Why WordPress Plugins?
A WordPress plugin can be a single PHP file or a complex collection of PHP, CSS, JS and images all used together to add new or enhanced functionality to the WordPress core. Since almost everything you can put in a plugin you can also just dump into a functions.php file in your theme directory, why should you bother building a plugin? Here are a few reasons I find important: • Plugins are focused pieces of code structured to accomplish one task. The very nature of a plugin makes it easy to maintain. • Because of the modular nature of a plugin, it makes your code instantly reusable on other projects (Depending on your code ownership agreements with your clients, of course.) • If over time it grows into a truly helpful collection of code, having it in a plugin allows you to release it to the public quickly and easily. • Having large chunks of functionality split into plugins makes changes to the PHP and related files easier to make later. I think WordPress plugins should be especially imp
