Preface

As it approaches the twentieth anniversary of its initial release, WordPress continues to be one of the most widely used, powerful, and open content management systems (CMSs). Whether you're a site owner trying to find the right extension, a developer who wants to contribute to the community, or a website developer working to fulfill a client's needs, learning how to extend WordPress' capabilities will help you to unleash its full potential.

This book will help you become familiar with API functions to create secure plugins with easy-to-use administration interfaces. Complete with new recipes and up-to-date code samples, including new chapters on the creation of custom blocks for the Block Editor and interacting with external data sources, this third-edition WordPress plugin development book teaches you how to create plugins of varying complexity ranging from using just a few lines of code to complex extensions that provide intricate new capabilities.

Starting with WordPress' basic mechanism for creating plugins, the book covers recipes to show you how to design administration panels, enhance the post editor with custom fields, store custom data, and even create custom blocks. You'll safely incorporate dynamic elements into web pages using scripting languages, learn how to integrate data from external sources, and build new widgets that can be added to WordPress sidebars and widget areas. By the end of this book, you'll be able to create WordPress plugins to perform almost any task you can imagine.