The plugin that I'm going to show you how to create within this post is a plugin that I created for MakeUseOf.

Creating plugins for WP is relatively easy and uses actions to call functions that are included in pages within the main WP files. To learn more about creating plugins for WP go here.

Ok so lets get started with creating the plugin.

When creating a plugin for WP make sure that you include your own unique word or acronym to your functions so that they don't conflict with any other plugins that may be installed.

Because I created this for MakeUseOf the acronym I use is MUO and then AF because I named the plugin author footer so every function within this plugin begins with MUO_AF.

So to start our plugin we add this

Here is where we add the name of our plugin, a description, your name and the version number of your plugin.

The next bit of code that we add is the register_activation_hook and register_deactivation_hook so that when the plugin is activated and deactivated the code within functions that we will create in our next step will be executed.

We're now going to create two functions called MUO_AF_activate and MUO_AF_deactivate so that the register hooks work correctly.

In the next step we will write code that will be called and displayed within the Your Profile page in the admin-cp.

When the Update Profile button is clicked the information from the previous bit of code will be retrieved in the next bit of code and the database will be updated.

The code we will write now is the code that will grab the contents of the post and then attach the authors signature to the end of that post.

We will now add the functions to actions, this is the most important part of the code because without this none of the functions would be called and nothing would happen.

Then at the end of the file close the php tags with

I have not been very descriptive in this tutorial of what the actual code within the plugin is doing because I created this tutorial wanting to show people the basics bit of code that are needed to call functions and make a plugin work.

I hope that you have learnt something by reading this tutorial and feel free to post a comment with your thoughts on this post.

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If you haven't checked out the previous tutorials then click on the names to view them. Part 1, Part 2, Part3.

In Part 4 of this tutorial you are going to learn how to edit and delete your posts from the admin page.

Connect to the database

The first thing that we need to do is go to index.php under the admin folder and to the after the first <?php add this:

Display The Posts

After this line in index.php

add below it

What we're doing here is querying the database to display all the posts in the table news_system from the newest post to the oldest post. We then use a while loop to loop through and display each post. You will see that each post links to editpost.php so what we will do now is create an editpost.php file.

Creating editpost.php

After you have created your editpost.php file add the following code to it

What we're doing here is opening the php tags then including dbconnect.php that connects to the database. $_GET['id'] gets the id from the URL and stores it in a variable called $id. Then we close the php tags with ?>.

Before the ?> insert the following code.

Below this we're going to create a html form and display the information that we have retrieved from the database within it so that we can edit it.

What happens in this piece of code is if the post hasn't been submitted then include the form. Within all the form elements you'll see that they all have value and that value is the variables. We also include the id in a hidden element so that we can carry it over for when the submit button is pressed. Under the submit button there is a link to a page that we will create in a minute that will delete that post.

In the next lot of code we're going to make it retrieve all of the values from the form and store them in variables that will then be used to update the row within the table.

All the code together should look like this:

Now that we have created the editpost.php file its time to create deletepost.php.

Delete a post

In this delete file I haven't added any confirmation to ask the user if they're certain that they want to delete the post. It might be a good idea to add it using submit buttons or javascript.

As usual we include the php tag and the database file as we're going to be querying the database. We then get the id from the URL and store it in $id. Then we query the database and delete the post and last of all we display a message to the user saying the post has been deleted.

Thank you

Thanks for taking the time to read this tutorial. I hope that you have learnt something and that you keep returning to check out our latest tutorials.

If there is anything that you need help with then please post a comment and I'll write a tutorial on it or get back to you.

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If you haven't already seen part 1 of this tutorial then watch it here.

For the second part of this tutorial you will learn how to create a cookie to log the admin user in and create the tables for your news system.

Ok so first of all we are going to modify the file from the first tutorial.

Modify:

if($_POST['username == $username AND $_POST['password'] == $password)
{
echo '<a href="newpost.php">New Post</a>';
}

To

if($_POST['username == $username AND $_POST['password'] == $password)
{
setcookie("username", $username, time()+3600);
setcookie("password", $password, time()+3600);
echo '<a href="newpost.php">New Post</a>';
}

The two new bits of code that we add are setcookie("username", $username, time()+3600); and setcookie("password", $password, time()+3600);. What we are doing here is creating a cookie called username and assigning the value of $username to it and time()+3600 will make the cookie expire in 1 hour.

Create the news table

Insert the following MySQL code into phpMyAdmin or any kind of MySQL software that you are using

CREATE TABLE `news_system` (
`id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY ,
`author` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL ,
`date` VARCHAR( 20 ) NOT NULL ,
`title` VARCHAR( 100 ) NOT NULL ,
`post` TEXT NOT NULL
) ENGINE = MYISAM ;

Connect To The Database

Create a file called dbconnect.php in the parent directory to the admin folder.

Enter the following code into dbconnect.php

<?php
$host = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$db = "news_system";

$conn = mysql_connect($host, $username, $password);
mysql_select_db($db);
?>

Change the variables $host, $username, $password and $db.
Most of the time localhost is what the host will be so if you're unsure then don't change this.

Create News Submission Form

Create a file called newpost.php and insert the following code below into the newpost.php file.

Make the form

Now that are tables have been created in our database the next thing to do is to add a HTML form and PHP code to process the form.

Our HTML Form:

<form method="POST">
Author: <input type="text" name="author"><br>
Title: <input type="text" name="title"><br>
Post:<br>
<textarea name="post" cols="30" rows="7"> </textarea><br>
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Publish Post">
</form>

PHP Code:

<?php
require("../dbconnect.php");
//if submit button has been pressed
if($_POST['submit']){
//retrieve form text fields
$author = $_POST['author'];
$title = $_POST['title'];
$post = $_POST['post'];

//get the date
$date = date('d/m/Y');

//post information to database
$query = mysql_query("INSERT INTO news_system VALUES('','$author','$date','$title','$post')");

if($query){
echo "Post was successfully added to the database";
}
else {
echo "Post was not added";
}
}

?>

In the next post you will learn how to display the latest 5 posts.

If something isn't clear or you would like something to be included in the next post then please leave your comments.

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A tutorial showing how to create a page which lets someone add a user to a database, its a little bit rushed and not well explained but I hope it helps in some way. I will add a better explained video tutorial soon on how to create a user system using PHP and MySQL.

What you will learn to do in this video tutorial is to create a basic HTML form which asks the user for their username and password, when the submit button is clicked their username and password will then be added to a MySQL database.

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