Brad Williams - Professional WordPress Plugin Development

This example shows how a standard link can be styled to look like a button, as shown in Figure 3‐12. To normal users, they would never know these are regular text links because they look just like a button.

FIGURE 3‐12 : Link styled to look like a button

WordPress has a special table class just for forms called form‐table. This class is used on all WordPress Dashboard forms, including every Settings page. This is a useful class when creating any type of options in your plugin.

Using the form‐tablecan give your options a familiar look to your plugin users. This makes for a better user experience, as shown in Figure 3‐13.

FIGURE 3‐13 : WordPress‐like options

HTML tables are a great way to display rows and columns of data in an easy‐to‐read layout. Tables can easily be styled in WordPress using the widefatclass.

The widefatclass has specific styles set for the theadand tfootHTML tags. This styles the header and footer of your table to match all other tables on the Dashboard. The class can also style all table data, as shown in Figure 3‐14.

FIGURE 3‐14 : Table style

If your plugin contains a list of records, you may have a need for pagination, which is the method to break lists of data into multiple pages and have links to load each individual page. This helps reduce the load times and makes it a much cleaner user experience to navigate through the data. Would you rather view 500 records on a page or 10 pages with 50 records on each page?

WordPress has a few different classes to style your pagination. The following is an example:

First, you need to wrap your pagination links in the tablenavand tablenav‐pagesdiv classes. The displaying‐numclass styles the records you view. The page‐numbersclass styles the page links in the familiar WordPress format. Adding currentor nextto the link class can add some unique styles to those elements, as shown in Figure 3‐15.

FIGURE 3‐15 : Pagination style

Keeping your plugin design consistent with the WordPress user interface can reduce your plugins' learning curve because users will feel comfortable with the design and styles used. This can also make your plugins' design future‐proof. If the WordPress core styles change down the road, your plugins' design will also change to match the new user interface, and you won't need to edit a single line of code!

This chapter covered many different methods for integrating your plugin in WordPress. You certainly won't use every method discussed in every plugin you develop, but it's essential to understand what's available for use in your plugin.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.