So this my first foray back into software development after a long break. I’m starting on a plugin for WordPress called UnitTracker. This little tool should help me create widgets or shortcodes in pages that track changes in anything over time. What does that mean in practice? You can measure weight, time, distance, depth, temperature, or any other figure you’d like over a given period.

“measure weight, time, distance, depth, temperature, or any other figure you’d like”

Goals

This is not so much about building a PHP plugin to have a concrete project to work on. Use GitHub, create a CI/CD pipeline, deployment scripts, learn and relearn PHP libraries and get comfortable with the Intellij Phpstrom IDE. Also, it should give me a bit more insight into the world of WordPress to help me in the future.

Planned Features

• Record a unit of any type (integer, double, weight, distance, temperature, monetary value, e.t.c.).
• Give an administration page to add/remove / update / delete the different Units being tracked.
• Give a description to each tracker for SEO.
• Shortcode to insert the tracker into a post.
• Track the difference between the starting point and the present
• Track the progress from the starting or present point to a goal
• Display the tracked unit on a page, post, or widget.

Future work

• Graphs and charts showing change over time
• More advanced target settings and display options
• Downloads of stored data as CSV or JSON.
• Export values to a tracking site where you can work with others.
• Alerts when changes are negative or when you haven’t updated in awhile
• Good WP development re-write
  • Use i18n, l10n.
  • Allow for updates
  • Implement all the WordPress Coding Standards.
  • Apply all of the Inline Documentation Standards.
  • Re-Write from scratch after considering Top 10 Most Common Coding Mistakes in WordPress Plugins
• Release plugin version 1.0 on the WordPress site.