Top 7 Mistakes To Avoid During WordPress Plugin Development
Reading Time: 4 minutes WordPress is the first and one of the most popular choices of global giants like Sony Music, BBC America, MTV News, The New Yorker, and so many other names for website development. WordPress is a solid CMS platform that marks the release of more than thousands of blogs almost every day.
However, during its development, encountering mistakes is not surprising. Any developer has to accept the fact that mistakes are a part of the development process because it proves your gut to risk new ideas.
We are making a list of seven common possibilities that land you in a troublesome situation. Let us discuss them to avoid the blunders developers often face while designing WordPress tools and plugins.
Table of Contents
Code Compatibility Missing
Poorly written code or incompatible plugins can cause a range of problems that all developers are familiar with. It is ridiculous and careless to ignore the code compatibility. Hence, we can maximize the usefulness of the plugins and reduce performance-related issues to handle this issue mentioned above.
The compatibility of the PHP and WordPress versions is the foremost thing to be considered even before writing the first line of coding. It must be ensured that the designed code supports the latest updates and recent versions to be consistently helpful.
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Thus, it becomes necessary to clearly understand your potential market and compatibility before stepping into the world of plugin development.
Switching Off The Debug Mode While Development
The Debug mode is defaulted to ‘off’ in live environments to avoid printing errors and PHP notices. In the case of WordPress plugin development, it should not be practiced anymore because it tends to provide the most necessary configuration for debugging that you can make use of.
When the debug mode is turned ‘on, ‘ it alerts the user of code errors and easily enables the task of finding warnings. After developing the WordPress plugin locally with the help of the following lines, do not forget to disable it again.
define( 'WP_DEBUG', true ); define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true )
Most developers forget about the debugging tools of WordPress and fail as they overlook this particular step.
Wrong Choice of Function Names
As a plugin developer, you must remember that it is silly to trust generic names for your code. It will likely create code conflict when other plugins use the same function names. First, distinct and descriptive names must be the first choice of developers to be able to differentiate from other plugin functions. Second, adding prefixes to the function names is the most excellent remedy to impart a unique function name.
Takeaway- If your mind feeds on only using a short and simple name for the functions, it might lead your code to a poor naming convention scenario, which must be avoided. Trust to prefix your functions with PHP classes, and you are ready.
Ignoring WordPress Nonces
WordPress keeps its security very tight. The plugin developers are responsible for reducing vulnerabilities by using the safety measures ensured by WordPress.
Most developers make a common mistake by focusing only on the plugin functionality and not its safety. The issue can be resolved by nonce utilization in your code.
Nonces are generally, security tokens, that avoid the misuse of your URL’s and forms. Each user possesses a distinct nonce, which makes identifying the user’s request for a specific action more straightforward. Nonces are advantageous as they help to prevent SQL injections and CSRF attacks.
Not Reviewing With The Official WordPress Guidelines
It is a significant failure of the developers if they do not comply with the WordPress.org guidelines. If you want your plugin to be submitted to the WordPress repository, follow the coding standards and the guidelines closely.
If your plugin includes any errors, the Review Team will email you to fix it and resubmit the code. If they suspect any malicious intent behind the plugin development, they won’t approve it and ban it from the WordPress repository.
The acceptance of following these standards and guidelines not only helps raise your probability of acceptance in the WordPress community but also enables others to expand your work and use it.
No Strategy For Wiping Off The Risk of SQL Injection
SQL injection allows hackers to get access to the database information, which is too valuable to afford to lose. It is a straightforward attempt for hackers as they can embed commands into an HTTP request and start to extract information from the site database.
The plugin developers must agree with the experts and use the prepare() function of the WordPress core that sanitizes the SQL queries’ parameters.
No Coding
To develop a tiny plugin, many developers search for a quick solution. And very soon, they end up with a plugin of compromised functionality, flawed architecture, and wrecked codes. Practicing organized coding from scratch for WordPress plugin development is always suggested. A wide range of tools is available for plugin developers to help them quickly develop WordPress plugins.
Always try to focus on maintaining clean plugin codes from the very beginning.
Conclusion
WordPress is such a tool that gives an appealing look to your website. You will encounter many common mistakes while going through the process of its plugin development. I have tried my best to incorporate all the mistakes often committed by any WordPress plugin developer.
Please share your feedback and feel free to drop in your experience in the comment section if you were ever into developing a WordPress plugin and came across a mistake not mentioned above.
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Co-Authored With
Yakshit Bose is the Senior Developer at leading Custom WordPress Development Services Company CMARIX Technolabs Pvt. Ltd. He is an experienced, WordPress developer. He likes to share his thoughts on Web development, CMS development, and Technology News.
