Modern WordPress Plugin Design Course. Cut & Paste examples

Course details

Writing Plugins for WordPress is easier than you can imagine. You only need a simple understanding of PHP to create your first plugin. Obviously, the more PHP, CSS and Javascript you know, the more you can do, but Working within WordPress makes it easy.

There is plenty of Development Documentation already available, but most documentation, especially from WordPress is reference material and is only useful when you have a plan and know what you need to be looking for. This is why most WordPress Developers consider themselves self-taught. They have had to learn a great deal by experiment, hints from others and reverse engineering other peoples code. With this course you can cut down on all that hassle and get a leg up to some simple tactics for producing quality and strong plugins for your own. 

Its a big market !

There are tens of millions of WordPress sites live now. The biggest plugins have millions of users and many leading premium plugins have thousands of paying users. However, I make most of my revenue by creating simple plugins for specific needs of customers, and creating custom sites for them running my custom plugins. Some fail to even realise they are using WordPress!

Don't worry about companies like Square space or Wix, mega themes like Divi... These products don't take customers away from you, they make more opportunities. As soon as the customer wants something a little different, all these products fall down, and you can often solve their issue with a simple plugin.

Many of my students create their own range of plugins and then tie up customers with a hosting and support service to include their plugins. They often find themselves with dozens of user of very similar plugins.

Once you have mastered a certain type of plugin, you will find it taking just a few hours to create different versions for different uses. Every time you add a new feature for one customer, you have the chance to sell that upgrade to everyone else!

Cut and paste to success

We provide all the code snippets and fully working examples along the way for you to cut and paste from. You don't need to be a PHP expert to use them.  You can follow along as we create plugins with cut and paste simplicity. We even include copies of the code at every stage, so you can see how we do it. I am giving you the similar core code that has allowed me to deliver over 150 active custom plugins for clients in the past 5 years. (In 2017 I created 63 plugins, more than one a week!) Keeping that many plugins under control could be a big task, and that is why I have refined my systems for quick development, lots of code re-use and ease of support.

All the introductions to each plugin can be previewed before you sign up.

I will walk you through a set of ever more sophisticated plugins to teach you all the main areas that you need to understand for plugin development. You will have a cut and paste system for making easy to use, quick to write and expand WordPress plugins that you can customise and sell - including;

• Short codes - How the three different types work and how you apply stylesheets and JavaScript to your short codes.
• Widgets to use in sidebars, footers and other widget areas.
• How to create admin menus.
• How to create plugin welcome screens when your plugin is activated
• Create admin pages to display and edit data within the Dashboard.
• How to make Admin Dashboard widgets 
• Creating, editing, validating and using custom option data to store setting values.
• Creating and using custom post types
• Adding extra meta fields to post types and how to use them,
• Customise the custom post type admin with your own columns and content
• How to add custom content pages via content templates and whole page templates.
• How hooks and filters allow you to integrate your plugin
• Using style-sheets and JavaScript on user pages and your admin pages.
• How to correctly activate and deactivate your plugin.

On the way we will look at 

• Security of your plugin, 
• Best practice tips for quick development
• Latest modern coding method including Namespace and classes.
• Re-use of code with our library of common functions
• How to use the WordPress Documentation
• Use of methods and Snippets to copy and paste your way to success. 
• Full source code of all the examples is included along the way

All the introductions to each plugin can be previewed before you sign up.

By the end of the course you should understand how to make a large range of plugin types and you can take the ones from this course and enhance them for your own use! - That's what I do and roll out one new plugin to a new customer almost every week.

Take these plugins and make them your own

You have the full source code and explanations of how they work, so you can use them as is, or add your own features to make your plugin unique. You are then free to monetize these plugins however you want.

I created 63 custom plugins last year and most of them used the templates that form the plugins shown on this course. 

All creating on-going revenue

Almost all customers that ask for plugins will opt for paying an ongoing monthly payment for hosting, support and their plugin rather than a one-off fee.

Includes some CSS and Javascript

I have simple JQuery examples that you can use too, which enhance your plugin to the next level and make it look better than most out there.

Delve deeper when you need to

I purposefully try and gloss over exactly how things work in the plugin development. Simply, you don't need to know all the detail when you are re-using code snippets. However, there may be times when you want to know more, or enhance the snippet to solve another problem. References to external sources like the WordPress codex are given when relevant.

Once you have seen how easy it is to make these plugins, I will show you the design process I use, every time I create a new plugin for a customer. Most of my smaller projects can share over 50-70% of their code with other plugins already developed.

If you are not sure - ask

It is often the case that for one person asking a question there are three more who had similar questions but did not ask. We are trying to keep the core information simple to follow, but if you want more detail about a particular function or system, then please ask and maybe we will release a new video to explain it for everyone.

Here are some examples of the 63 plugins I have written in the last year, all of which can be created using the tools I give in the course and a bit of research.

Examples of plugins I created in the past 12 months

Google Analytics Code and Facebook Pixel We almost write all of this in the course. People want to use the Facebook pixel so they can target web visitors with Facebook ads.

YouTube Videos Plugin Give customers the ability to add YouTube videos with a plugin. Take control of the video size and starting time.

Meet the staff Plugin Use a custom post type to create employee contact pages

Group Directory Plugin Use custom post types to list members of a local business group

FAQ Plugin Add an FAQ page using an accordion layout - as shown in the course

Where are here Plugin Add a google map of the business in a short code or in a widget.

Sign Up Add an email signup box content from a well know email marketing company into a short code for easy adding to site

Facebook OG and Twitter vCard info Add the code for Facebook and twitter sharing with correct image and info. As shown in this course.

Add SEO info Add meta data missed out by theme

Rich Snippets Many plugins adding specific rich snippet information for customer, prices, products, news etc

Book Your Appointment Many plugins with different rules for booking appointments or meetings

Join our webinar Many plugins to advertise or provide content for upcoming webinar or event.

Sponsor me, but me a drink or Support Me Short code to provide custom PayPal sponsor payment links.

Any Bits of code Whenever a customer needs to cut and paste a bit of code to allow their site to work with PayPal, eBay or any other third party site, they love the ease and convenience of you putting that in a short code for them.