Plugging Into WordPress

Although I’m now using WordPress for the “Thoughts From Eric” portion of the site, that doesn’t mean I’m using a default install.  Oh no.  I had to go hacking on the source of the system, even though I knowknew next to nothing about PHP (not that it seems terribly difficult to learn) and bend it to my desires.  No, not those kinds of desires.  The HTML it produced wasn’t suited to my needs, so I changed it.  I didn’t like the limitations of some functions, so I extended them.  I needed a more robust monthly calendar, so I added what I needed.  I thought the administrative interface could provide better visual feedback, so I hacked on it until I could do things like highlight activated plugins in varying shades of green.

Since WordPress now supports plugins, I figured I’d share some of what I’ve created in case anyone out there is interested.  Thus, I now have a WordPress Plugins and Hacks page in the Tools area of meyerweb.  The three plugins currently given there are the three I wrote first, and which work the way I wanted.  Each plugin has a page that documents the parameters it can accept, which is a good way to decide if a given plugin will be of any use to you or not.  I have a few more plugins that are almost, but not quite, ready for public release; hopefully I’ll have them sorted out within the next couple of weeks.

So feel free to check out my WP plugins, and to use ’em if you like ’em.

• Plugging Into WordPress was published on Monday, May 10th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Tools and WordPress categories.
• There have been three replies.