WordPress Plugin Creation Tutorial – Simplest way

Today I asked myself how to explain to a junior, how to create a wordpress plugin, the simplest way. Without the inclusion of complex structures with public folder, includes, ….., but something very very simple.

Below I will explain how to create a plugin to manage some date, in this example is a Sport Race:
– Create Sport Race
– Insert members of a Sport Race
– Show table with Sport Race, and manage data (bulk delete)
– Show table with Sport Race, and manage data (bulk delete)
– Upload media using WordPress System (media manager of wordpress)

You can download it on: GITHUB

The structure of the project in the Plugin name directory is:

My project as two section: Sport Race and Members
Each section is composed by two file: _page.php and _table.php
And a file of system: plugin_activation.php

For example now analyze two file: sportrace_page.php and sportrace_table.php

For the sportrace_table.php will explain in the next article how to create a table, now take a look at file, is very simple.
For now i will explain how to use it in the sportrace_page.php

At top of page we put

<?php 
global $wpdb;

// jQuery
wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
// This will enqueue the Media Uploader script
wp_enqueue_media();
?>

For the inclusion of table put:

<?php 
echo '<form method="post">';
require_once 'sportrace_table.php';
$class = new Sportrace_Table();
$class->prepare_items();
$class->display();
echo '</form>';
?>

In the plugin_activation.php you can find the mysql create query and the menu inclusion!

Let’s start to create your wordpress plugin! Simple and Fast!