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WordPress

Jonathan Grieve
MOD
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,253 Points
Posted by Jonathan Grieve
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,253 Points

Actions and Filters in Wordpress - What are they for? What do they do?

I'm almost through the Wordpress Actions and Filters course but I'm afraid I'm none the wiser on Hooks in Wordpress and what they're for?

Can anyone give any insights into what they're for? What do they do? Why are they useful and why do I need to know them? I've been following the track pretty will till now Thanks :)

1 Answer

Casey Ydenberg
Casey Ydenberg
15,622 Points
Casey Ydenberg
Casey Ydenberg
15,622 Points

Basically, actions are what allow you to modify the behavior of Wordpress. If you were writing a plugin, you might hook in at several points:

  • adding a menu item to the admin screen
  • adding your CSS and Javascript files
  • displaying some HTML it a sidebar widget

As for why you need to know them, they are quite simply the only way to do these things. If you are writing plugins, you will almost certainly use hooks at some point. They aren't used as commonly in theme development, but it's still important to know why they exist. (I probably REMOVE more actions than I add in most themes, but still need to know how they work to do that...)