8 Mistakes I Made When Building a WordPress Plugin With AI

As the title of this article says, I have no formal development experience. For full transparency though, I also wasn’t coming into this with a total lack of understanding about the underlying code that makes WordPress plugins function. In other words, I wasn’t a complete newbie or an average WordPress blogger with no technical knowledge.

That did make things somewhat easier, but nowhere near easy.

However, I was damn enthusiastic about building a WordPress plugin, so I decided to give it a shot.

I used ChatGPT as my Batman and Claude as my Robin, and as helpful as they were, I still needed the good ‘ol WordPress developer handbook to fill in a lot of blanks. Not to mention a strong willingness to level up my coding game. If it was an easy plug-and-play solution, then the article you’re reading right now wouldn’t exist.

Yay! 🎉 You made it to the end of the article!

By Martin Dubovic

41 articles

Martin wrote his first e-book and built his first website using Weebly to market it and sell it in 2013. After making his first sale, he knew he was onto something. A few years later he made the switch to WordPress with the help of CodeinWP's tutorials and articles, and from then on he became a full on WordPress addict. When he's not WordPress-ing, you can find him doing pullups, handstands, and drinking matcha.

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Mrteesurez

September 1, 2024 2:13 am

I learned a lot from this article. I have already built a plugin using ChatGPT, and it worked fine, but I didn’t realize all the mistakes you listed since I haven’t submitted it to the WordPress Plugin Directory. I will need to redo it and follow all the tips you’ve shared here.

I remember submitting the plugin to CodeCanyon, but unfortunately, it was given a hard rejection. I didn’t know what I did wrong, but I think it might be due to one or more of the mistakes you mentioned, especially regarding coding standards and indentation.

Thanks for this comprehensive guide.

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Martin Dubovic

September 2, 2024 1:40 am

Reply to Mrteesurez

Thanks for taking the time to read and to leave a comment. I appreciate hearing from like-minded people. I’m also glad that you found some value in what I wrote. It’s definitely a way different ball game when you’re going from “working plugin” to “submission-worthy plugin.” I was surprised that it took so much more extra work – significantly more than just making the plugin functional.

If you end up submitting it and get approved, please share a link to it. I’d love to check it out.

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