I made an e-commerce website before where I copied the template files inside WooCommerce and edited them to display the content how I wanted. But now I know of shortcode and WP_Query which can also be used to get the products / categories etc.
So what I am wondering is which method is best and are there times where you would use one method over another?
There is actually a time and place for different methods. Nix the shortcode though. Generally speaking you shouldn't "hard code" shortcodes into a custom theme (there are exceptions of course), unless you mean that you want to build in a shortcode that theme-users have access to.
That said, if you want to emulate WooCommerce's current style/layout with your own flair, or you want to extend the current templates, use the current template override method. Note this will lead to your theme getting "stale" at some point. WC does a decent job of not changing the templates too often, but it does happen and your theme should accommodate when that happens.
If you're doing something different with a list of products entirely that's not necessarily supposed to look ingrained in the WooCommerce structure, then you can use a custom WP_Query or Database query to accommodate your needs.
So effectively:
If you want to tweak, extend, or reduce the current WooCommerce structure, use template overrides
If you want a fully customized solution or need WC Products in a different capacity, use a custom query method.
Everything woocommerce do well.
No need to use WP_Query separately
If you wants customize the theme you can use add_action() and add_filter()
Also you can modify css.
Hooks Referance:
https://businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-visual-hook-guide-single-product-page/
Related
Actually I have changed some code in WordPress Store Locator. I want it to remain when plugin will update. So I want to create a child plugin for that. Any ideas on how I could manage it?
This varies plugin to plugin, and it sometimes isn't even possible, other times plugins have documentation to extend them easily (such as WooCommerce and Gravity Forms). Some of them create Action Hooks with do_action() that let you extend the functionality easily. A common example is updating a post after a Gravity Form is submitted with their gform_after_submission hook.
Effectively, it depends on what you want to do, and how the plugin implements the functionality you want to change. If they add text with a Closure or Anonymous Function, it will be harder to modify said text, and you may have to look at something strange like doing a run-time find and replace using Output Buffering, typically on the template_redirect hook.
If you want to remove something a plugin does, you can often unhook it with remove_action. This can be a bit tricky depending on how the plugin is instantiated, sometimes its as simple as:
remove_action( 'some_hook', 'function_to_remove' );
Other times it's more complicated like:
global $plugin_class_var;
remove_action( 'some_hook', array($plugin_class_var, 'function_to_remove') );
Those are the basics of extending (or even 'shrinking'?) a plugin's functionality, and it's not always doable appropriately. Unfortunately the narrow answer to your question is outside of the scope of what we can provide from StackOverflow.
From here, you'll need to figure out exactly what you want to do with the plugin, and dig through the plugin's files to see if there's an appropriate hook or function you can use. If you're still stuck, you'll need to post a new question (don't update this one) with your exact desired result and anything you've tried, and the relevant code that goes along with it. "I want to change a plugin without editing core files" isn't nearly specific enough. "I want to replace an icon with a custom icon in this plugin, here's what I've tried" is specific enough to possibly answer.
Good luck!
I just went through myself and I had so many changes that I couldn't just override the actions.
I created this tool that allows you to create a child plugin like a child theme. You can make updates to the plugin and still update it without losing your changes.
I'm posting this here because it relates and hopefully becomes useful to the next person who runs into this issue.
https://github.com/ThomasDepole/wordpress-child-plugin-tool
As per WordPress standard, it's called plugin's addon.
if the plugin has provided any action to update that functionality then you can use it with your addon (child plugin).
Here I am sending a link for reference.
https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/add_action/
I want to add a new entity named "ideas" having different fields. I want to add this to the admin side, where a logged in user can add/edit new "idea", which can be published/unpublished to the site.
I don't want to edit via php and make things complicated, instead do it from the wp-admin log in front-end. Is there a plugin for this? I need 3-4 such entities to be created, and define fields for each such entity.
New edit:
Custom Post Type is the best option I feel. Can anyone suggest, a free plugin for form to capture the values for the custom post type?
According to this WCK - Custom Fields and Custom Post Types Creator plugin you can achieve this.
WordPress Creation Kit consists of three tools that can help you
create and maintain custom post types, custom taxonomies and most
importantly, custom fields and metaboxes for your posts, pages or
CPT's.
WCK Custom Fields Creator offers an UI for setting up custom meta
boxes with custom fields for your posts, pages or custom post types.
Uses standard custom fields to store data.
WCK Custom Post Type Creator facilitates creating custom post types by
providing an UI for most of the arguments of register_post_type()
function.
WCK Taxonomy Creator allows you to easily create and edit custom
taxonomies for WordPress without any programming knowledge. It
provides an UI for most of the arguments of register_taxonomy()
function.
Hope it helps you.
You can use a combination of two plugins to fit your needs:
The Custom Post Type UI (https://wordpress.org/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/) makes it possible to generate Custom Post Types (like "Posts" or "Pages") and Custom Taxonomies. This is how you can create your entity "ideas" which will show up in the admin menu.
