10 Quick Tips About Moodle Plugin
A Moodle plugin can be created by anyone. However, for Moodle Plugin Development, the only thing that a developer needs is to have some understanding of PHP and HTML coding. In order for your plugin to be added to the official Moodle plugin directory, seeking help from a professional development team will be beneficial, as it will first evaluate the plugin code.
Before approaching the Moodle plugins directory and submitting a plugin (or a new plugin version), one should go through the checklists below and fix the issues if any with the developed plugin. Doing so will make the critic of the plugin happy and may make a difference in how long the plugin has to spend in the approval queue before it lands smoothly.
If you want your Moodle plugin to work smoothly, then hiring an expert developer would be best. Many moodle development providers offer Moodle Development Solutions for different purposes.
Here, are 10 quick tips for Moodle plugin development:
1. Meaningful plugin descriptions
It is important to have a meaningful description of your plugin. Prepare a short and precise description for the short description field and write an elaborate description for the full description field in English. Also, provide the same information on the record page of the plugin and in its README file as well.
2. Supports Moodle versions
Make sure that the new plugins that you have developed and submitted into the plugins directory support at least one of the Moodle versions that are being maintained currently.
3. Code repository name
Once you have developed a Moodle plugin, make sure to provide a reliable experience for other Moodle developers and site administrators. You should make use of the repository naming rule for Moodle plugins: moodle-{plugintype}_{pluginname}.
4. Provide source control URL
You should make your open-source plugin easily accessible to others. Enable sharing and further development of your open-source plugin. Once the Moodle Plugin Development is over, you should provide the URL of your code repository that is publicly accessible.
5. Bug tracker URL
Always encourage participation from other plugin developers and provide a space where issues and bugs can be reported, make feature requests, or suggest other types of improvements for the plugin.
6. Provide documentation URL
Provide a place where others can locate further documentation of your plugin. One of the preferred locations is Moodle docs. You can also use Github wikis or your own website for further documentation of your plugin.
7. Illustrative screenshots
If you really want to provide Moodle Development Solution, then you should capture and share some screenshots of your plugin. This will help others to get an idea of what it looks like when installed. The professional development team will use these screenshots in more places in the plugins directory in the future.
8. Functionality
It is important to test the plugin functionality with full developer debugging enabled. A professional Moodle plugin development team will make sure that the code doesn’t show any unexpected PHP warnings, notices, or even errors.
9. Required subscription
If any third-party subscription-based service is required by the developed plugin, then ensure to mention it clearly in the plugin’s description.
10. Installation
Ensure that the plugin is installed well using the in-build plugin installation interface from the ZIP package. If it requires any substandard post-installation steps, make sure to list them in both plugin’s description and the README file.
