The Complete Guide To The WordPress Settings API

The Complete Guide To The WordPress Settings API is a series of articles by Tom McFarlin for Envato’s Tuts+ network. With a total of eight posts, it covers all the stuff you’ll need to start creating options pages. Tom has also made a project on Github, which is actually faster to read for more experienced developers.

In Open Source, Learn to Decide

In Open Source, Learn to Decide is a post by Andrew Nacin, a WordPress Core developer. Andrew writes about decisions versus options and the WordPress philosophy. Comments and pingbacks are worth reading/visiting too.

WordPress is known for its simplicity and usability, but I can still think of a half-dozen options I wouldn’t hesitate to remove under the right circumstances. Many WordPress plugins subject their users to too many options. Don’t add settings screens simply because you know how.

Don’t Steal my Theme Options

Don’t Steal my Theme Options is a great article by Andy Adams, a developer at The Theme Foundry. Andy writes about the decisions they have to take when dealing with flexibility versus simplicity. Here’s an important quote:

Instead of making a theme either fully-customizable or configuration-free, I’ve realized that the ultimate goal is to add “just the right options” to make the user experience more pleasant.

The comments at the end of the article are worth reading too. What are your thoughts on “the perfect number” of theme options? Do you think premium WordPress themes should come with more “customization” options, than free themes? Thanks for your comments and don’t forget to share this post!

Creating Reusable Controls with the Settings API

Here’s a tip! add_settings_field() has an $args parameter which is an array, passed on to the callback functions that you assign. So it’s pretty easy to create reusable controls, like this: