WordPress Pods Projects Going For A Song
March 9th, 2010 by Keith from shrewdies | Filed under Function.I can reveal that this will be an homage to the ubiquitous Hello Dolly plugin – with some extras, and some Pods magic.
Just to remind you. I love Pods as it is intended to be used – a Content Management System that extends WordPress Pages and Posts to allow developers to provide new content styles. This is extremely important to me as I develop new tools for webmasters, and new web applications to extend my health sites.
But for the moment, I’m hooked (pun intended) on using Pods to hook rapidly developed packages into WordPress as plugins. This series of articles explains the Pods features used to create WordPress plugin files complete with readme.txt. WordPress explains what a plugin is by way of the Hello Dolly example. In a similar way, I needed a very simple plugin application to test and demonstrate my WordPress Pods Plugin Builder.
Enter Soft Charisma, the music company run by Scott Kingsley Clark, one of Pods lead developers. Scott has written the perfect song to complement Hello Dolly – Think Of Happiness Today.
Happiness Today Plugin - click for large size
My plugin, Happiness Today, displays random lyrics from the song on the admin pages. So far, so Hello Dolly, but there are extras:
- Up to 3 link buttons
- Customizable lyrics, position & links
- Easily editable content & options through the Pods interface
It is currently at ‘proof of concept’ stage. A complete, usable plugin, but incomplete readme.txt file, no deactivation routine (though easily tidied up manually via Pods administration), and untidy code structure. Also, it borrows its styling to match the selected admin scheme in a way that is best described as Borrow Code.
Borrow Code is a semi-original term, coined by me, to explain the style of programming I borrow and use. The style of Borrow Code reflects how I use snippets of code without understanding the original concept, shape it with a big hammer until it just about works, then refine it properly for public use, or discard it in favor of suggestions from better coders.
I will add it to the WordPress extensions database once it is fit for public consumption, when we can also discuss potential uses and enhancement suggestions.
WordPress Happiness Today Plugin
Potential uses:
- Promotion for musicians, poets, authors, etc to randomly present their own lyrics and links
- Promotion for website developers to randomly present support tips and links
- Random product benefits and links
- Fund raising quotes & links
- Your suggestions
Enhancement suggestions:
- Widget support to display random messages, adverts, etc to visitors
- Single click data import, export, delete routines
- Remote data updates
- Your suggestions
WordPress Pods Projects: Next Steps
That’s enough background for now. In the next article I’ll explain some specific Pods techniques used in the WordPress Pods Plugin Builder, and its example project, Happiness Today.
Tags: Happiness Today, WordPress Pods CMS, WordPress Pods Plugin Builder