Creating Themes and Plugins
In this article, I will tell you why I started plugin and theme development, and show you some examples of my work.
First of all, a plugin API is a great achievement. Back in the day, we used to modify existing software by overwriting source code, which made upgrades hard or impossible.
Some popular web software that has come a long way since the early millennial internet boom defined plugin interfaces, so that software developers could extend and modify existing software while still, at least in theory, being able to upgrade the core software nevertheless. Both WordPress and Software opened their code to be extended by themes and plugins many years ago, so there are a lot of ready-made plugins to chose from. Chances are that you do not have to write your own plugin from scratch. But you can.
Working on a software as a service for web performance optimization, I developed plugins for WordPress and Shopware to make shop owners connect their web software to our API to make sure the optimization cache will be updated every time they add or update content to their shops or websites.
Things I learned: How to get your Plugins Verified
Apart from the challenge to develop a working plugin, there is still a review process before any plugin will get released in the official stores.
- Write Clean Code
- Respect Coding Standards
- Start Small
One thing I learned: don’t try to build the perfect, fully-featured software before submitting it to the store.
Start small, build a working proof of concept, and try to submit. This way, you will get feedback early on and avoid mistakes in an early stage of development. You can add more features later, often without the same scrutiny by human reviewers.
Plugins for WordPress and Shopware
Some PHP exercise: the plugin “wao.io Cache Control” is quite similar for both Shopware and WordPress, but development and verification differed a lot.
While the Shopware community encouraged me to provide a plugin for the new Shopware 6, which is similar, but not compatible to Shopware 5, WordPress is focussed more on backward compatibility, and in the end, I found myself testing the plugin and rewriting the code to make sure it works with WordPress 4 and PHP 5, just in case.
Plugins for Code Editors
While I like VisualStudio Code (or rather Codium) as a quick and simple editor that fulfills most of my requirements as a web developer, there are reasons to use PHPStorm, like using the official Symfony and Shopware plugins for e-commerce development.
There are already a lot of themes to customize the appearance of VisualStudio Code, while JetBrains’s IDE editors face a more limited choice of customization in 2021.
Themes for IntelliJ Platform IDEs
JetBrains have made theming possible since 2019 for all IntelliJ IDE’s (like PHPStorm), but there were not many colorful themes yet. Sepia and Espresso Light Theme are nice, and Pastel-licious looks very promising, but it failed to install in the current version. I also like Pink as heck but I need a light theme for coding on a sunny day.
Why not try to code my first IntelliJ theme then?
A Cute Pink Light Theme
Here it is: Cute Pink Light Theme — Plugins | JetBrains
Source Code: github.com/openmindculture/intellij-cute-pink-light-theme
My own cute pink light theme for IntelliJ IDE has been inspired by WebFreak’s VS Code / Codium theme, so it is mostly a copy, and credits for design got to go to WebFreak.
You can find my theme on GitHub and in JetBrains’ official plugin marketplace already.
Originally published at https://dev.to on May 3, 2021.
