[wp-hackers] Plugin developer "toolbox"

[Chris Taylor - stillbreathing.co.uk]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 2:55 PM, Michael Van Winkle
<mike at mikevanwinkle.com> wrote:
> Chris, just FYI, you might take a look at PodsCMS. It's a framework that
> does a lot of this already. http://www.podscms.org/

That looks very interesting, but beyond the scope of what I had in
mind. For example, my plugin would just be to "get you started" rather
than offer a complete GUI for managing content types. Basically, it
will shortcut the tedious work of starting a new plugin and getting
the basics in place.

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 2:56 PM, Brian Layman
<wp-hackers at thecodecave.com> wrote:
> I don't know of  any as sophisticated as what you are proposing.  My
> suggestion for #2 is actually in conflict with #3. I'd like to have some
> more boilerplates to chose from, in that it would be great to have a wizard
> that says, this plugin needs an options page, it modifies posts, or is a
> widget that needs options or any of a number of standard plugin actions and
> then have it create the basic code structure for you to build on and modify
> the properties of in the IDE.

Absolutely, that's exactly what I'm thinking. You want to create a new
general-purpose plugin so you follow the wizard:

Step 1) Enter the general details (this will create the readme.txt)
Step 2) Choose what features the plugin will have:
- Options page
- Other admin screens
- Classes (you will be able to specify properties and methods)
- Custom tables (with the option to create classes that map to those
tables with CRUD code)
Step 3) The code is created in /plugins/ and you can edit it in the
IDE, or download it as a Zip

One other thing I am planning is making the plugin extensible, so
people can create other wizards that create different types of
plugins, or even other things in the future (child themes etc). At the
moment I'm staying away from the custom posts thing, as there are a
range of plugins that already allow you to create and manage those.

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 5:21 PM, Mike Little <wordpress at zed1.com> wrote:
> Serious question: Why on earth would anyone want to write plugins inside
> WordPress? Or even in a browser for that matter?

I suppose just because I can :0) This plugin will generate the basic
code that you can then edit either in the IDE, or by downloading the
generated code. The IDE will also handle editing other plugins, I
often find I need to have a more powerful editor in the browser when
trying to debug problems with my own plugins on different sites.

> Now, writing an add-on to one or more of the common (PHP) IDEs ... Now that might be a good idea.

I agree, that would be good (just a WP-function-aware plugin for
Notepad++ would be good for me) but my skills don't lie in that area.
Are you volunteering to do that? ;0)

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 12:11 AM, Ken (WraithKenny)
<ken.adcstudio at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nacin seems to have had a similar idea
> http://andrewnacin.com/2010/03/17/google-summer-of-code-idea/

Do you mean the "One-click child theme creation" idea in that post?
Yep, seems good. That's exactly the sort of this an extension to my
plugin would be able to handle.

Thanks for the feedback everyone,

Chris