How to create a basic plugin in WordPress?

The first step of creating a plugin is to create a directory and a PHP file in the WordPress plugins directory and add the necessary information to have it recognized by the system. In this I will show you how to create a basic plugin file for WordPress and how to activate this new extension from the WordPress Dashboard

Getting ready

You should have access to a WordPress development environment, either on your local computer or a remote server, where you will be able to load your new plugin files.

How to do it…

Follow these steps to create your first plugin header and activate the plugin in WordPress:

1. Navigate to the WordPress plugins directory (wp-content/plugins) of your development installation.
2. Create a new subdirectory called your-plugin-name within the plugin directory.
3. Navigate to this directory and create a new text file called your-plugin.php
4. Open the new file in a code editor and add the following code

   /*
   Plugin Name: Your Plugin Name
   Plugin URI:
   Description: This is the description, that will be shown in
   the WordPress admin interface. Dashboard->plugins
   Version: 1.0
   Author: Vinay Vengala
   Author URI: https://www.vengalavinay.com/contact-us/
   License: GPLv2
   */

   While the Description text is shown on two separate lines in the code example, it should be entered as a single line in your code file to be completely displayed in the WordPress Plugins list.
5. Save and close the new file.
6. Log in to the Dashboard of your development WordPress installation.
7. Click on Plugins in the left-hand navigation menu to show a list of all installed plugins. You should see your new plugin listed next to the two default ones that come pre-packaged with WordPress:
   
   The list of default plugins may vary depending on how you built your development environment. You will see Akismet and Hello Dolly if you installed WordPress manually but might not see them if you are running a local development tool such as Local.
8. Navigate to Inactive section, there you can see all the Inactive plugins and also your plugin listed there.
9. Enable the plugin by clicking on the Activate link under its name. You will see that the background color of your new plugin changes to indicate that it has been activated, along with a message specifying that the activation was successful.

How it works…

Plugin files can either be located directly in the wp-content/plugins directory or in a subdirectory under this location, with most following this second approach. When you access the installed plugins list in the administration interface, WordPress scans the entire plugins directory, looking for PHP files that contain comments following the format specified. In some cases, there can be more than one PHP file containing plugin header data in any of these directories, and each of them will show up as a separate entry in the Plugins list.

Taking a closer look at the code that we entered in the file, the first line of the plugin file (<?php) is a tag that identifies the beginning of the PHP code that will be analyzed and executed by the PHP interpreter. Optionally, we could include a closing PHP tag(?>) at the end of the file. However, most PHP developers omit the closing tag, since having any spaces after that tag will cause warnings to be displayed by the interpreter.