Every business is unique with processes and systems that require specific needs that may not exist in the wider market. However, by developing a custom plugin for your WordPress website, you’ll be able to offer your users a distinctive application. As a result, you’ll stand out from the crowd gain an advantage over your competition.
In the WordPress ecosystem there are tens of thousands of plugins available to meet many common website objectives. For example, if you need a contact form, there are plenty of free plugin options available for your WordPress website. Simply download, install, activate, and go. However, many businesses have individual needs that the plethora of available plugins do not meet. Therefore, you need a custom solution to bring your unique process to your online audience. Crack-Ajax can develop a WordPress custom plugin to solve your problem so your business will have the one-of-a-kind tool it needs to gain competitive advantage.
Theme-Based vs Stand Alone Custom Plugins
WordPress developers have the option to code custom plugins directly in the theme or as a stand-alone application separate from the theme. There are advantages and disadvantages to each option. Crack-Ajax will work with you and ensure you understand the pros and cons of your unique situation. Subsequently, we’ll proceed to build the tool you need using the most beneficial method.
Theme-Based Custom Plugin Pros and Cons
In general, theme-based custom plugins should focus on functionality or style/layout issues that are theme centric. Perhaps your theme has a need for a Woocommerce mini cart that drops down from a header menu. Adding the functionality directly to the theme is appropriate given that it is a theme feature. Our developers can easily add such functionality to your theme and maintain it in separate files, therefore providing you with future portability.
Theme-based Plugin Pros
- Easy to incorporate into theme
- Additional structure is not necessary
- Lower cost to develop
Theme-based Plugin Cons
- Only available to it’s parent theme
- Code is not isolated unto itself
- Difficult long term management
Stand-Alone Custom Plugin Pros and Cons
Stand-alone plugins are separate from any theme you’ve chosen. They can be used with any theme, making them portable and ensuring longevity. This is the preferred method if your custom plugin is a tool not dependent on your theme in any way. If you need to develop a reporting system based on website activities, you will want to use it on your current theme as well as any theme you use in the future. So, by creating a stand-alone custom plugin, completely independent of your theme, it will continue to function even after changing your theme.
Stand-alone custom plugins can also be very complex and the separated code structure makes them easier to maintain over time. Crack-Ajax develops custom plugins to help you create the tools you need to compete and set your company apart from the crowd. We employ a class-based coding structure to make your code perform more efficiently while eliminating potential conflicts with other plugins you may be using.
Stand-alone Plugin Pros
- Portable and usable with any theme
- Maintenance is easier with isolated code base
- More efficient code with less conflicts
Stand-alone Plugin Cons
- Greater complexity and time consuming to build
- May require additional structure
- More expensive to develop
Existing Plugin Customizations, Add-ons and Extensions
One of the great things about WordPress is it’s open source philosophy. It allows anyone access to the core code and offers the ability to customize it in using what are known as hooks, actions and filters. The spirit of this philosophy also applies to the thousands of plugins available in the WordPress repository.
While technical, this simply means that any of the free plugins available at wordpress.org have open and accessible code. Any developer can customize the existing plugin to address a need the original code did not. Many plugins also utilize hooks, actions and filters allowing developers to create independent add-ons that interact with the original plugin, yet are completely separate.
What this means is: if you have a plugin that does what you need for the most part, but not exactly what you would like, there is a solution. Crack-Ajax will create an add-on or extension to modify the plugin to achieve your desired outcome. Depending on the plugin, we may either create a fork of the existing code base and add customizations directly. On the other hand, we may create a stand-alone plugin using hooks, actions and/or filters to achieve the functionality you desire.
SPECIALIZATION: WOOCOMMERCE ADD-ONS AND EXTENSIONS
Crack-Ajax has developed many add-ons and extensions to enhance and customize the highly popular Woocommerce plugin. It is the most popular ecommerce platform used on the web today. It gives you the basic tools you need to create an online store, but it doesn’t do everything. Luckily, Woocommerce is built with extendability in mind.
Our developers have built Woocommerce add-ons and extensions that do everything from track sales and award points for a user loyalty program to a logistics optimizing extension that determines the nearest supplier to reduce shipping costs. If Woocommerce doesn’t meet your needs out of the box, Crack-Ajax will develop a plugin to make your vision a reality.
Tiffany Andersen Brand’s Golden Key VIP Rewards plugin pictured right.
Specialization: Gravity Forms Add-ons and Extensions
Gravity Forms is another widely used WordPress plugin that offers an extensive web form infrastructure. Albeit a paid plugin, Crack-Ajax provides it to any client at no additional cost. Gravity Forms was written with lots of hooks, actions and filters to make it easily customizable to accommodate any need.
If you plan on doing marketing activities on your WordPress website, you will need forms to help you gather information on your prospects and customers. Crack-Ajax is the perfect partner to add features you require that Gravity doesn’t include out of the box. Let us help you get the information you need to maximize your marketing campaigns with a custom add-on or extension for your Gravity Forms.
Olympus Camera promotional form with contest-based add-on pictured eft.
Crack-Ajax offers WordPress services for everything you need to build, manage and market your WordPress website. From design and development to hosting and maintenance we have you covered.