[wp-hackers] Developer portal

[Dougal Campbell]

On Dec 11 2009 3:37 PM, Matt Mullenweg wrote:
> If there were to be a developer portal for WordPress, someplace where 
> if you're first getting started with hacking on WP, building plugins, 
> creating themes, you could go and it'd have all the best resources in 
> one place, what resources do you think would be important to have there?
>
> What do you wish you had when you first started developing for WordPress?
>
> (Bonus points if it's something that already exists, just scattered 
> around. :))

Some really detailed information on Best Practices for both plugins and 
themes, as well as for submitting core patches to Trac.

The Best Practices guidelines for plugins would probably cover things like:
  * Separating back-end and front-end code so that you don't load the 
entire plugin on every page request.
  * How to use a class to encapsulate code, how to instantiate a class 
object from a hook, and how to pass class methods to action/filter hooks.
  * Checking user capabilities for security. Pointers to specific 
capabilities.
  * Using the object class functions for data that might benefit from it 
(and some examples of what kinds of data would benefit from it).
  * Using the nonce functions and other admin option page helper functions.
  * All the new escaping functions for URLs, attributes, javascript, and 
other values.
  * Translation functions for fixed strings and how to set up the plugin 
textdomain.
  * Other stuff I don't have time to enumerate right now, because I'm 
about to leave with my wife for her office Christmas party. :)

-- 
Dougal Campbell <dougal at gunters.org>
http://dougal.gunters.org/
http://twitter.com/dougal
http://twitual.com/