violated them. PHPCS can detect standards violations in CSS and JS also but in WordPress we use it only for PHP as there are other tools for those languages too.

We can install multiple standards like for WP VIP, for WP core etc

Plugins : the first step

After learning how to use WordPress, we are going to learn how to extend its functionality using plugins.

There can be incredible things to be done without ever having to touch the core of WordPress. We can extend the functionality of our WordPress using plugins.

How to create a plugin ?

/*
 * Plugin Name:       Test
 * Plugin URI:        https://example.com/plugins/the-basics/
 * Description:       Testing if this works
 * Version:           1.0.0
 * Requires at least: 6.2
 * Requires PHP:      7.2
 * Author:            Pratik Londhe
 */