Intro to building a basic WordPress plugin

WordPress powers 70% of the internet, but as a websites ambitions grow, the existing functionality within WordPress might not be enough to do the things we want to do. We would need to extend the functionality that WordPress provides us, and we would do this by creating a plugin in WordPress.

The WordPress plugin store

WordPress has a plugin store where you can download plugins made by others. You might find a plugin that works for your specific need and wont need to bother creating a plugin.

For example, WPGraphQL is seen as a solid robust plugin to create a GraphQL endpoint and there likely isn’t any need for you to create your own plugin like it.

However not every business is the same and there may be an instance where you need specific functionality for your use case.

About our plugin

The plugin we create will do the following:

• Return posts from WordPress
• Return Tags and Categories from WordPress
• Give us the ability to search for Posts and filter by name, tags and categories

This seems pretty simple, and we’re only reading existing information using our plugin, but its important that we start small to understand the building blocks of creating a plugin

What you’ll need

• A local instance of WordPress running on your machine.
• Knowledge of HTML, CSS, and PHP