Starter Plugin

The YOOtheme starter kit provides a minimal and simple starting point for building your next YOOtheme Pro extension. Easily create a module for YOOtheme Pro to extend its functionalities. For example, add setting panels to the customizer, elements to the page builder or load needed asset files into the site. Once the module is customized based on your application's needs, automatically build a Joomla plugin and WordPress plugin to distribute it to your customer project.

Requirements

Install Composer v2.5+, which is used to install PHP packages.

Also, use Node and npm to install Task, which is needed to run build tasks.

npm install -g @go-task/cli

Create a new plugin

To create a new plugin run the following command in the plugins folder of WordPress wp-content/plugins or Joomla plugins/system depending on your preferred development environment. Replace PLUGIN_NAME with the name of your plugin, for example myplugin.

composer create-project yootheme/starter-plugin PLUGIN_NAME

You will be asked for additional plugin information which will be used in the plugin metadata.

• Enter plugin title: The plugin title, for example My Plugin
• Enter plugin description: The plugin description
• Enter author name: The author Name
• Enter author email: The author email
• Enter author url: The author URL
• Enter update server url: The URL to the update server file

This will create a new myplugin directory with required plugin files.

.
├── build                   # Plugin blueprint files
│   ├── joomla
│       ├── myplugin.php   # Joomla plugin
|       ├── myplugin.xml   # Joomla plugin metadata
│   ├── wordpress
│       ├── myplugin.php   # WordPress plugin
├── .env                   # Metadata
├── vendor                 # Development dependencies
├── LICENSE.md
├── README.md
└── Taskfile.yml           # Tasks

Set up the plugin

Open your new plugin folder in the terminal and use one of the following task to copy the necessary plugin files from the build folder to the plugin root folder.

task setup-wordpress
task setup-joomla

Now the plugin can be discoverd and installed in WordPress or Joomla.

Create a new module

To create a new module run the following command and replace MODULE_NAME with the name of your module, for example my-module.

composer create:module MODULE_NAME

You will be asked further questions to configure the module.

• Enter module namespace: Enter a PHP namespace, for example MyPlugin\MyModule
• Add asset files example? [y/N] Press Enter for No.
• Add settings example? [y/N] Press Enter for No.
• Add custom LESS example? [y/N] Press Enter for No.
• Add custom source example? [y/N] Press Enter for No.
• Add translation files example? [y/N] Press Enter for No.

Read the Modules documentation to learn more about the created files and code examples.

Note: Add wordpress or joomla to the name for system-specific modules, for example my-module-wordpress or my-module-joomla. The build tasks will only copy the relevant modules into the WordPress and Joomla zip archives.

Create a new element

To create a new element run the following command and replace ELEMENT_NAME with the name of your element, for example my-element. If there are multiple modules, choose a module of the provided list.

composer create:element ELEMENT_NAME

Optionally define the module where the element should be created.

composer create:element ELEMENT_NAME MODULE_NAME

You will be asked further questions to configure the element.

• Enter element title: The element title, for example My Element
• Create multiple items element? [y/N] Press Enter for No.

Read the Elements documentation to learn more about the created files and code examples.

Build distribution files

To create an installable zip archive of the plugin for WordPress and Joomla, run the following task. The created zip files are located in the dist folder.

task build

Alternatively, create the archives individually.

task build-wordpress
task build-joomla

Publishing and versioning

To raise the version number of your plugin or change metadata like the plugin title or description, open the .env and edit the options.

TITLE='My Plugin'
NAME='myplugin'
VERSION='0.0.1'
DESCRIPTION='Lorem ipsum'
DATE='{{ now | date "2006-01-02" }}'
COPYRIGHT='Copyright (C)'
LICENSE='GNU General Public License'
AUTHOR='My Company'
AUTHOREMAIL='me@example.com'
AUTHORURL='example.com'

After that, re-run the setup task to update the plugin for your develop environment meaning WordPress or Joomla and run the build task to create the distribution files.

Update Server

Running the build task will also create update server files for Joomla dist/update.xml and WordPress dist/update.json.

Upload these files to the configured Update Server URL to inform about a new version and provide one-click updates for the plugin.

The package information is also stored in the .env configuration.

# Update server
UPDATEURI='https://www.example.com/updates'

# Package information
TYPE='plugin'
STABILITY='stable'
DOWNLOADURL=https://www.example.com/downloads
PHPMINIMUM='7.4'
JOOMLAMINIMUM='(5\.[01]|4\.[01234]|3\.10)\.'
WORDPRESSMINIMUM='6.2'

Updating commands and tasks

The command and task scripts have their own starter-utils Github repository. To update the package to the latest version run composer update from time to time.

Github

To make your plugin a Git repository use git init -b main and follow the steps under Adding a local repository to GitHub using Git.

License

MIT