8 Amazing Tools to Simplify WordPress Plugin Development

Aug 20
13:45

2019

guptanishant

guptanishant

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WordPress plugin development is not that easy without the use of latest and relevant tools. Here is a list of nine extremely useful tools which you can try to simplify and streamline your plugin development process.

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Plugins are arguably the most interesting and handiest things about WordPress. Allowing you to extend the functionality of WordPress site,8 Amazing Tools to Simplify WordPress Plugin Development Articles they help you achieve things that you would otherwise not be able to with WordPress itself. However, developing a WordPress plugin is not that easy without the use of latest and relevant tools.

Whether you’re a plugin expert or just getting started with Custom WordPress Plugin Development, we've researched and compiled a list of nine extremely useful tools which you can try to simplify and streamline your plugin development process. Let's go through them one by one!

The WordPress Plugin Boilerplate:

Following both the PHP Coding Standards and the PHP Documentation Standards, the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate provides developers with a standardized and object-oriented foundation for building highly-functional WordPress plugins. 

Being organized in the same manner as the plugins in the official WordPress Plugin Directory, this amazing tool leaves no guesswork as to what goes where.

WordPress Plugin Boilerplate Generator:

If you’re looking for a tool that can automatically generate customized plugin boilerplate code, this great tool is particularly for you!

Just type your plugin details, like plugin name, plugin slug, plugin URI, Author URI, etc, in the given form and the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate Generator will automatically generate a zip file based on your provided information.

Plugin Readme Generator:

This is a handy tool, especially for newbie WordPress developers who want some help regarding the generation of their plugins’ readme files.

Using this nifty tool, you can easily create a custom readme.txt file for your WordPress plugin without any syntax mistakes.

To generate a readme.txt file, all you need to do is fill in the given form, click the “Update Code” button, and finally save the code as a snippet or copy it to your project.

WP Test:

WP Test is a fantastically comprehensive set of test data that allows developers to measure the integrity of their WordPress theme and plugins.

Based on WordPress’ Theme Unit Test Codex data, these tests can easily be imported into a WordPress installation.

To make plugin testing easier and more resilient, this interesting tool can be installed either via the WordPress Admin or via WP-CLI.

Debug Bar:

With over 30,000+ active installations, Debug Bar is a must-have plugin for WordPress plugin developers!

Adding a debug menu to the admin bar, it shows developers helpful debugging information about queries, caching, and performance every time a WordPress page loads.

Moreover, when WP_DEBUG and SAVEQUERIES are enabled, Debug Bar also keeps track of PHP Warnings, Notices, and MYSQL queries.

Roots:

Roots is actually a suite of several high-quality, modern development tools designed to help you build better WordPress theme and plugins with absolutely no hassle.

Along with a WordPress Starter Theme, a WordPress Boilerplate, and a WordPress LEMP Stack, Roots also offer a WordPress Plugin Building Framework and WordPress Plugin Boilerplate - both of which are still in early development.

Atom:

If you’re looking for a highly advanced yet user-friendly code editor to develop a WordPress plugin in collaboration with other fellow developers, then Atom is perfect for you.

With state-of-the-art features such as Smart Autocompletion, Cross-platform Editing, Multiple Panes support, and a Built-in Package Manager, it helps you write code much faster than other text editors.

When using with WordPress, make sure you install WordPress-specific packages WordPress API and Autocomplete WordPress Hooks to leverage the true potential of Smart Autocompletion in WordPress plugin development.

PHPUnit:

PHPUnit is a unit testing framework tool for PHP. Since WordPress is also based on PHP, you can take advantage of this powerful tool for the unit testing of your WordPress plugins.

No matter what version of PHP your WordPress plugin is built with, getting started with PHPUnit is as easy as one, two and three with the wealth of documentation provided.