#233: WP-Tonic Round Table Show We Discuss This Weeks Main WordPress & Internet News Stories

This week, the WP-Tonic Roundtable featured Sallie Goestch, Lee Jackson, John Locke, Kim Shivler, and special guest Larry Swanson along with host Jonathan Denwood to
discuss WordCamp Seattle and WordPress Hooks: Actions and Filters.

Larry, of EllesMedia (https://ellessmedia.com/), is a content strategist who is co-organizer of WordCamp Seattle, so we kicked off our session with an peek at what this year’s WordCamp Seattle features. Four tracks including a WP 101 Setup track are available with a speaker list that includes frequent Roundtable contributor Morten Rand-Hendriksen presenting Gutenberg & the Future of WordPress. WordCamp Seattle will be held November 4-5, 2017, and tickets are on sale (https://2017.seattle.wordcamp.org/).

The discussion of Hooks focused on explaining them and providing resources for learning to use them.

Think of a hook as a place to hang something - the same way you would think of a physical hook - not a piece of software. When looking at WordPress, a hook is a place where you can hang your code into the WordPress code. Actions and Filters are each a type of hook. These are used in the development of both plugins and themes.

Actions allow you to add or remove code, while Filters let you modify or replace specific data.

At it’s core, this is actually all PHP programming, so an “Introduction to PHP: course is recommended for anyone wanting to develop WordPress themes or plugins.

Not sure what actions and filters are being used on a WordPress page? Simply Show Hooks (https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/simply-show-hooks/) is a plugin that will show all hooks on a page making it easy for developers to find where they can hook into.

Resources for Using Hooks and Creating Plugins:

WordPress.org Codex Writing a Plugin (https://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_a_Plugin)

WordPress.org Codex Hooks Reference (https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API)

Simply Show Hooks (https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/simply-show-hooks/)

Envato Tutorial (https://code.tutsplus.com/articles/the-beginners-guide-to-wordpress-actions-and-filters--wp-27373)

Pippin’s Plugins tutorials on Plugin Programming (https://pippinsplugins.com/learn/)