Creating a wordpress plugin is a lot easier than it might first seem. As long as you know how to write PHP code (or any similar language) you should be able to get a plugin together pretty quickly. The aim of this tutorial is to show you how to create a basic template for a plugin that will show up in the WordPress plugin menu.

Start by navigating to the plugins directory for your WordPress install. This directory is located at “wp-content/plugins/”. In this directory create a new folder named after the plugin that you want to create. E.g. “plugin-test”. Inside this directory create a php file with the same name, so “plugin-test.php”. Open up this php file and add the following code.

Save this file and that is it. You now have a plugin template created. You don’t need to do any additional work to register this plugin with your WordPress install. If you open your web browser and log into your WordPress install. Go to the plugins tab and you will see that the test plugin that you just created now shows up on this list. You can activate the plugin, but it will not do anything as you have not added any code to the plugin.

Now that you have an active plugin registered within your WordPress install, you can start adding any custom features that you want.