Tools to create a High-Quality WordPress Plugin

There are a few tools that improve your plugin code quality. I have described them below:

For Sticking to one Coding Standard:

The Plugin code should follow one code standard. More than one developer is working on the same plugin. Coding Standard is giving feel like all code developed by a Developer.

If we follow a coding standard, there is a low chance to produce a buggy code and We can understand the code easily.

Code is like poetry and following coding standard gives good look to the code. As a developer, We are spending a lot of time reading code instead of writing a code. A Well Structured code is easy to read and understand.

There are three tools to maintain WordPress Coding Standard:

1. PHP CodeSniffer – https://github.com/squizlabs/PHP_CodeSniffer
2. PHP Coding Standards Fixer – https://cs.symfony.com/

For WordPress plugin code, I recommended using WordPress coding standard or PSR-3 or higher coding standard.

Right IDE:

If we use the right IDE, We can see syntax errors easily, Debug PHP code with Xdebug. I recommended using VSCode or PHPStorm IDE for WordPress Plugin Code development.

Static code analysis Tool:

We should remove unused code and variables from the code. For it, We should PHPStan – PHP Static Analysis Tool.

Task runner tool:

For compressing JS and CSS files, Remove comments and make PRO and Free plugins, We should use Gulp, Grunt, Codekit, or Webpack.

Version Control System:

We should use git for the version control system.