PlugGen

OK, so for some time there has been mention of a WordPress Plugin desktop application! Huh? What the heck is that I hear you say? Well, the original idea was to enable a simple way for Plugin developers to automatically generate their Plugin admin options. This leaves much more time that developer can devote to the actual Plugin core functionality, rather than having to spend time putting together a useful set of admin options for users to customise the Plugin.

Adding new options to an existing page can be just as frustrating. Quite often if you wanted to just drop in another CheckBox or two, you definitely thought twice about it! It wasn’t something you could simply add in five minutes. Even using the new Plugin Settings API (which really simplifies things immensely), or copying and pasting from a previous Plugin is not a snip. There are several things you need to check for each added option to make sure everything is hooked up correctly and behaving properly.

PlugGen sidesteps this scenario nicely as it generates all the Plugin options code automatically for you, via a visual design interface (which matches the WordPress Plugin admin options page). You will be able to save your options so that if you need to tweak them in the future you can do so in seconds.

BUT, that was merely the initial intention. Since playing around with some pre beta code I quickly realised that this application could be much more, and will now be developed to be a complete WordPress Plugin management tool.

Watch this space, more news, screenshots etc. coming soon! For the very latest updates follow me on twitter.