Writing Your First WordPress Plugin

** This month's meetup will be on the FOURTH Tuesday of the month... next month we will go back to the Third Tuesday.

The reviews are in, and though most people enjoyed last month's meetup, it seems that much of it was a little advanced for new users. So, we are going to have a 30 minute pre-event session to allow beginners to get their feet wet.


6:30-7pm: Beginning WordPress
Platform: WordPress.com and WordPress.org
In this half hour we will go over some WordPress basics, and prepare you for the main event at 7pm. Questions will be limited due to the 30 min time constrant, however, we will have a beginner Q&A at 9pm (see below).

7pm - 8pm: Writing Your First WordPress Plugin
Platform: WordPress.org users only (WordPress.com does not allow you install your own plugins)
If you've managed your own installation of WordPress, then it's likely that you've installed many plugins to extend and change the way that the core WordPress software works. The world of WP plugins, both free and premium, is vast - currently, there are 8,152 plugins in the repository at http://wordpress.org/.... But even with this huge variety of available plugins, sometimes you can't find one that does exactly what you want. How does a relative beginner, someone with some knowledge of HTML and maybe a passing familiarity with scripting languages like PHP, get started in the wonderful world of plugin development?

In this talk, Boone Gorges will talk about some of the ways that a non-developer can get her feet wet extending WordPress. We'll start with an overview of WordPress's "extensibility" - that is, what it is (in laymen's terms!) about the architecture of the WordPress core code that makes plugin development possible. Then we'll walk a few hands-on examples of plugin development, starting with the extremely easy-to-create custom shortcodes, then touching on the Widget API and the system of actions, filters, and hooks strewn throughout WordPress.

If all goes well, even the greenest n00b will walk away with a sense that the development of a custom WordPress plugin is within reach.

8-9pm: Breakout sessions
After the main event has ended, we can break out into various groups based on interest. This is totally unplanned, and worked well last month. If you want to continue exploring plugin development, then Boone can work with a breakout group. Also, we will have a Q&A with beginners like we did last month.


About the speaker:
Boone Gorges is as an instructional technologist at Queens College, where for several years he has been the administrator and primary pedagogical support for QC’s blogging program, which hosts over a thousand active users on Movable Type. He’s also the lead developer for the CUNY Academic Commons, a social networking platform meant to facility scholarly collaboration between faculty and staff across CUNY’s 23 campuses. The CAC is built on WPMu, BuddyPress, bbPress, and MediaWiki. Boone is also a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center.