WordPress Plugin Development Course IS LIVE! - Post feedback and questions here

If you've been having trouble with FILL IN THE BLANK questions, it's my fault!!! I incorrectly entered in the options into our quiz engine. They should all be fixed now, but ping me if you think you found any I missed!

Hi Zac,

I am not getting the CRUD quiz (1) to validate. Here are my two answers which I think are correct:

To write to and update our plugin information in the database we use the update_option() function

In order to get information from the options table, we use the get_option() function

May you have a look, please?

Hi Zac, i'm having problem with the CRUD with the options table challenge, in the 3rd question "Since ___ are not a recognized MySQL datatype, WordPress ____ them when storing them when writing to the database." my answers are "arrays" and "serialize" wich i think is correct. Could it be a bug? or am i mistaken? Thanks!

YES AWESOME WICKED.....:D :D :D!!!! I am very excited.

Hi, I've a problem with the Code Challenge 2 : "Using the JSON feed in the comments and the existing loop, echo out each of the course names inside list items." I tried :

echo $my_plugin_profile -> {"courses"}[$i] -> {"name"}; 

I think it's correct, but it doesn't work ? Cheers

Generally I thought it was really good, the JSON part tired me out a bit though :-)

ups! thank you so much!

Hi, i'm very ineterested in following this course, i wanted to know which level i need in php, i'm really basic, but i am following how to build a wp theme, and it's ok for me (i understand loops etc..). So i wanted to know if that's enough, or have i to follow before the course about php ? (i have follow a long course about php but not here, and as i don't practice....) I'm really focus and specialized on wp, i actually build templates from scratch with a framework (ultimatum ) and want now to really learn to create from scratch, and why not plugins :-)

Ok, so i will go for the PHP course!

I thought I found a bug but it was just me being wrong... :-)

I have another issue, at the JSON Code Challenge Task 2. My solution doesn't validate although I think it's correct:

{
    "users": {
        "First Name": "Mike",
        "Last Name": "the Frog"
        }
}

Can anyone see what's wrong with my code? I'm working on the 3rd Objective of the section "Creating a Plugin Setting Page".

Here are the instructions:

Create the function called in the add_options_page() function. Inside of it echo out "Welcome to my plugin settings page."

Here's my code:

<?php

function my_plugin_menu() {

// Page Title: My Plugin Settings Page
// Menu Title: My Plugin
// Slug: Same as menu name, but with hyphens instead of spaces
// Make sure user has ability to manage plugin options
// my_plugin_options_page() is the function for what displays on the options page

add_options_page(
'My Plugin Settings Page',
'My Plugin',
'manage_options',
'my-plugin',
'my_plugin_options_page'
  );
}
add_action('admin_menu','my_plugin_menu');

function add_options_page() {

echo 'Welcome to my plugin settings page.';

}

?>

Hi Zac, I have a problem with the second task in "Adding ajax to plugins on the frontend" I tried this: wp_enqueue_style('my_plugin_frontend_css', plugins_url( 'front-end.css' ) ); But I get the following error: "Bummer Make sour You have used the proper CSS file path and name!.". Cheers

Nevermind. I was calling the wrong function.

I'm on the adding settings to the widget video. I went to download the zip and it's empty

Dave - I guess you're supposed to know that the css file is located in the "my-plugin/css" folder - no indication of this at all in the challenge.

Zac,

The following Code Challenge has an issue in task two:

http://teamtreehouse.com/library/adding-ajax-to-plugins-on-the-frontend

"Inside of the my_plugin_frontend_scripts function, enque a stylesheet named front-end.css with a handle of my_plugin_frontend_css"

It tells us to use wp_enqueue_style() with plugins_url(). I have used them but it keeps complaining about the exact path to the css file. Is there some subpath that it is expecting that is not mentioned in the step. I have tried the following, but it doesn't work:

wp_enqueue_style('my_plugin_frontend_css', plugins_url('front-end.css'));

I even tried the following, thinking that the quiz project was called my-plugin:

wp_enqueue_style('my_plugin_frontend_css', plugins_url('my-plugin/front-end.css'));

The files referenced in this course are apparently not in the zip file. No CSS, Neither are there any of the additional PHP files referenced in the course.

To use your phrase: "BUMMER!" - as now I have to stop and ....wait.

Please advise

Preston

Update: After jumping ahead in the course and downloading the files (zip) I WAS able to find the CSS file.

Hi, A small review, i found this project was way harder than the previous ones especially from the 4th chapter,

Some challenges questions are not very clear and/or miss some elements, i don't remember wich ones exactly :/ for example "wrap the require between output buffering functions" without telling that the second one have to be assigned as a variable value to pass the challenge.

