WordPress is the gateway drug to programming!
It’s true. Almost all WordPress users harbor a secret “I wanna write my own plugin” fantasy
And that’s nothing to be ashamed of!
What’s even better: programming your own, simple WordPress plugins isn’t very difficult. Many small tasks such as creating custom shortcodes, linking related blog posts, or creating a small options page for controlling your site, can be accomplished quickly and easily…
…when you have the right instructions!
And those instructions are now available to readers of Website In A Weekend. Yep, it’s another WiaW Whitepaper: WW#14: Simple, fast WordPress plugins.
This Whitepaper is specifically designed to get you ramped up really fast. For each of 6 small plugins, the entire source code for the plugin is listed out with full syntax highlighting (pretty colors!) and line numbers. Then, each listing is broken down stepwise, and each line is explained in detail. Nothing is omitted!
Furthermore, for your convenience, all plugin source code is freely available at an open repository.
All of this in 20 pages!
Here’s what’s inside…
Long time readers and previous Whitepaper purchasers are familiar with the compact and dense format. No wasted whitespace, no waste of paper (this is perfectly formatted for printing), no fluff. Just solid, actionable information, one plugin at a time:
- World’s Shortest Plugin: It’s a single line! But make no mistake, it’s a single line you need to know about. Understanding what WordPress does with just this single line plugin will pay you back Big Time later on.
This is so important I made a video showing how it works!
- Estimated Reading Time: See that line right under the title (Reading time: …)? I’m going to show you exactly how that works, line by line. When you understand this, adding your own material to blog posts will be trivial.
- Transclusion With Shortcodes: Transclusion means grabbing something from one place and sticking into another. Like how images work in WordPress. In fact, the built-in WordPress “shortcode” function allows you to place arbitrary data anywhere in a blog post.
Suppose you want to put an affiliate advertisement halfway into every blog post about marketing, but not any other blog posts. This is an easy way to do that. You will be surprised at how easy it is.
- Custom Link Your Series: We’re going to use your brand new knowledge of shortcodes and extend it with the power of Custom Fields. It turns out that each post and page in WordPress can have an entire suite of totally custom information associated with it. You can use these custom fields any way you wish.
What we will do here is create a plugin allowing you to link together a series of blog posts, helping readers find more information and potentially reducing your bounce rate. (That is, you want your readers to stick around and read a while. This is one way to encourage them!)
- Create Custom Menu: Once you decide you want the user involved (and that user could be you), you will need to create a menu item steering people to an options page. It’s not difficult, and you will see how it’s done in a few lines of code.
- Your Own Custom Widget: Once you’re through the easier plugins, you will be ready for a bigger challenge, a custom widget! You’ve dragged these widgets around to sidebars, footers, maybe even custom widget areas in your header or content panes. Creating your own isn’t difficult, and this lesson will provide you a template for making more, any kind you like.
All that in 20 pages? Yep.
Like I said, no fluff. Solid, actionable content through and through.
Best of all, once you learn how to program small, simple plugins, you get the skills to write larger, more useful plugins.
Get your copy now for $19.95: 
