Developing Your WordPress Plugin

Posted in Plugins

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series WordPress Plugin Creation

Now comes the fun part you need to get your plugin created.

Unless you are a techie person yourself you will no doubt need to outsource this task.     You can find great people in forums that you might frequent, Rentacoder and at Freelancer.

If you are using an outsourcing site search the site for people with experience creating WordPress plugins and view all their feedback before proceeding.    If they have a lot of comments about bugs, issues and delays you need to move on.

While you are searching the site also take note of the jobs that people are posting so you can get ideas when posting your own job. Before you post your own job you should consider writing out or drawing (or both) your ideas of how the plugin interface should look and what each element of the plugin should do.   Include all the details you want in these specifications no matter how small or how trivial they may sound.

You will also want to ensure that you include in the specifications that the plugin:

  • has in built security features (to prevent hacking via the plugin),
  • notes the type of licensing (GPL, GPL and your own),
  • includes a “read me” file setting out clear instructions on how to drive it :)
  • is to be uploaded to a test site for testing,
  • bug fixes  will be carried out within 48 hours of notification and
  • that the coder should provide 3 months of support (at least) for any bug fixes.

You should also add what version/s of WordPress the plugin should work with.    You should also consider whether the plugin should allow for international language support, widget support, be able to be automatically updated, require activation, have advertising or links to your own site, a forum, a paid support desk or other third party sites.

If you want to upload the plugin in the WordPress repository you should advise the coder to provide all information that is required to do this (or ask him to do it as part of the job).

Make sure you include all these details in your specifications. When posting your job include the specifications document you  have created and add to your job  post that bidders must read the specifications before bidding.

Coders are a funny breed and you will find that you will get a lot of responses to your job ad but you need to be extremely careful about selecting the winning bidder.   Again, check their feedback score and search through their comments for any issues that other users may have had with them.

You will find that coders are also optomistic and will often quote a deadline and be unable to achieve it.     You should allow in your own mind at least three times the period of  time of what they are quoting.

The other thing about coders is that they often go to ground making it difficult to get a response or contact from them.      So you need to set up some ground rules that you have a number of different ways of contacting them and that they should send you a report on what work they have been doing along the way for example, daily or weekly. Finally, you should tell the coder what the name of  the plugin is so that can be incorporated from the beginning.   When thinking of a name for your plugin try and think of something that people intuitively may be searching for, that is search engine friendly or adequately describes your plugin’s functions.

In the final part of this series we’ll talk about testing your new plugin and packing it up ready for the big bad world :)

Series NavigationWordPress Plugin Development TipsTesting & Releasing Your WordPress Plugin

Have fun with WP :)