With Advanced Custom Fields (https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/) you can define additional content fields for your "ideas"-posttype and others. It also can handle relations between your added custom-post-types
Using the SWIFT Templates as proposed in Touqueer Shafis answer will be sufficient when you only have smaller bits of information to display on the page or if you just want to display archives of your custom-post-types. But you will quickly reach the borders of these templates when it comes to single-pages.
I recommend altering the PHP of your template files manually: you will have more control where and when to display the contents of the custom-post-types and custom-fields you added on your page.
Well, I'm not really gonna give you the answer you want to hear but I want to give you an advice from my own experience.
Using a plugin will make things usually much more complicated than doing it manually. Consider some things:
1) The plugin may not be supported for ever (or long), so if the author decides that he or she wants to be a gardener instead of a developer you're screwed. Unless you want to wrap your head around the plugin code and proceed developing it on your own. This is especially true for "underground"-plugins which are not so popular and/or maintained by a single person. Although I think you CAN rely on the "big" players like "Advanced custom fields"
2) At some point you may find that the plugin you are using doesn't support some sort of customization that you really need and quite a few plugins are built in a way that makes it hard to extend them or break out from the way they work.
So I recommend you to wrap your head around custom taxonomies and post types and just add them with PHP in your functions.php or a custom plugin. It's very very easy (it's really just arrays with arguments). You could use this visual code generator as a starting point:
http://generatewp.com/post-type/
And for adding custom fields I recommend using Advanced custom fields. You won't need any other plugin for backend management customization and it's built in a way that you can even export your custom fields as php so if they ever drop support you still have a good starting point.
I want to know the most elegant/best practice way to do the following:
Let's say I have some PHP that returns a string (today's weather, for example). I want to be able to include the string within a WordPress Page, but not by using a plug-in to allow PHP within a Page.
So for example:
This is content of the page that is editable via WordPress pages.
Today's weather is THE_WEATHER. This bit is also editable, but as
an editor I can't edit the PHP that just told us what the weather
is, the developer does that.
What is the best practice way to do this (preferably without using plug-ins)?
Offhand, it sounds like you want to define a shortcode that lets you invoke the PHP function you're talking about and insert its result into a page/post. This pretty much means that you're writing either a (very simple) plugin or you're incorporating the shortcode definition into the functions.php file associated with a theme (which can be a simple child theme of the one you're using).
Which to do probably depends on whether or not you're likely to change themes (if it's just one site) or whether or not you need to do the same thing on different sites that can have different themes. If either is the case, then you should write it as a plugin; otherwise you can just make it part of your theme.
Consult the Codex to learn how to define shortcodes.
I'm very new to WP development. I host a website which needs a list of trails (hiking, biking, etc) and I'd like to write a WordPress plugin to do it.
Can someone please tell me if I'm taking the right approach, and if what I'm proposing is possible.
I'd like the site to end up with an auto-generated and filtered index at http://example.com/trail-guide, and the discrete trail info pages at http://example.com/trail-guide/trailname. This data would all be stored in a single database table holding info for each trail, with an admin page for adding, editing, and deleting entries from here.
Is a WP plugin the best way to go about doing this, or should I be looking at something else?
From the way you're describing, your best bet would be to Register A Custom Post Type. This can be done by adding to your existing theme's Functions.php file, or by creating a plugin.
If you don't plan on changing themes, my advice would be to just hardcode everything into your functions.php file. Otherwise, creating a plugin for this particular job would be the safest alternative.
Using this functionality in tandem with Custom Meta Boxes and Custom Taxonomies will allow you to keep everything organized within the Wordpress Framework with your own special data.
This means that these new posts can also be queried at any time through the standard Wordpress Loop or search box.
If you are uncomfortable with writing your own functions to extend your existing framework, you might want to look into some plugins like GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools to manage your own.
Hope this helps.
For a project of mine I need to define an alternative template for single posts.
To be more specific I need each post to be displayed as usual when the website is browsed but I need to create different single pages reachable from different URL to create a sort of a mini-website for each post.
(I'm actually using the WooCommerce plugin and what I need to do is to create a mini-website for each product. This needs to be something "outside" from the main website, with a complete different graphic template and is going to be reachable through a QR-code).
Hope it makes a bit of sense.
Thanks for your advices and/or suggestions.
Angelo
I think the easiest way to do that is by registering a custom post type for the special posts that get this special "single.php" template. Then, you can simply write a new single template titled post-[custom post_type].php. Any post you register of this type will use that template.
OR...
If you don't actually need them to be posts, it's even easier if you publish them as pages. By default, pages let you assign a specific page template in the edit screen. So you could make any number of custom templates. Just make sure you add the special header:
/* Template Name: Custom Page */
...so WP knows it's a page template.