The basics of a WordPress plugin

Now honestly, the details of writing WordPress plugins are far beyond the scope of this title; my goal is to show you the structure of a simple WordPress plugin and the basics of how to construct one. Understanding this, you can begin to write your own basic plugins and feel more confident looking through other people's plugins when assessing what kind of features they provide to your WordPress site and if you need to tweak anything for your jQuery enhancements. Even as simply and basically as we're going to work, you'll see how truly powerful WordPress plugins can be.

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Want to become a WordPress plugin rockstar?

You can start off with, yet again, WordPress 2.7 Complete by April Hodge Silver and Hasin Hayder. There's a chapter on plugins that walks you through creating very useful simple plugins, as well as a more complex plugin that writes to the WordPress database. Beyond that, you'll want to check out WordPress Plugin Development: Beginner's Guide by...