I’m working on a wordpress project right now. I’m not working on the theme for this website, but building a ‘design tool’ plugin that will allow users of the website to view different dress images that are made to order. Its challenging.

I knew that I’d be able to get it to work, I just have to learn to make it work with wordpress. Its challenging to work with jquery, javascript, php, and wordpress without knowing a lot about any of it. Its fun. Its exciting to have a deadline and work away and keep at it. Its fun to consistently and surely hack away at a problem and see results come out of it. Its great.

In the last few weeks I’ve learned js, ajax, php, & enough wordpress to make things happen. Its invigorating. I’m now learning how to make plugins for wordpress. Its great to have a project with a deadline and know that things are on the line. Its not something I’ve had for a very long time.

10 hours to make a plugin

It took me approximately 10 hours to learn and implement a simple form plugin that has a menu in the admin screen. It took me around half of that to figure out how to make a separate php file process the form. I asked around on IRC and searched for it on google for long enough, and then did what I should have done after the first 30 minutes of not having an answer; I looked at how other plugins do it. Lesson learned.

In comparision, the code to create the design tool itself was easier and more straightforward. AJAX is a lot easier than I expected it to be.

Apparently doing a “include_once(‘../../../wp-config.php’)” is frowned upon. I don’t quite know why, but it is. At the moment, though, all I care about is that it works.

I need to learn how other plugin-writers keep their page-code within the frame of the admin page. Lots of things to learn. Its a good thing that all the plugins have their code out in the open.

WordPress Pods

While doing research for this project, I was told to look into WordPress Pods. I’ve not yet gotten a chance to use it, but it looks awesome. If I have free time I might just try to redo the project using pods. Good to have something on the horizon.