Maybe it sound logical but i have to admit that I didn't really understand what i've done after the 3rd chapter. :s

i'll now take the build a theme project wich maybe i should have take first and then go for some advanced php tracks.

After that i think i'll have to re run this track to understand the last part.

Maybe someone have some tracks or projects to recommend before running it again like some missing parts of the wordpress track.

Thanks

I can't seem to get past the 3rd challenge, here's my code:

<?php

function my_plugin_menu() {
        add_options_page (
      'My Plugin Settings Page',
      'My Plugin',
      'manage_options',
      'my-plugin',
      'my_plugin_options_page'
      );

    // Page Title: My Plugin Settings Page
    // Menu Title: My Plugin
    // Slug: Same as menu name, but with hyphens instead of spaces
    // Make sure user has ability to manage plugin options
    // my_plugin_options_page() is the function for what displays on the options page



}
add_action ('admin_menu', 'my_plugin_menu');

my_plugin_options_page() {
    echo "Welcome to my plugin settings page.";
}

?>

I'm echoing out the welcome message, can't figure out whats wrong.

This is the correct way: add_action ('admin_menu', 'my_plugin_menu'); function my_plugin_options_page() { echo 'Welcome to my plugin settings page.';

Thanks Lisa, I pass the 3rd challenge with:

function my_plugin_options_page() {
  echo "Welcome to my plugin settings page.";
}

Because we have to call the function, not call add_options_page.

Hi all, I'm having some trouble with the widget. In the widget areas, when I drop the widget into a sidebar, the following message is displayed between the title field and the num_badges field:

Total Badges Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/web-experiments/wp-content/plugins/wptreehouse-badges/inc/widget-fields.php on line 8

0

(that last 0 should be the number of total badges).

This is the line of code the message refers to:

<?php echo count ( $wptreehouse_profile->{'badges'} ); ?>

How can I solve this error? I know it appears beacuse I have the debug mode set on true, but the widget is working fine anyway, so I could simply turn the debug mode off, but I got to the same error in the front now that I'm working on the shortcode (only coming from frontend.php, line 2, where the same code is repeated), along with several other errors (i'll post them in a separate comment), so I'd like to solve this problem and make my shortcode work :D

Thanks a lot for your help!

I found this course pretty challenging in that it breezed through and assumed knowledge of a number of advanced WP and PHP topics (e.g. hooks, filters, widgets, shortcodes, WP JSON, AJAX, jQuery, SVN, and more) while providing little background on each. There was a lot of magic and "just copy this code" in the course where more explanation or at least links to sub tutorials would have helped. Really, the How to Build a WordPress Plugin course could/should be an entire track consisting of multiple courses. That said, it was a great "into the fire" course and aided and encouraged me to write my first plugin.

I use both Treehouse and Code School and wanted a way to eventually display badges for each on my personal site. (On that note, I know Treehouse and Code School may be seen as competitors to some degree, but I find there isn't a lot of crossover between the two. I enjoy Treehouse for friendly, approachable introduction to topics, and use Code School for deeper dives into specific technologies.) Searching the WP Plugin Directory, I was surprised that Code School didn't have a WordPress plugin -- so I used what I learned in this course to build one, add it to GitHub, and launch it in the WP Plugin Directory. It's available at:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/code-school-badges/ and

https://github.com/mcnitt/code-school-badges-wordpress-plugin

If interested in trying it out, some test Code School usernames you can try are: perry, dave, nick, mcnitt, luke,gus.

On the surface, the plugins are similar and do the same thing, display badges, but I found in working on it that there were a lot of differences. The current Code School API is not nearly as advanced or consistent as the current Treehouse API, and the way they structure their badges is different, and I chose to implement a slightly different feature set, so there was a lot of learning in doing so, so it is by no means a direct port of the Treehouse course code. (Probably the biggest lesson I learned was not to hardcode the plugin folder name in the enqueue scripts and styles section as the plugin folder name the WP Plugin Directory creates for your plugin is not necessarily the same as the folder name you use to develop and upload the plugin. This led my scripts and style links to break in the initial version. Check out the enqueue scripts pattern I used on Github that proved to be less brittle.)

But above all -- thank you, Zac for teaching this course, really great. And please don't hit me for creating the Code School plugin. ;)

Hey Zac! I enjoy your courses on Wordpress a lot, so thanks for the great content. In future courses I hope to see a bit more detailed explaining of what you're doing and why. For example, in the plugin development course, when we add a widget, you quickly go over the four functions of the Wptreehouse_Badges_Widget class, but it still is unclear what each of them does, so I just follow what you're doing but don't really understand the logic.

Hey Preston Davis,

Were you trying to download all the completed files at the beginning of the project? The project downloads change throughout the project and only correspond to what is covered in each video or stage.

Does that clarify things?