How to edit a WordPress Plugin?

Developing and taking your blogs to great heights is possible with WordPress. WordPress is a CMS and happens to be the great blogging platform till date. WordPress engine is used by major giants like Flickr, CNN and many other top companies from various industries. The reason why WordPress gets all the attention is because, it makes itself the right platform to showcase blogs and content. One major advantage of WordPress is the thousands of plugins. You can see that the Plugins can help you a great deal and updates happening more often to make the platform secured. If you are already using WordPress and you need to edit a WordPress plugin, you may be in need of some help, which you can find here. Here is how to edit a WordPress plugin.

Editing plugins in WordPress:

Plugins are the editable files, among the many, used in WordPress. When you want to edit the codes of the plugins, you can do the same by going to the Plugin Editor Screen. This screen lets you modify the snippets and bring about the necessary changes. There are lots of things, this built in Plugin editor lets you to do.

• Any PHP code can be viewed in large text or edited using this built in Plugin editor
• You can also save the files from this area, provided the files are writeable. If you are not sure about the same, you can click the option, Changing File Permissions to see if the file is writeable. If the file is not writeable, you will be notified of the same through a message. You can make the file writeable using the Codex option.
• When you have edited a plugin, the name of the plugin appears on the top in a text box.
• Note that this text box cannot take any picture or images. This is because plugins are of pure text.

How to choose the plugin to be edited?

With thousands of plugins and chances of you being installed, 1/10^th of them, you need to first choose the plugin you need to edit. For this, you go to the drop down menu in the top right of the WordPress and select the plugin, you need to edit. The names of the plugins are listed here.

Under the selection menu, the plugin files that can be edited are listed. There are file links available and click on them. This lets you paste the text of the files in the textbox, enabling you to edit the plugin.

Documentation Lookup:

It becomes important to look up the documents, and this can be found under the editor. There is a list of the function names available in a plugin. Select a function and tap the Lookup button. The documentation can be seen in phpdoc.ordpress.org. You can also find the same in php.net.

Updating the Files:

Once you have made the changes, make sure, you have click the Update File button, to save the changes. A splash message that tells you that the file has been changed successfully appears, once you have clicked this button. If you can see no message, the changes are not saved, so repeat the process.  When you cannot see the update file button, then the file is not writable.