Your First WordPress Plugin: Simple Optimization

WordPress is the largest blogging platform available on the internet today; and with the official release of version three just around the corner, it’s only going to get bigger. As such, over the next few self-contained tuts, we’re going to learn the ins and outs of WordPress plugin development, starting with the creation of our first simple plugin, “Simple Optimization.”

Step 0 Before we Begin

This tutorial is going to assume that you have at least a beginner’s understanding of PHP and the WordPress syntax. Though we’ll be covering everything, some knowledge beforehand will help you grasp the concepts much more easily. I’ll also assumes that you have a WP blog setup and ready to go.

Step 1. What our Plugin Does

The very first step, when writing a WP plugin, is to determine everything you want it to do. Since this is our first plugin, we won’t do anything too drastic. Let’s create something which will speed up our blog; our pages will render faster, and we’ll also do a little SEO to improve our search rank and findability.

“Always create a list of what you want your plugin to actually do before you write any code!”

Remove useless meta tags:

  • “rsd_link” – Really Simple Discovery Link
  • “wlwmanifest_link” – Windows Live Writer link
  • “wp_generator” – WordPress version number

Remove unnecessary filters:

  • “wptexturize” – Curly quotes
  • “wp_filter_kses” – HTML in user profiles

SEO:

  • Insert post tags into <head> as keywords
  • Insert post excerpt into <head> as description
https://code.tutsplus.com/articles/your-first-wordpress-plugin-simple-optimization--net-11869