Building and Maintaining Plugins

When it comes to plugins, the possibilities are endless, which means we have tons of choices to make throughout the life-cycles of our plugins. Some of the different aspects we'll dive into include:

• Taking a plugin from the drawing board to launch

• Creating commercial plugins

• Releasing free plugins on WordPress.org and Github

• Creating plugins for individual client projects.

• Plugin support, expectations, documentation, etc.

• Adopting plugins, maintenance, new features, etc.

Over the years, I've had a chance to do many of the above poorly, and have also learned from those experiences and done them the right way too. Whether experienced or just getting into the game, learn something new and think about things a bit differently in your adventures.

OPENING PRESENTATION:

Using WordPress at a startup is often an easy decision. But when you have a software product built on other platforms, it's often difficult to create a seamless experience for visitors and customers. Using a custom plugin is a great solution to bridge the gap and give you access to your internal data on the WordPress platform.

GET ONE-ON-ONE ASSISTANCE AT OUR HELP DESK:

Our experts will be available throughout the evening to help you with your WordPress issues and answer your questions.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS:

Tom Harrigan is the Principal Software Developer at Alley Interactive where he focuses on large media sites. Over the years he's worked on properties such as NY Post, POLITICO Europe, Vogue, Digiday and others. Previous journeys include lead WP dev at HowAboutWe (acquired by Match.com/OkCupid), and Ninja at WooThemes.

Sarah Whinnem is a designer and engineer at Betterment. She's been the resident WordPress expert there for the past four years, has redesigned and written the theme and plugin architecture from scratch multiple times, and has wrangled the template hierarchy to within an inch of its life.